Day 17 Cazorla to Guadahortuna

It was difficult to leave the beautiful Camping Cortijo in Cazorla, but we needed to press on towards Granada where we have prepaid tickets for the Alhambra in two days time.
This is a new landscape, not as wild as before because of the intense cultivation of olives.

Here we are finding fewer big hills, but lots of smaller ups and downs, which if anything, are even more tiring. 

We undulated our way through the olives on almost deserted back roads until, some 47km further we came to the first town (or village for that matter), Jodar where we found the only open bar (we don't know why most were closed) and had a few linguistic (and, I think cultural) problems about vegetarianism before eating a good meal to set us up for an afternoon of climbing in the heat. I had in the meantime stretched my Spanish to the limit and succeeded in booking a room 40km down (or in fact UP) the road. There is very little accommodation on this stretch and we didn't want to take a chance. 

This road is more major and though there isn't much traffic, that that there is goes very fast, so in spite of the beautiful surroundings this section proved to be a bit of a slog in the afternoon heat. A final big hill nearly finished us off.

We eventually made it to the top and were rewarded with a view towards the distant Sierra Nevada in the haze.

Thankfully a long downhill brought us to the hotel. 

Cazorla to Guadahortuna 85km, 1100m ascent .