Overview
Extremely close to the city of Malaga is the Montes de Malaga Natural Park. It is characterized by its dense Aleppo pine forest, hills, valleys and large number of water courses. The protected area covers nearly 5,000ha. Its hills range from 80m to just over 1,000m above sea level. The park is located in the river basin of the Río Guadalmedina, which flows to the west of the park.
Walking
There are five signposted walks in the park:
Sendero El Cerrado is a circular walk of around 4km. This route takes you through pine forest, some of which was destroyed by fire in 1989. One of the reasons the walks is particularly interesting is because it allows the visitor to see how the forest has regenerated since the fire. The best part of the walk is the view point ‘Mirador del Cochino’ which provides fantastic views of the park.
Sendero de Torrijos is a short straight walk of 2½km. It takes allows the walker to see some typical houses that were built around the 19th century. Some of these can be visited.
The Sendero de Picapedreros is a more strenuous 7km walk which heads uphill through forest. It takes in several waterfalls and provides wonderful views over the park.
The other two paths are the Sendero de Contadores and the Sendero de Pocopán.
Sightseeing
There are plenty of places to visit.
These include the Ecomuseo Lagar de Torrijos
which was a former lagar (a house which was predominantly used for wine production) which has now been converted into a museum.
An area called the Piedras de Cabrera has cave paintings in many caverns.
Colmenar, is a white village in the district of La Axarquía, characterized by its narrow and small streets. In Casabermeja, where remains of megalithic sepulchres are found, the Arabs also left their mark in the shape of the wall and the Zambra Tower.
“La Alcazaba,” is an Arab fortress, visit it to admire the Renaissance majesty of its cathedral and to immerse oneself in the liveliness of its historic city centre.
Animals/Birds
The Natural Park is home to a diverse number of species of birds, mammals and reptiles. It is one of the few places where chameleons are still found and has a significant population of long tailed newts. Polecats, weasels, wild cats, stone martins and wild boar are all found here. Many birds of prey including eagles, sparrowhawk, goshawk, buzzards and eagle owls inhabit the forests.
Plants
The predominant plant is the Aleppo pine – planted to help prevent major floods. However, there are also many other types of trees including scarlet oak, madrona, olive tree and cork oak as well as the stone pine and Monterrey pine. There are areas of Mediterranean scrubland which plays host to more mature pine trees and lentisc, dwarf fan palms, oleanders and strawberry trees but to name but a few. |
