A day at Peñanalara Natural Park

Living in Madrid is great fun, I am not denying it, but… well, I am a “mountain” kind of person. In other words, I need to go to the mountain, to be out in the nature in order to be completely happy. While living in Madrid, I thought there were no mountains nearby. Later I was told a nice mountain, called Sierra Guadarrama existed not far from Spain’s capital. I checked it and it seemed to be nothing really special. I turned out to be very wrong.

Few days ago I received a friend request on Facebook by some Spanish guy, whose name I did not know. I checked his profile and still nothing. What impressed me, however, was a picture of a beautiful mountain lake he had posted. The caption of the picture was something like: “I am happy that such a beautiful place exists at the Comunidad de Madrid” (The Madrid area). I loved the photo and I checked the place. It is called el Parque Natural de Peñanalara (Peñanalara Natural Park) and it turned out to be not far from Madrid in deed. I posted on the local Erasmus group and soon found two girls who were interested in joining me for a day trip to the park.

We met early one Sunday morning and there we were, on bus 691, heading to Peñanalara. The ride took us about an hour and twenty minutes and was quite nice. We passed nice small villages and a dam. The views were quite different from what we were used to see in Madrid. I got to see Madrid’s skiing resort, which was very intriguing for me. Then, we got off the bus and realized we were really in the mountain. The air was quite fresh and there was cold wind. Still, the weather was nice and sunny and we were ready to go. Before we started our walking trip, we drank coffee at a small restaurant/bar at the entrance of the park. They had nice homemade cakes, coffee, beer, sandwiches, etc. (a bit expensive, though).

After a nice café con leche (coffee with milk), we were finally really ready to go. Luckily, there was information desk, where we received some instructions and a map of the region. I was afraid we might get lost but the paths were easy to spot and it was full of tourists. It was nice to see families walking together, or old couples holding hands. We decided to go to the nearest attraction, the Laguna de Peñanalara. It is a very beautiful glacier lake at about 2.000 meters. I loved the feeling of being so high in the mountain. I could not believe it was so near Madrid. After a long break and lunch, we decided to climb up and see the lake from above. It was a bit difficult for my two companions but they did quite well. We met interesting people on the way, including a Spanish guy who was doing business in my home country. I loved it. On our way back we fell asleep. After arriving at Moncloa bus station, we were hungry and happy. We went for the famous “100 Montaditos” sandwiches, which was a nice end to a nice day.