Discovering The Lost Village El Acebuchal, Spain

For our latest travel to Andalucia in Spain, of course a travel, dedicated to photography, for those of you who know me well aleady, we decided to take the nomadic approach. I mean, we didn't have any pre-booked places to spend the night. We were booking a new places every day depending on where the road and some of the planned points on our list have been taking us when the afternoon was starting to turn into an evening. This approach always works better when we travel to a country or region where people are generally warm and friendly, like beautiful Spain!

This particular place we discovered exactly this way, as the evening found us in Frigiliana, one amazingly beautiful town from both architectural, natural and cultural perspective. On the map it looked approximately close to Frigiliana and the price for the night was affordable, we loved the photos of the village we saw online as well. So few minutes after we placed the reservation through the mobile app we got a call from our landlord. Shortly after we met him at a pub in the town, having beers with his friends. He invited us to have a beer there but I have a rule to not put any alcohol in my mouth before we are all set for the night. We also wanted to walk some more time in Frigiliane before we call it a day so we politely refused the offer and carefully listened to his directional advices.

Getting to The Lost Village was a bit tougher than I expected. Mainly because few kilometers of the road there was a gravel road. El Acebuchal is located inside a mountain national park and as our friendly host explained later that evening, the road will not get aby better as construction is highly limited inside the park. That, of course, has its positive sides :)

Here is our first sight from the gravel mountain road:

It was so beautiful that I couldn't wait and just pulled down our car window and took a shot :) I was worried we could break a tire, to be honest, most of that rocky road but all was great, in both directions as it appeared :)

The village practically has one main street so it wasn't hard at all to find our house for the night. We slept at the property at the left-hand side, while the owner, who was there with his little daughter, was staying at the house apart from the main boulevard, heheh :)

I have to admit, this was one of our most romantical night there. Our host was a very nice guy, a Belgian who has invested in few properties in the village. He spent few hours telling us his story and the village history, all of them appeared quite dramatical and interesting. As a true Belgian, he was offering a rich variety of Belgian beers so the evening and part of the night turned into a beer tasting holiday! The history of the village turned out to be long and dynamic. It was born on a famous trade route centuries ago and ended being totally destroyed under the ruling of Francisco Franco to raise again only few years ago as a place to break away from the noise of the civilization and spend some days "recharging the batteries" in a unique way.

I don't remember, for the last five-six years, going to a place such silent. We slept under a window fully open, no anti-insect net as there weren't any. In the morning we were waken up by the singing of a peacock!

Ops, I forgot to mention that the end of the night for me was dipping into the small whitewashed pool on the roof of the house. The feeling to watch the Milky Way and my body surrounded by the warm water in the cold mountain night... I will never forget that emotion!

In the morning, after having our breakfast we had a quick chat with our host and asked him to recommend some places around to satisfy our photographic searches :) He recommended the ruins of few houses supposed to be "close". So we went by foot following on the same mountain gravel road. It took us more than expected but we enjoyed not only those ruins along the same trade route from the past, but the calm spring Spanish nature as well:

It was obvious live is returning to this place as about a half of the house were under construction at the time:

Imagine living in this whitewashed house on the mountain hill:

After about two hours it felt good to see again the borders of The Lost village:

There is a lovely small church at the western border of the village, next to the public parking when we left our rental car for the night. The church was locked and unfortunately we couldn't get inside it.

No idea how this tree is called, but I fell in love with its gorgeous pink blossoms:

We spent that awesome night there in the second half of May. It appears this was outside the active season when, according the words of our landlord, the village is almost full. Thankfully, that morning we had this amazing settlement virtually all for ourselves, as we met no more than five persons while walking around :) There was such a charisma in wandering the empty streets, pardon me, the street :)

Most of the houses seem restored with the help of a "Rural Houses" European Union program. As I could tell, large room cannot be expected inside but the energy of the area and the crystal blue water pools definitely compensate for it!

Now you could enjoy the great bright white and blue colors of the typical local architecture of El Acebuchal:

At few places we found traces of celebrations but there was nobody to ask what was it all about ;)

We were enchanted by the outlook of the village square above ;)

Before we take off to our next location we noticed a small bar, open and offering some treats:

All they sounded magnificent but it was too early to have lunch so we tried some of the home-made ice cream that turned out extremely delicious :)

Now the maps says under its name "Takeout" and I suppose that is all about the nasty Covid but at the time we were there we were served by a couple of very polite guys, as the bar was ran by a family taking care of everything. Now I recall there was a small local shop as well, we bought few amazing things from there, souvenirs, along with goat cheese, honey and a jam that disappeared in our happy mouths few days later :)))

Bar on the first floor and their home on the second floor, with an amazing view, of course:

The Lost Village El Acebuchal is a hidden piece of Heavens. Indeed! If I have the chance I would return there and spend much more days. Probably if I become a writer of any other profession that don't need Internet, TV, the noise and the artifacts of the modern world... I would definitely pick on that special "lost" place!

Thanks a lot for dropping by, stay safe and be happy!

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Copyright: Damian Hadjiyvanov, Light Captured

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My photo site: https://hadjiyvanov.com/

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Thank you for all the support!

Have a great photo! :P

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