Day 3 - Madrid to Caceres


We started off this morning with a great breakfast in the beautiful courtyard at the Hotel Orfila in Madrid.


Soon after breakfast we were picked up by our Bark to Bottle tour guides and went to two other hotels to pick up the other members of the group. Bark to Bottle offers four tours a year for a minimum of eight and a maximum of 10 people on each tour. This is only the second year that the tour has been offered. We have eight in our group - a mother and daughter from Texas (Winnie and Shirley), a couple from California (Tom and Leslie), Ralph and Donna and us. We also have two guides - Patrick Spencer, the Executive Director of the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance located in Oregon, and Miguel Rollan, the owner of Two Birds One Stone Eco-Tourism located in Spain. That brings the total on the tour to ten.



We began to get to know each other and learn about cork on our three hour drive from Madrid to the small town of Trujillo where we were served a wonderful Spanish Lunch.   Some of what we learned included:
  • cork forests help to keep the soil very rich in nutrients and therefore help to keep deserts from encroaching.
  • cork forests are playing a vital role in the preservation of the Iberian Lynx - a small wild feline that lives mainly in Spain and Portugal and is on the endangered species list.  There were roughly 100 Iberian Lynx when they were placed on the endangered list in 2002.   The lynx preys almost exclusively on rabbits but due to a disease that has sharply reduced the rabbit population, the numbers lynx suffered.  Restocking of rabbits has helped bring the lynx population to about 400.  The cork forest plays its role because the rabbits eat the acorns in the cork forest.
  • cork trees take 25 years to mature - the first cutting of the bark when a tree reaches maturity produces unusable cork because it is so porous.  The second cutting nine years later produces cork that can only be used on cork boards and flooring.  The third cutting of the bark which happens when the tree is 43 years old produces bark that is capable of being used to make bottle corks.
  • 70% of all cork harvested is used for bottle corks.
We stayed in the UNESCO city of Caceres, a city that dates back to the 12th century and were given a tour by a local guide - Marco.   The two-hour tour started at 8:00pm and at 10:00 we went to dinner. Below are our guides - Marco, Patrick and Miguel.


The delicious dinner consisted of tapas and wine.  La Cacharreria, which is in a restored castle,  is the best Tapas restaurant in Caceres and it always requires reservations - especially at 10:00 pm.   The tapas we had were:
  • Patatera (pork and potato sausage) and date croquettes
  • Warm chicken and mushroom salad
  • Pork Snout with coriander (YES - PORK SNOUT!)
  • Tuna carpaccio marinated in soy sauce
  • Diced sirloin steak with Torta (a strong local milk cheese)
We got back to the hotel at midnight and people were still eating dinner outside at a cafe across from our hotel.  And it was Monday night!



Tomorrow we will visit our first cork forest.

Comments

  1. Deb and CharlieJune 5, 2017 at 7:22 PM

    Love reading of your adventures and learning from your experience. Not liking dinner at 10 though!! Haha! Have a wonderful time.

    ReplyDelete

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