A night with clattering teeth

Let me clarify: We did not stay in Puertomingalvo. I had just sent off the blog post from yesterday when my partner remembered that she would like to move on because 1. the music was far too loud and 2. she found the song selection terrible. I wasn't sure which of the two points had tipped the scales for her decision, and to be honest, I didn't want to know. Okay, spending a whole night with that music wouldn't have been easy, but then dealing with a woman beside me who was casting a pleading glance at my conscience – I really didn't want to put myself through that.

So we cruised a few kilometers to our next stop, Linares de Mora, just before nightfall. And I quickly found the perfect spot for my partner: 500 meters outside of town, right next to a cemetery. It was so quiet here that we could hear the needles of the surrounding pine trees dancing in the gentle evening breeze. When I woke up during the night, I heard a soft clattering next to me. It must have been my partner's teeth. An isolated cemetery ... dark night ... creepy ... But it's eerily silent, I thought, turned over, and fell asleep again immediately.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning when the first thought of getting up quietly knocked at my door. Due to the time change, she said. About two hours later, we set off for a walk to Linares de Mora. We were just sitting down for a small second breakfast in a bar when the idea of a little hike came to us. We wanted to visit the famous pine tree, Pino del Escobón – which required a walk of almost three kilometers. For us, it was like asking a 100-meter sprinter to run a marathon. But we had fortified ourselves well and set off cheerfully.

We took almost an hour and a half for the trek there. At times it felt like we were going backward, but when we reached our destination, we knew it had been worth the effort. Before us stood a magnificent specimen, a pine tree nearly 30 meters tall with a circumference of just under six meters. The Pino del Escobón is over 400 years old. A simple number that grows ever larger when you consider what has happened in that time: Spain was a world power, the Thirty Years' War raged in Germany, and Galileo Galilei was fighting for recognition of his discoveries.

We stood in awe before this pine, which is healthy and can live up to 1,000 years. What will it experience in the next 600 years? I'm not sure I want to know ...