About Fuente Agria
The Fuente Agria was really our waterfalling excuse to talk about the beautiful city of Granada as well as to visit the white towns of Las Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada range of Southern Spain, which themselves were said to be the highest mountains in the country. Indeed, these mountains were the very ones that backed the famous view of the Alhambra from the Albayzin District of the city of Granada at the Mirador San Nicolás. In any case, this small waterfall was modestly-sized (probably on the order of 5m), but it provided a bit of peace and quiet as well as some relative seclusion on the morning of our visit.
We found that visiting this waterfall was quite easy. From the church just to the east of the Alpujarran town of Pórtugos (see directions below), we then crossed the road and followed a sign saying “El Chorrerón” past a picnic area behind a roadside building. Then, we descended a short series of steps leading to a dripping fern-fringed cove containing the Fuente Agria. This would be the end of the walk, but it was so lush and peaceful down here that we lingered for a while.
The stream seemed to be very mineral rich. So the stream bed appeared to have a reddish appearance, which you can see in the photo at the top of this page. This characteristic would continue further downstream where the reddish stream would weave its way between the lush greenery of this spot. Speaking of the greenery, it seemed like this area had the right combination of sufficient precipitation, shade, and the stream of water to sustain this habitat. It even seemed healthy enough for us to hear birds singing during our visit. Indeed, this seemed like a slice of Eden before we headed back up to the car to continue driving the curvy roads of Las Alpujarras.
Overall, we spent about 35 minutes away from the car. However, this could easily be as short of a visit as you want or as long of a visit as desired depending on how much you linger.
From the city of Granada, we drove south along the A-44 (Autovía de Sierra Nevada) in the direction of Motril for roughly 32km south of the GR-30 and A-44 interchange. Then, we left the A-44 to take the A-348 for a twisty 16km to the town of Gonzalez Robles. From there, we kept left and took the even twistier A-4132 for roughly 23km passing through the town of Pórtugos until we encountered a white church at a bend in the road just east of town. There was a small area for parking near the church, which we took advantage of during our visit.
Overall, this drive took us between 90 minutes and 2 hours (with gas and food as well as mirador stops along the way). Given the narrow and twisty nature of the roads in the Sierra Nevada, I definitely had to exercise patience (from large vehicles and slow drivers) as well as caution (from large vehicles going in the opposite direction) in addition to fighting road fatigue to be safe.
To give you some context, Granada was 126km (90 minutes drive) northeast of Málaga, 172km (2.5 hours drive) southeast of Córdoba, 250km (2.5 hours drive) east of Sevilla, and 420km (4 hours drive) south of Madrid.
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Upstream to downstream sweep of the lush cove containing the spring as well as some dripping moss and red rocks
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