Dragi took us through forest, over hard rocky screes and meadows where bears had swiped the tops off ant hills, to a clear lake.
From the water, the waves make much less sense than they do from the mountain (the mountain, on the other hand, becomes, once you paddle out, a magnificent vertical triptych, with rocky, waterfall-threaded scree below, a band of arid, delicately colored brush in the middle panel, and a paradisal vision of golden grass and redwood groves rising into the sky), and I was having trouble lining it up.
The coastline is rocky, with crags, screes and low cliffs; heather covered hills are separated by valleys occupied by pastures.
In addition, the country's diverse geology, numerous exposed rocky crags and screes and deep, damp ravines coupled with a relatively pollution-free atmosphere enables a diversity of species to exist.
On the heels of our guide, Bill Leavell, a longtime local who regaled me with tales like the one about watching a wolf pack take down an elk outside his living room window, I made it across the scree, over a rocky bowl and up to the lake.
Sands, sandy or gravelly loams, shallow stony soils, and alluvium (material deposited by rivers and streams) and scree-derived deposits (rocky material at the base of cliffs) predominate.
In the Low Arctic, most land surfaces are fully vegetated, with the exception of rock outcrops, dry ridge tops, river gravel bars, and scree slopes (those slopes that have an accumulation of rocky debris at the angle of repose).
The final length of the ridgeline stands as a rocky comb of shale against the sky, dropping down on either side to wide scree slopes and rocky bluffs and nothing.
The hills around Cordoba offer some incredibly varied mountain biking terrain - from exciting descents down scree slopes to rolling paths across the scrublands; from speed plunges in rocky gorges to gentle meanders across farmers' terraces in the woods; and from leaps across mountain streams, to freewheeling to a halt on the beach by Lake Iznajar.
