Here nature remains riotous in colour, movement and sound, in sharp contrast to the furnace like somnolence elsewhere upon the mountain.
However even these oases are shrinking under the fierce tropical sun.
This is a dry year and everywhere water levels are lower than in living memory.
The lifescape gasps now in its parched desolation as life draws deeper and deeper within itself.
All around eyes and leaves turn to the west in keen anticipation of the vast cumulus towers that will build, signalling the end of the long dry.
For now though they are met with the intense blue of the Andalucián skydome without even the rumour of a cloud.
The ecology waits with the patience of millennia, it can do no more.
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Photo: Rio Jara at La Vega. Courtesy of the author.