– Travel Insurance
– Transportation by bus with air-conditioning, video, reclining seats etc.
– 2 nights in 4-star hotels based on half board (breakfast and dinner)
– English speaking tour guide
– Visits with local guides

Day 1.

Departure from our terminal heading north. Crossing the fertile olive groves of Jaen, we arrive at the Despeñaperros Natural Park, the natural border between Andalusia and La Mancha. Stop at the visitor center and continue to Ciudad Real. Visit with a local guide, transfer to the hotel, dinner and accommodation.

Day 2.

After breakfast we travel through the footsteps of the knight Don Quixote, visiting emblematic places of La Mancha: Counsuegra, Campo de Criptana, Mota del Cuervo, Belmonte and Tomelloso. In the afternoon, arrival at the hotel in Ciudad Real, dinner and accommodation.

Day 3.

Breakfast at the hotel. Departure to the Tablas de Daimiel National Park. Visit this wetland unique in the world. We continue back to Andalusia. Arrival and end of our services.

Castilla-La Mancha is probably one of the most universally known regions of Spain, thanks to the adventures of Don Quixote de La Mancha.

The “Route of Don Quixote”, declared a European Cultural Itinerary, runs through the territory of the Castilla-La Mancha region following the adventures of the knight Don Quixote in the universal work of Don Miguel de Cervantes, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha (1605). In this territory, we will cross plains of infinite horizons, old sales, villages with wide streets, crests with white mills, the largest vineyard in Europe and we will find a surprising nature garnished with lagoons and landscapes full of magic.

Belmonte, was the birthplace of Fray Luis de Leon. It is a monumental complex of great interest, declared a town of tourist interest since 1968. One of the most important elements of the monumental complex of Belmonte is its walled enclosure, from the 15^th and 16^th centuries, which with the walls and gates communicates the town center with the castle; Several sections are preserved in perfect condition and several gates: the Chinchilla is the access to the city; that of Almudi, next to the Posito, that of Monreal or Toledo with a dressing room to the Virgen de la Estrella. But its most emblematic monument is its castle, built on a previous one from 1324, in a transitional Gothic style to Plateresque with Mudejar influence. It was restored by Eugenia de Montijo who used it as a residence.

Also, of great beauty is its complex of the urban area, where the church of the collegiate of San Bartolome stands out, of great dimensions, built in Gothic-Renaissance style. Inside, thirteen chapels, the choir, the sacristy and the chapter house, a large collection of beautiful altarpieces, very interesting grille and endless works of art – sculpture, painting, goldsmith, books and documents – forming a museum of sacred art. It has two exterior doorways, one Gothic and the other Gothic-Renaissance.

Mota del Cuervo, is known touristically as El Balcon de la Mancha (the Mancha’s balcony), is located in the center of Castilla-La Mancha, with an almost equidistant distance to all the provincial capitals of the region (except Guadalajara). It has been an important crossroads since ancient times, between the route that linked Toledo and then Madrid with Eastern Spain and the route between Cuenca and the south. Its most characteristic feature are its seven windmills that are located on the hill at whose feet the town sits; These, together with those of towns such as Campo de Criptana, Consuegra, Puerto Lapice or Alcazar de San Juan among others, give the typical image of Don Quixote’s La Mancha.

El Toboso, is an emblematic town of the Cervantes universe since it was where Don Quixote’s love, Dulcinea, lived. The Casa de Dulcinea, in addition to its literary value and being for Tobosinos the old residence of a historic and famous neighbor, Mrs. Ana Martínez Zarco de Morales, who is identified with the Dulcinea del Quijote, is a typically La Mancha workhouse from the 16^th century, very well restored and decorated, with a rectangular floor plan and two heights, with a third in the central part as a tower. It has a stately doorway with two coats of arms and its interior is dedicated to a museum of ethnological value and daily use in traditional La Mancha life. The furniture is from the 17^th century, contemporary with Don Quixote. In the courtyard we find one of the largest known oil presses in the province of Toledo, with a beam of more than fifteen meters; it also conserves a dovecote and a mill. It has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest with the category of monument.

Ciudad Real extends into Campo de Calatrava dominating its typically La Mancha, Quixotic and Christian condition. Alfonso X founded, in the Pozuelo Seco de Don Gil area in 1255, the Villa Real, it is therefore a medieval and Christian city par excellence as evidenced by its buildings and the vestiges of its origin. From this footprint of the thirteenth century we find the Puerta de Toledo, the only remaining part of the old wall, inside the city it was organized around three axes of which we still have samples. The Plaza Mayor, with the eclectic appearance of the different centuries that weaves it, preserves the Casa del Arco, the old town hall, of what was the civil and economic centre in the Middle Ages. The other vertex, the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora del Prado, dated at the end of the 13th century, was the religious area. The military center was the Alcazar, in the upper part and of what is now the Torreon. Submerged in this medieval and religious environment, convents, churches, hermitages … flutter the spiritual aroma of different times.

The Tablas de Daimiel are a practically unique wetland in Europe and the last representative of the ecosystem called river tables, once characteristic of the central plain of our Peninsula. It is a complex ecosystem that mixes the characteristics of a floodplain, produced by the overflows of the Guadiana and Gigüela rivers at their confluence, with that of a groundwater discharge area from a large aquifer. These overflows, favoured by the scarcity of slope in the terrain, are accompanied by the development of a powerful and characteristic vegetation cover that constitutes an exceptional habitat for all the fauna linked to the aquatic environment. With the declaration of the National Park, a great step was taken in the conservation of one of the most valuable ecosystems of La Mancha, thus ensuring the survival of the birdlife that uses these areas as wintering, staining and nesting areas, creating an Integral Zone of waterfowl.

* Pepe Tours reserves the right to alter and modify the itinerary and the order of the excursions for organizational reasons.. Depending on hotel availability or in case of last-minute bookings, Pepe Tours may replace the scheduled hotels by others of the same category (see list of scheduled hotels in this link).