We got up this “morning” and raced to get the whole family ready so that we could head down to the “big city” of Órgiva to do our shopping for the next week or two. On the way out of town we discovered that there was a produce market set up right on the main street of Cáñar. We had no idea that that happened on Sundays. We realized to our astonishment that this was our first ever weekend spent here in our own village! How crazy is that?
So we shopped at the produce market and sent Liesl and Luciana to the little playground to entertain themselves while we did the produce shopping. We probably shopped for half of an hour and got to say good morning to lots of the locals. The market is a great chance to get out and see everyone as this appears to be where everyone gets their produce. The produce market is run out of the back of a van. It is pretty funny. The girls had a great time getting to go to the playground for so long and while they were there some local kids stopped by too so they got to meet a few kids.
Once we were done with our shopping – which included three large bags of groceries and came to about four and a half dollars (no really!!) we got into the car and drove down to Órgiva.
To our dismay, everything in Órgiva was closed. We went to both groceries stores but no luck. And basically every shop was closed.
We decided to get some food but the local parking lot was full. We ended up in a different part of town than usual and found an amazing Moroccan restaurant that we had never seen before. It was extremely hot out, nearly one hundred degrees when we stopped for lunch, but the girls insisted on sitting inside even though there was no air conditioning which made for a very warm lunch.
Lunch ended up being really amazing. We have been looking for a change of culinary pace for a while. Spain has great food but most food really is extremely similar with the standard Spanish fare and pizza being almost completely ubiquitous to a degree that we found quite surprising. So this is a great find for us. We were really excited and ordered way too much food, but it was all just amazing.
When we left lunch, which was probably two hours later, it was a full on one hundred degrees. Too hot to do anything, especially as it was humid too. We really needed groceries and it appears that everything here must close on Sundays. We are only guessing it is the only thing that really makes sense.
So we decided to just hop in the car and drive to Salobreña on the Costa Tropical. We were already partway there and they have two large supermarkets that are very likely to be open, even on a Sunday.
We were surprised by how little was going on in Salobreña when we got there. But there was activity.
We hit the SuperSol supermarket instead of the Dia Maxi today because while the Dia looked rather like it was open its parking lot was completely devoid of cars and we did not want to go in right as they were closing or find that they had just closed or whatever. So we got to explore a new grocery store.
On our way there the girls had spotted a bouncy house thing at a little street carnival that they begged and begged to be taken to see. So we took a look to see how that was. It wasn’t cheap, at nearly two euros per ride, but the times were long and they really wanted to do it. So we spent about twelve Euros and they did that for at least half an hour. Liesl specially liked riding a big carousel that had a lot of variety and Luciana really liked the bouncy house that had trampolines in it.
After the carnival we walked across the street to the city park which had an old, run down playground in it. But it was rather busy. We stayed for a while.
After the playground we drove down to see if there was any parking available near to the shore and there was actually quite a lot. We parked right on the beach and walked to the water. This is actually the first time that we have actually taken the girls to the sea since we got to Spain! We have been to the water several times and seen the sea a lot and were on the ocean in Cádiz but have not been on to the Mediterranean yet. So this was a nice and a surprise treat.
It was only eighty degrees down on the sea shore. A very nice day for it. We sat right by the water and all got our feet wet. I taught the girls how to skip rocks. Liesl actually did pretty well. They had great fun.
The girls all stayed on the beach and I climbed a huge rock formation near them and got some amazing views of the beaches and could see way back to our village. I climbed back down, got the camera and climbed back up again.
We stayed out until about nine in the evening and then drove back to the house and called it a day. Tomorrow is going to be a long day for sure. Work all day then driving to and from Malaga. That’s four hours of driving after work is done. And we plan to clean more tomorrow too since we lost all of our day today. We had not planned on being away all day like we were but it did turn out to be a pretty fun outing. So we had a nice day even though it was too hot to stay in our own village.