Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Tuesday.  We were pretty worried when Ryan went to bed last night, being so tired, that he was going to sleep through the entire day today.  And we were right.  We had been talking about maybe going to Lanjarón today for lunch and getting some time to walk around and, if there was enough time, going to see the Moorish Castle there, but that did not happen.

It was after three when Ryan finally woke up.  Dominica has been saying that there is something about this house that makes people just sleep for forever and it appears to be true.  We are not the only ones.

We just had a casual day until Ryan finally got up.  Once we was up and showered and ready to face the world, which was around four, we went to the Meson Rural Los Angeles for lunch.  This is only our second time since moving to Spain that we are going to the local restaurant in town!  I can’t believe that we finally got Dominica to go out for a meal in town.

We had a nice lunch.  We forgot how good the food was there.  Luciana got the calamari.  Might be the best calamari we have had yet since being in Spain!

After our lunch we went for a little walk in the lower part of town, down the GR7, exploring some of the walking areas that Dominica and I have not even had a chance to go down yet ourselves.  I did not have much time with them, though, and had to actually jog up the hill to get home in time to make my stand up meeting.

While I was working, Ryan and Dominica tried to go for a walk on the GR7 which Dominica has not done before.  Originally Ryan was just going to go but then Dominica decided to go with him.  Ryan had been thinking that he would try to get to the next town over, but I think that this was a rather unrealistic attempt given the distance and the fact that these are very rural paths.  They ended up not making it very far before it got dark and needing to turn around.  They failed to follow the path and ended up going up the hill and finding the village cemetery which was neat, but not intended.

Dominica tried to buy tickets for the Alhambra tonight so that we could go see it tomorrow. They sell tickets online.  Unfortunately she discovered that the Alhambra tickets are sold out for six months!  Well that has altered our plans a bit.  She did more searching and found that there were just a few slots available in a guided tour tomorrow.  The cost is crazy, but it is our only chance to see the Alhambra while living here and it would be ridiculous to miss it now that we are here.  So we talked about it and decided to spend a few hundred dollars to have the chance to see the biggest attraction in Europe before not living right next to it.

After work was done, Dominica stayed home with the girls and Ryan and I went to the Meson Rural Los Angeles, where we had had lunch today.  We got there and ordered beers.  This is the first chance that I have had to get a beer since we moved to Spain!

We had a good time and got to meet some of the locals.  We had a good exchange using a mixture of Spanish and French and just a little English.  But we got to know people a bit and going out in town will be a bit more comfortable after this.  (It would turn out weeks later that I would get to know these guys well and they are all politicians.)

Today is Monday.  Tonight Ryan is arriving from New York.  He left last night and spent most of today exploring Oslo, Norway.  He has an eight hour layover there and is walking the city and taking a boat tour of the local fjord.

I had to work early in the day so that I would be able to drive out to Malaga this evening.  Dominica spent the day doing a lot of cleaning too.  Thankfully she can clean for many hours after I leave as it is a four hour or more round trip to Malaga.

Ryan’s flight to Spain ended up getting delayed just a little so I really was able to easily put in a full day at the office and did not have to leave early or anything.  I didn’t work late but I didn’t quit early either.

It was just after eleven at night when I pulled out of Cáñar and started my drive towards Malaga.  I took the Órgiva route on the A346 to the A44 and down to Salobreña, where we were last evening, and west on the A7 / E15.  The drive is a very easy one and the same one that we did our very first night as we arrived in Spain, but in reverse.

I had to get gas to be able to make it to Malaga but all of the gas stations in La Alpujarra region were closed and there is nothing on our section of the A7.  I had to go quite a ways before finding something but thankfully once you get to the Costa del Sol there are twenty four hour gas stations regularly.

I managed to make it all of the way through Malaga without needing to use a GPS.  In fact the GPS was all wrong and would have taken me all kinds of wrong places.  Getting to the airport was pretty easy.  My timing was really good too as Ryan was just ready for me as I pulled in.

Ryan was pretty exhausted having been up for nearly thirty six hours when I picked him up.  He had spent this morning in Oslo taking a quick tour of the city.

It was nearly three when we got to the house and about four when everyone got to bed

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.

 

Two days until Ryan arrives here in Cáñar so we are cleaning, primarily, this weekend.  Lots of cleaning today, although it was tough as the weather is starting to get warm.  This is the warmest that it has been since we first got to Spain.  Which is not really all that bad since our first month here was a bit colder than we were really thinking that it was going to be.  Now things are getting to be a bit more like we thought that Spain would be like.

The cleaning went mostly well.  There is still a lot to be done.  And some things, like the laundry, cannot be rushed as we are limited by the clothes lines and how much we can dry at once.  To make that even more challenging the lines are old and rotted out and break regularly.  Dominica broke the one line several times today and now, instead of running between poles, we have one end tied off to a stack of chairs because that is the only thing that can hold any weight but can be moved to where the now shortened line can reach.

Overall a relaxing day.  We went nowhere and did nothing but cleaning and then watching some Love Boat this evening.

Tomorrow we are going to go grocery shopping down in Órgiva so that we are stocked up for all of the visitors.

Today is Friday and it is also our final week day alone at the house in Cáñar with it being just the four of us.  The house is going to be packed started on Monday.  The girls are a bit disappointed that they are going to be losing the “guest bedroom” as they love that room and have slept in there nearly every night since we moved to Spain.  They like it because it has good Internet access so their iPads work really well in there and they like that it has a double bed so that they can easily sleep together than than each having a twin on opposite sides of the room like they have on the ground floor bedroom.

It was mostly a quiet day.  This evening Dominica and I watched the start of the third season of The Love Boat which is silly but we love that show.