Sheep Guarding Llama

This is our last morning in Arcos de la Frontera.  Just a quick weekend trip for us.  Most guidebooks, including Rick Steves, call it a one day, or less, trip.  There really are no attractions, per se, in town except for the city itself.  So the number of people overnighting here and the total number of tourists, in fact, is not that high.  The Pueblos Blancos is not a major tourist stop, in general, and it is very far away from the big tourist areas and cities.

We were pretty tired after yesterday, especially me not having gotten to bed until after three.  So Dominica was up first and showered and started packing.  I went up to the common area and tried to get caught up a little bit while I had some Internet access but there was pretty little to be done.

We got the room all packed up and Nick was nice enough to let us keep a “house” key and leave all of our luggage up in the common area out of the way and he gave us clear directions on how to go see the famous El Toro del Aleluya, the running of the bulls.

It was a good hike, up the hill and then back down again, to get to where the bull run was set up.  Arcos de la Frontera no longer lets the bulls run free through the old town as it was incredibly dangerous and caused a lot of property damage.  Now there is a safe, fenced system that keeps the bull away from peoples’ homes and makes it trivial for the people to escape making it not really a very brave ting to do and very little running.  Mostly it is just people standing and jumping to safety.  No real risk.  So we had to walk up over the hill and down the other side to get to where this was set up.

We arrived just in time.  We managed to get a front row spot right against the barrier so that even the girls could see.  Dominica took the Nikon and I had the GoPro.

It was really cool that we managed to be here for such a big event.  It did not feel like it was too overrun with tourists, although there were lots.  The event left a lot to be desired, though.  The bull was not interested in running much or goring anyone.  They had to work hard to get him to go after anyone.  He was, at best, a mildly perturbed bull.  The people were a spectacle.  Most standing around in good clothes and inappropriate footwear holding a beer and acting like idiots.  The run was not very long, just a long, narrow barricaded area with room at the ends for the bull to turn around and go back.  So the running of the bull was it running back and forth in this contained area.

We got a great view of the bull right in front of us where it fell twice, the poor thing.  At one point, and this was a little exciting, it decided to charge me and I got, I think, some great footage of it coming after me and hitting the barricade.  I had to back up as it could have reached me easily where I had been.  The girls actually had a great time.  But I saw people in the audience lose it and not be able to stand the site of the bull.  Lots of paramedics but no one punctured or tossed around on the horns.  The most dangerous thing that happened was a rapid (possibly even literally) American tourist waving a red jacket tried to knock the girls down to frantically get at the bull.  He grabbed me so forcefully that I thought something was wrong and that the barricade was going to come down.  But no, he was just some American who had lost his shit and had gone mad.  Like he didn’t even know that people were there.  It was like how people in fantasy novels are supposed to act when they see a dragon.  It’s called dragon fear.  Except this guy got it with a mild, slightly annoyed bull beyond a barricade.  Sad.

After the running of the bull, probably the last time that we will make the effort to see that but we are glad that we did this one time, we walked back up the hill and ate at Meson Don Fernando where we had eaten last night because it was so good, we wanted to try it again.  And, like last night, it was truly fantastic.

Dominica wanted paella again, she really loves paella.  Liesl wanted pancakes so the closest thing that we could find were spinach crepes which we got for her.  Luciana got calamari.  I went for tapas so that I could have variety and got the seafood croquettes that were so amazing last night and tuna stuffed tomatoes which were really good as well.  So much great food.  And our waiter tried to get us to get some wine but we told him that we had to drive so he brought us sangria instead – which was absolutely amazing, by leaps and bounds the best sangria ever.  I had no idea that sangria could taste this good!

Everything was superb.  And when our meal was over, our waiter brought us another bottle of wine, white this time, for us to take home with us!

After lunch we hit the ceramic store that we had investigated yesterday and bought the painted tile that Dominica had liked.  We try to always get some art on our trips as memories of places that we have been and this seemed like a really good one.  We especially love our Spanish art having bought nearly all of our art on our last trip to Europe in Madrid.

And that was it, we are done in Arcos de la Frontera.  A beautiful town and we had a nice time.  It would have been so much better had we not had the issues finding our way around on the first night and if we had not had to deal with the disaster yesterday evening.  But Arcos was very nice and we managed to see the things that we had wanted to see.  I hope we return if only to eat here again!

We returned to Casa Blues and talked to Nick for a little while before collecting our luggage and heading out for Ronda.  We decided that Ronda, which we really, really wanted to see was basically on the way home and so worth taking the slightly slower path to get there and see it.  We might have to return to have more time there, but at least we will get to see it if we stop today.

The drive to Ronda was only about an hour.  Getting there was no problem at all.  Once into the city we drove right down the main drag to the old bridge but took the loop around the circle before going over it and found municipal parking and explored the city on foot.

Ronda is not a large city but is, in fact, just a little bigger than Arcos.  We walked through the heavily touristed restaurant area in the new town and over the “new” bridge (older than the United States) into the old town.  The gorge that you pass over is just astoundingly beautiful.  It is really hard for pictures to tell how amazing it really is.  And how deep it is.  This is a really big gorge.  Everything was so lovely.  It is sad that the city is so completely full of tourists, the views here are really something.  There are hotels and restaurants built all along the gorge so there are tons of places to go and enjoy the views and the views are everywhere.

There is tons and tons of tourist shopping areas here in Ronda.  Even things that aren’t special about Spain or Ronda, just lots of shopping.  We have been looking for some Flamenco stuff for the girls and Liesl has been begging for castanets.  We found a shop selling Flamenco dresses for little girls and castanets so we took the girls in.  Liesl got a pink dress and Luciana picked out a blue one.  Dominica really wanted one of them to get one in red and black but failed to convince either of the girls to go in this direction.

As we walked down the street I saw a shop that had Michelin maps in the window display, the exact ones that were up in the Casa Blues that I had mentioned to dad last night that we wanted to get as wall maps so that the girls could see where we were, where we had been, etc.  Wall maps are perfect for learning an area.  So I stopped in and bought three – the full Iberia map (Spain and Portugal), the Andalusia map and the Costa del Sol map which includes the Alpujarras region.  Each one is zoomed in more than the last so we get differing levels of detail.

We ended up spending some time in the shop and getting a guidebook that was not digital, the TimeOut Andalucía, plus some pencils for the girls and little notebooks as Liesl has been asking for one of those too.

We also found a non-local, but Spanish from Valencia, toro (bull) figurine that we all really liked.  Well, Dominica, Luciana and I really liked.  Liesl picked out a completely different white bull nothing like the black one that we had decided on.  But it is a house decoration and not for Liesl, so Liesl did not really get a vote and she was sad.

We decided that we had seen enough of town and the girls really wanted a playground and Liesl had seen a park that seemed promising so we walked back over the bridge into the new town and down to the city park which was full of kids and people everywhere.  Very popular on Easter Sunday.

The playground was in a big garden area connected to the famous old bull fighting ring in Ronda.  The playground itself was pretty small but enough for our girls.  I went off to explore the gardens and see if I could find anything of interest.  Liesl, of course, decided to come with me which undermined her goal of wanting to be on a playground.  So she and I went for a walk.  Luciana, seeing her sister leave, almost immediately made Dominica take her to come follow us.  So this kind of ruined things.

Along the walk there were all kinds of amusement things that cost money like bouncy houses, bumper cars and the like.  This caused issues as the girls wanted, of course, to do all of that stuff.  We were thinking about trying to figure out how to do the bouncy house when Luciana threw a temper tantrum about the whole affair, a really enormous one, so we called it a day and left.

On the way out of Ronda we passed a shop selling ice cream.  Liesl had been very good so we got her ice cream but Luciana did not get any, she was still being very naughty.

Back into the car and on the road.  The drive home was uneventful.  More gorgeous countryside.  As we approached Granada there was a big rain storm to the north with lightning.  We saw a little rain on our drive but only a very small amount actually landed on us.  We have heard that the Andalucian rain storms can be pretty dramatic, like the big ones in Texas, so while we are excited to get to see one we are hoping to see it from the house and not while out driving – especially when we will have to drive in the Alpujarras mountain roads.  So we were quite glad that we did not get the rain ourselves tonight.

It was nine thirty when we got home to Cáñar.  It felt a bit weird coming “home” after a vacation weekend abroad in Spain to our Spanish house!  Funny but the house already feels a lot like our home and living in Spain feels completely natural.

We all got into bed pretty early tonight.  We were exhausted.  It was a lot of travel and a lot of walking and quite a bit of stress this weekend.  Glad to be back home and ready for sleep.  Luciana begged for me to sleep upstairs in the guest bedroom with her, so we slept up there and Liesl slept with Dominica down in the basement.

No plans for tomorrow.  Nothing really planned all week.  We are planning to do something this coming weekend but nothing too big.  Maybe Cordoba.  In two weeks we are planning to go to Morocco.

 

A gorgeous morning day as we woke up in the Casa Blues in Arcos de la Frontera in Cádiz Province.  The sun was bright and there was a haze across the lower parts of town.  I took some pictures as everyone was waking up to the sounds of the rooster down in the farm below the city.

While Dominica showered, I went up to the common room to get some Internet access and do a little writing as SGL is a couple of days behind and I don’t want to fall too far behind.  The views from Casa Blues are spectacular, probably some of the best views coming from the city of Acros as it sits directly in the middle of the arc of the city looking down onto the farm in the middle with the river running right beneath us.

I showered quickly.  The hot water in our room is pretty much just for pretend.  It took me a good ten minutes just to figure out that there even was hot water but it changes temperature so quickly that you cannot actually ever start to shower in the water because you will either be burned or you will freeze.  It’s pointless.  That was very frustrating.  But, at only eight Euros for two nights, it is pretty hard to complain.  The room is pretty good all things considered.

Once we were all ready we set out for a walk, up the hill this time.  We got started on the early side hoping that it would not be too hot.  But it was anyway, hot and warm.  We climbed the hill and walked the old town.  There really are few sites to see in Arcos de la Frontera, it isn’t a touristy town.  The old town is full of little shops and restaurants which are really awesome but the are that has those is small.  The real attraction here are the tiny, winding, labyrinthine streets where you will get lost no matter what you do.

Once we reached the old town, having not had dinner last night and having no breakfast this morning, we were ready for some food.  As soon as we came into the restaurant section of town (there is no other way to describe it, easily a dozen restaurants all clustered together after walking over a kilometer up the hill without a single business of any kind) we started looking for options.  We chose one with an inviting courtyard (a typical Andalusian Court, it proclaimed) and proceeded to have a wonderful, leisurely lunch.  It was before noon but close enough.  There were only about two other people there when we arrived.

We got calamari for the girls, it was very different here with huge rings and a batter that was completely new to us for calamari.  Luciana choked on it, again!  We really need to work on getting her to chew her food better.  She is taking aggressive bites which is not good at all when she eats something as dangerous as calamari so often.  Liesl learned that she likes lemon on her calamari.

We also got ensalada rusa.  So good.  Liesl tried this but decided that it was not for her.  For the main meal, Dominica and I ordered our very first paella since moving to Spain.  It was a vegetable paella which is far better for us than a seafood one (see yesterday’s entry on eating seafood.)  It was delicious.  So good.  Best paella I have ever had; I believe that Dominica would agree.  Liesl had some of it too, although she only wanted the rice.  The artichokes were especially delightful.

We sat for a while and relaxed.  The sun was out and we were warm.  Dominica had café con leche and I had a small cervesa.  They are very small here, but that was all that I wanted.

From the restaurant row we walked on to the main plaza which butts up against the city’s castle which is sadly private and inaccessible to the public.  I imagine that in a region like this a castle of this nature is nothing like a traditional castle and is exactly like a really large house since it is built exactly like all of the other houses in the region, just must larger.  Odd to think of it in that way.  It even had a garage door emptying out onto a tiny, tight little street for their cars to attempt to ingress and egress.  Even the castle struggles with getting in and out of town.

There are no real places to go.  There is an amazing view to the south of the city from the plaza.  That was pretty amazing.  But the only real thing to do was to walk around.  So we did that for a while.  We stopped in a ceramic shop and grabbed postcards and bottled water and looked at some artwork that we are struggling to resist.  We love Spanish art.

We walked the streets for a while and attempted to find the legendary convent that is located in town that sells cookies but we were unable to find it.  We did find a little art shop that also sold ice creams.  The girls had been begging all morning for ice cream so we indulged them here.  Dominica and I got ice cream too, of course, in solidarity.

We walked only half a block before a motorcycle came by, Luciana was startled and dropped her ice cream on the ground.  She was very sad so I had to run back to the shop to replace it.  The girls got these things that looked like giant lollipops made of ice cream and the sticks were cheap little plastic whistles.  Very odd.

We were a bit warm and wanted to relax and wash up.  I figured it was a good time to upload some pictures and do some writing as I have fallen behind.  So we walked back to our guesthouse, the Casa Blues, to while away the warmest part of the day.

Upon returning to the guesthouse I immediately set up my laptop and discovered, almost instantly, that several of my most important websites had been hacked.  Not hacked with a little redirect or something like they often have been in the past but completely hacked with the entire contents of the sites deleted!  This was pretty major.  This site was one of them as was our travel blog full of our podcasts!  This was pretty huge and took some tracking down just to know what had happened.

So much for a relaxing afternoon.  This turned into a disaster of a day.  A really serious disaster and, as always, we are out of town and my Internet access is spotty.

It was probably four or maybe as late as five when I discovered this.  The rest of my day was spent trying to figure out what to do.  It ended up that we were not even able to leave to go to dinner until nearly ten this evening because I had to do so much work in the hopes of recovering some things and by the end of the day it was not completely clear just how much damage was done.  It will likely be into next week before all of the damage assessment is done.

The big three sites that were hit, the ones with the everyday impact that was going to be catastrophic, I managed to migrate to a new web host with good success.  If you notice that SGL is running much faster now, that is because it is now hosted on A Small Orange.  This has been the plan for some time but the actual migration had been held off as I just have not had the time to do it and, until now, I really was not all that important.  At least the result of all of this was that the migration was done.  The biggest, hardest sites to migrate were migrated.

While I worked on that I had my Flickr uploads running in the background and got about sixty new pictures uploaded mostly from this morning but most will not be available for a few days as I have to go through them one by one and make them public and add information to them before anyone can see them and while the uploads went through fine there was no time for me to do that at all and there will not be time for me to do it tomorrow either.

At ten I was to a point that the websites had been recovered mostly and there was very little else to be done.  I had worked with our backup and recovery system in an attempt to get the most important content that had not yet been recovered – the MP3s of the Kidding Around Europe podcast.  But at ten when we went to dinner it was looking like they were truly lost.

We walked back up the hill to the old town with a plan of eating dinner at the “fancy” Convent Hotel which, we had thought, was regarded as the best place to eat in town.  Dominica had read this in a few guide books.  We got there, though, and discovered that there was no restaurant in the hotel at all.  We have no idea how the information was gathered so poorly but, there we were.

We decided just to return to restaurant row, which we knew was still open, and get dinner there.  We walked by a place and the owner (we assume) was super friendly and it seemed like a great choice.  He immediately offered simple children’s options and the girls were very interested so we plopped down at an outside table and got menus (which are called carte in this region, we learned today.)

Something that we have been learning now that we are in Spain is that a lot of the vocabulary that Dominica and I were taught in high school is just wrong.  That was Mexican Spanish and it does not apply here and they don’t even know what we are saying.  The worlds for menu and money, how people say good morning and other things are quite different than we were taught.

The food at Meson Don Fernando was absolutely amazing.  The girls split a plate of buttered spaghetti, one of their favourites.  Dominica and I started with warmed goat cheese with sauce on bread.  Yummy.  Then we had spinach croquettes which were delicious.  Then seafood croquettes in a cold mango sauce.  Those get a full Geoge Takei (Oh My!)  They were melt in your mouth delicious.  Liesl tried them and liked them too. So good.

Dominica and I also split a bottle of red wine.  Just water for the girls.  It got cold out quickly, a few drops of rain would come down from time to time and the wind really picked up.  I was fine outside and Dominica managed to even give up her sweater to Liesl but Luciana was feeling cold and Liesl ended up on the verge of tears from how cold it was, even with Dominica’s extra sweater on her.  We asked to move inside and they moved us right in to a warm table.  The girls were very happy.

Once inside Dominica ordered café con leche and rice pudding for herself.  I was content with the wine (Dominica never drinks more than a quarter of it) and we got a plate of fried Camembert cheese with raspberry jam to split – one of my favourites and this was one of the best of it that I have had.

By the end, dinner was completely amazing.  Great atmosphere, outstanding food, great service.  Everyone was happy and content.  Sadly I was still stressed out about the very high likelihood that a lot of critical data had been lost.

When we left the restaurant, the waiter told us to wait for a moment.  He disappeared and when he came back he had a bottle of red wine for us to take back home!  This place was awesome.  Had we been in the States I would have expected that dinner to cost at least two hundred dollars!   Easily more.  Barely fifty Euros here in Arcos de la Frontera!

We walked back home.  It was nearly midnight.  Got to the hotel without getting lost at all.  We didn’t miss a single turn going to the restaurant earlier, either.  Dominica and the girls went straight to bed.  It was supposed to be Ciana’s night with me but she was asleep so quickly that there wasn’t time to arrange things.  All three of the girls were asleep long before half past night.

I set up in the guesthouse lobby and put in several hours of work.  I had to do a lot of research and test a lot of things but eventually I got the restore system working and was able to recover all of the missing files!  So relieved.  It was nothing but work from midnight until two in the morning.  Once the files were recovered I did not deal with getting them all back in place, that is for another time.  At the moment I am just very thankful that this got figured out.  And so, so, so thankful that Art had run a manual backup just last night – twelve hours before the hacking took place!  I had really thought that everything was lost there for a good portion of the day.

Since I was not ready to go to bed yet, there having been so much stress, I took a little time to write up today’s SGL update and to get some of the pictures made public on Flickr so that at least something of Arcos de la Frontera could be seen by the people following along.

Today is our big driving day and our chance to see a lot of the region from the car.  It is about three and a half hours from Cáñar to Arcos de la Frontera so we have budgeted most of the day for car travel.  We have no plans today at all except to drive and settle into the guesthouse.  We will be staying at the Casa Blues when we arrive.  Another AirBnB find.

It took a little while to get everyone ready and to get moving but we did not do too badly.  It was after ten when we left our village, well within our target window.  It was a nice morning for a drive.  The clouds from last night had all burned off, which made us very happy, as Dominica had been very concerned that we were going to have visibility issues this morning.  But everything was clear and sunny, no issues at all.

The little car, once out on the A44 headed north up to Granada, really shows just how underpowered it is.  On many of the hills it is all that our little Opal Corsa can do to hit two thirds of the speed limit!  The Corsa is only seventy horsepower, so very, very anemic.  The Corsa is Spanish made, though, even though the badge is German.  It is assembled is Zaragoza.  At least the fuel efficiency is good.

We drove up through Granada, our first time seeing our “local” city just under an hour away.  It is not far at all as the crow flies but between averaging under thirty kilometers per hour as we go west and then often only hitting eighty kilometers per hour on the highway due to the car’s lack of power (and being fully loaded with four people and luggage) as we go north on the highway we just cannot get there all that fast.  If we did not have the crazy mountain roads right here and could open up to one hundred and forty on the highway like everyone else we could be there in twenty or thirty minutes easily.

Granada was beautiful.  We got to drive right through it.  It is in a wide, sprawling valley against the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada.  The city was much larger and much more modern than I had pictured.  Tourists get such a skewed view of foreign cities with only old towns or selected areas being shown.  Granada is a very modern city full of modern amenities.  We are very looking forward to exploring it soon.  It is close enough that we have no plans to weekend here but plan to take morning trips up to see it.

The drive to the west was very interesting.  We had a good idea of the landscape between us and Granada, no surprises there.  Going west we went through a couple different mountain ranges.  We took the A-92 to the west, which meant that we drove all of Granada south to north and most of it east to west and out through Santa Fe.  Really gave us a good view of where the real Granadians live and work.  Very nice.

Driving in Spain, out on the “real” roads that people actually use, is a dream.  The roads are so smooth and well maintained, speeds and reasonable and the civil engineering and planning that has gone into them is so much better than what we are used to.  Gas stations are tiny but far more common so you are never worried about finding one or having a crowd; and they are so easy to use with little offshoots from the highway where you can just pull over and get right back on.  They have little mini-markets in them like in the States so drinks, chips, candy kind of stuff.

We had to get gas in Spain for the first time today, which proved to be extremely easy.  One thing that throws Americans off here is the price of gas, a bit more than in the U.S. but it is also surprising that the “low octane” gas is 95 octane and the high is 98 octane.  So you have to think of it as better than the best gas you can get in the U.S. and adjust the price expectations accordingly.  Normally in the U.S. you can only get 92 octane just anywhere and 93 is the super high stuff that only a few places sell and both are quite expensive.

The entire drive was beautiful.  All kinds of mountains and gorgeous farmland.  Little villages on hills.  The only real city of any size that we passed near was Antequera which is not very big and the highway does not go right through it.  It was highway driving most of the way, but the highway is not all that big.

We turned south and got onto the smaller roads in the Pueblo Blanco region of Cádiz and wondered slowly through the country, often the only car around, through some really lovely areas and got to see many of the famed white villages including Estepes and Villamartin.  So gorgeous.  It was a great drive.  Andalucia never ceases to be beautiful.

Arcos de la Frontera is the largest of the famed white towns, a city of over thirty thousands.  It was well past three in the afternoon when we arrived and nearly a quarter till four when we got up into town and pulled over to look at maps and try to discern how to get to the guesthouse.  Town is a little hard to navigate normally but we arrived with many of the streets blocked off for the Semana Santa processions!  That was not good.  We had hoped to have avoided that and thought that we were scheduling around all of that.  No such luck.  We were stuck in horrible traffic and dealing with police directing people at every turn.

After a stressful half of an hour trying to navigate town with no clear idea of where we were to go I found a municipal parking garage and just planted the car in there to wait until the procession was long over and the streets would be free.  Much of the street parking was lost to the procession too making everything very difficult.

We came out of the parking garage right into a big public park with a terrace restaurant right in the middle of it.  Perfect for us.  There was a tiny playground right there so that Dominica and me could sit and relax with some food and the girls could play on the playground.  The sun was out and it was quite warm which was the only nuisance.  And, of course, we were stressed about finding the hotel and figuring out what to do.  Driving and parking in new cities is always a bit stressful.

We probably sat at the restaurant for two hours or more.  We only got a small meal, an half kilo of fried assorted seafood which sounded brilliant but was, of course, a horrible idea because it was European style seafood, not what we were thinking at all because we were stressed and not thinking properly, and so it was whole fish dropped in a fryer with heads, tails, bones.  A huge pain to eat.  Not what we wanted to tackle while being stressed.  At least we had all of the time in the world.  The fish was at least pretty good, once we got to it.  And thankfully there was calamari mixed in too.  Luciana ate some calamari.  Liesl ate a little of the fish and some calamari.

It was getting late, like after six when we left the terraza restaurant, got in the car and made a run at finding the hotel again.  We had gotten some information from the proprietor while we were at the restaurant so had a better idea of what to do.  It was still pretty tricky and we ended up driving around the other end of town trying to figure out where to park and gave up by parking down by the river and lugging the kids and the very heavy bags (but not the luggage) up the entire hill of Arcos de la Frontera from the water level all the way up to the top of the city!  That was not fun at all, especially when attempting to navigate not knowing our way around.  We were hot and tired very quickly.  The girls did an amazing job of climbing the hill, we were so happy with them.

We got lost a few times and at one point actually stopped and talked to a family in their doorway to see if they could give us directions.  Thankfully they went in and got their teenage daughter who had some idea of where things were and then her dad explained how to get there, which we actually understood.

We finally arrived at the Casa Blues guesthouse at about seven, only five hours later than we had originally been hoping.  There was a major disaster going on at work so my normal meeting which would have been at seven was cancelled.  I had to get signed in and get right to work, though.

Casa Blues was really nice.  Lots of common space to relax.  The room itself was very small but it was all that we needed.  No reason to have anything more than that.  The guesthouse sat right in the middle of the city, right on the hillside with unfettered views to the entire north.  Very nice, indeed.  And there was a small terrace to sit on in front of our room, a huge open space with views on the main floor and terraces above that we didn’t even use.  Internet was only available on the main floor common space, though, that was one negative.

Dominica and the girls relaxed in the room for a while. I sat up in the common areas working all evening. Not super fun but it was what we had expected.  We had not had any plans to do anything fun tonight.  We were just getting to Arcos de la Frontera today so that we could have a full day here in town tomorrow.

At nine thirty, once worked had settled down some and now that we knew where the guesthouse was and where we could park I walked down the big hill again to get the car and move it closer.  This was a bit of an adventure on its own.  I had to drive up the hill into the old town dealing with the tight cobblestone streets and had to parallel park on a steep hill with only enough room for one car to pass with cars close in front and behind with a stick shift.  It was a bit challenging.

Then, once parked, I had to get the heavy luggage and lug it up the hill.  Not just up the hill but over rough stones which make it very hard to pull even with its wheels.

Everyone was hungry and I had seen some restaurants open with people sitting outside while I was out getting the car that seemed like they would not be too far of a walk from the guesthouse.  It took a while to convince everyone to give it a try and to get ready.  So it was well after ten when we made our way down the hill.  Of course, it was too late and everything in that part of the city had closed up.  (Had we known our way around, there were lots of restaurants available up the hill but we were not prepared to do any more exploring at this time.)

I had seen a pastry and candy shop on my earlier walk so I left the girls on the higher street and walked down there to see if that was still open.  Thankfully it was so they came down and joined me and we got a bag of candy, some chips and a few cakes to eat for “dinner.”  We also got ice cream to eat on the walk back up the hill.  The girls really, really loved their strawberry-vanille ice cream push pops that they got there.  They talked about them all weekend.

After walking back up the hill, especially from all the way down again where we had to go to get the food, we were pretty tired.  So we sat our on the terraza in the common area and ate.  Then the girls got ready for bed and I worked for a while yet.  The girls were out and about all day today so were looking forward to some quiet time with their iPads.  They played some games on them down in the room for the rest of the evening, which was not very much.

Was in bed before one.  Lots to do tomorrow.

 

Today was an up early and take a hike kind of day.   I was up long before Dominica or the girls and so I took the chance to explore town.  I grabbed the Nikon AW100 and my phone and started walking the higher streets in town, those above the Plaza Santa Ana.

It did not take long to discover that we are truly near the top of town already and the majority of town lies below us on the hill rather than above us.  We have previously seen most everything that was higher than us and there were only a few little side streets left for me to discover.

After exhausting the options on the upper side of town I went out to the main street, which has been under heavy construction since before we arrived – the old generic street is being turned into one of these gorgeous new Alpujarran style streets with smooth concrete on either side for the car wheels and an attractive center channel made of large stones cemented together to channel the water down.  Much of town has been redone with these already and the GR7 leading far to the east of town is being built that way as well.  Going up the hill on the main road I could that the road was made with an underlying grid of rebar to make it not slide down the hill.  These are seriously well made roads.  Nothing like this in the US.

I continued up the road until I arrived at the last house in town, an English guesthouse high up on the hill.  From there there was an obvious mule path leading to the west, into the ravine that runs alongside the village, so I took that.  For the first bit the path was solid and “wide” as mule paths go.  It is very obvious that this path is still used, probably my mules as we see them doing this and can always hear them, quite heavily.  It made for a very pleasant walk.

I made it far enough that I discovered the old waterfall, dammed up hundreds or possibly thousands of years ago.  No one knows who changed the water courses in the Alpujarras.  Many assume it was the Moors but it could easily have been the Romans and at that point we are really just guessing.  Also possible, but no one mentions it as it is so unlikely, that it was the Vandals – after whom the region is named.  Al Andalus, in Spanish called Andalucia, is the Moorish world for “Land of the Vandals” as this was a Vandal Kingdom prior to the Moorish invasion.  The dam on the waterfall is what creates the acequia system that feeds water to the farms and the village.  It is amazing how extensive and complex the waterworks are in the region.

I stood in the waterfall itself, the dry bed where the waterfall once fell long ago.  The rocks are still there, as if the river had just been there.   But the riverbed is now a mountainside covered in plants.  But you can tell, if you realize where you are, that a waterfall used to be there and for a very long time.

I walked on a ways until I came to a farm with a farmer out working in his orchard with a goat.  Then I turned around and returned because I wanted to learn more about the waterfall which I could only see from a distance below the dam on the mule path.

I found a farm path going up from the mule path so took that and it wound through some interesting cuts that could easily have been in Hobbiton (in the Lord of the Rings.)  Very scenic with meadows and fields far up the mountain.  I got some great chances to look down on Cáñar from above.  Gorgeous.

I stumbled upon a field that had its fence moved in such a way that I assumed that it had been opened long ago and left that way.  There was a hint of a trail through the grass so I decided that it was open for use – especially as the field was abandoned to the grass and was now just a high meadow.

Walking through that field yielded no results, it was just another field, like many which ancient stone walls holding back the terrace above it.  When I turned around to leave the field I noticed that the change in sunlight direction exposed some really interesting shadows on the stone wall!  Could it really be…. a hidden ladder made of stone!  It was placed directly behind a tree and from the approach there was no way to see it until you looked from the other direction. I even went around to check and it really could not be seen until you went all the way around and saw the shadows that it was casting.  How neat, just like out of a fantasy novel.  The ladder was just small stones sticking out of the ancient wall, no supports on the outside.

Up the ladder led me to a dry meadow with little growing in it.  Exploring that led me, finally, to a vantage point near the waterfall allowing me to see the waterfall and the dam.  I took some video.  It was well worth exploring those fields!

I returned to the farm road and continued climbing it up the mountain.  I could feel the air getting colder and thinner as I climbed.  It was high enough that I was breathing a little heavier, even when resting.  I found some extremely high fields and meadows very, very far up.  I wonder how it works to farm this high up, must be extremely challenging getting equipment up here and food back down.  I can only imagine that much of it is done with mules.

I came upon the water tower for the village which isn’t actually a tower at all, since it is on a mountain.  But this is where the emergency water supply comes from.  There was a small road there that only led to a nearby farm and nowhere else.  Very odd.

There was a large orchard, high on the mountain.  And then I climbed up, scrambled up actually, into some fields and went as high as I could, up to a honey farm – there are many flowers up here on the mountain including poppies growing out of the stone walls.  I was many bumble bees while working my way up the mountain.

That was as high as I could go.  I had to turn around and work my way back down the mountain.  By the time that I was back at the house I had done about three and a half miles of mountain climbing!  A very good morning.  I got a lot of pictures while I was up there.  The views were really spectacular.

Once back home I showered and got to work for the day up on the terraza.  It ended up being a very busy work day and I worked well into the late evening.  A long day, but I was feeling good from my awesome morning walk.  Very glad that I did that.

This evening, as the sun was getting low, we could see big clouds rolling into the Alpujarra Valley off of the Mediterranean to the south.  It was really neat, and I got some pics that kind of show it, because the cloud layer was hundreds of feet beneath us but very high above the villages down in the valley!  So it was more like being in an airplane seeing a cloud layer that you are flying over.

Tomorrow is Good Friday and so Semana Santa is in full swing here in Spain.  This evening was one of the processions through the village.  Dominica and I managed to make it to the window just in time to see them go through the Plaza Santa Ana on their way to the lower parts of town.  Since the church is right beside us, this is where they are starting the procession.

We could hear the procession as they sang, the echoes going through the tiny stone lined streets for some time.  Then, from the terraza as it was now day, we saw them assemble far down at the bottom of town at the little “park” where the GR7 leaves town to the east and then slowly walk east up the GR7 to the miradore (observation deck) that I discovered out there a few days ago.  The candles and singing off in the distance but very clear was really neat.

By this time the clouds had come in and filled the valley.  It was like a sea had rolled in.  It was so beautiful.  The moonlight made it really look like a misty ocean and the villages high on the mountain were just perfect for the clouds to come right up to the base of them so that they looked like little seaside villages on the shore.  The illusion was so good that we couldn’t even figure out where our own village dropped off.  The buildings just below us looked like they were on a shore and you could not picture the precipitous drop that was actually right beyond them.  It was unbelievable.  One of the neatest sights ever.  Órgiva and Los Tablones, normally clear as can be in the valley right below us, were gone completely.  Swallowed by the “sea”.  Even some of the villages high on the mountain were gone. Only those near our height remained.

Tomorrow is our big driving day.  We are getting up on the early side and driving all of the way across Andalucia to Arcos de la Frontera near the coast.  This is one of Rick Steves’ must see locations on his three week whirlwind tour of Spain.  It is the largest of the famous Pueblos Blancos, the “white towns” of the region.  And the title “de la Frontera” means that it was a Christian town before the fall of Granada and earned the title by being on the contested frontier against the Moorish empire of Al Andalus.  Arcos de la Frontera was one of the very first cities of this region to be taken by the Christians and actually stood here as a Christian outpost on the frontier for roughly the same amount of time prior to the fall of Granada in 1492 as the United States has existed!  Now that puts some perspective on the city.  It was Moorish for a long time and Roman before that and Christian now for nearly nine hundred years.  No wonder it has earned the right to retain “de la Frontera”, with a history of being there longer than some of the older, modern empires!

History in this region is so dramatic.  Everything is so old!

Our drive tomorrow is about three and a half hours and this is our first time venturing out with the car from our little area between us and Malaga and a few local villages.  That will be an adventure too.  So by tomorrow night we will have a much better feel for the whole of Andalucia.

Luciana was the first one up today.  She came down the spiral staircase into the “cave” of basement and said “I snuggle you?” and climbed into bed to snuggle me for a while.  Eventually she got up and told me she wanted me to go upstairs with her so that we could hang out while she played on the iPad.  She’s so cute.  Liesl slept in hours longer than Luciana did.  Luciana was up around nine thirty.  Liesl was definitely not up until after eleven.  They both had gone to bed on the early side last night since they were in their own room where the iPads don’t get a WiFi signal.

Last night, before going to bed, I discovered ants in the kitchen.  A lot of ants.  Turns out that it was our recycling bag that was hanging near the kitchen table.  What a mess.  I cleaned that up, got rid of all of the ants that were there and went to bed. That explains the ant that Liesl found in the guest bedroom yesterday.  Thankfully these are tiny, black sugar ants.  They don’t sting or do anything.  They are just looking for sugar and don’t hurt anything.

When we got up to the kitchen this morning I told Dominica about the ants and then we found another spot where ants had come in.  This one was really weird.  One of the power receptacles in the kitchen had ants streaming out of it going for some treacle sitting on the lip of a can of golden syrup on the counter.  What a mess.  We spent all morning getting the kitchen cleaned so that there was nothing for the ants to go after.  That was a major project.  We pretty much got them to back off, though.  Dominica did a lot of work.

We have nothing planned for today, it is a down day.  So I was on the terrace nearly all day.  Liesl had homeschool for the first time since getting to Spain.  Time to get her into the groove again.  That was a bit tough as Liesl really did not want to do school.  It was a bit of a fight but eventually Liesl calmed down and did really well today.

It was a very slow day, but very nice.  The family spent part of the afternoon up on the terraza with me.  And they spent a lot of the evening camped out together in the guest bedroom each of them with their own iPad.  They are three peas in a pod those girls.

I had tuna pizza for the first time today – just something frozen that I picked up at the market a few days ago.  It was actually quite good; I liked it a lot.

One of our neighbours from down the hill and a friend of the owners of the house in which we are living stopped by to say hello and to offer assistance if there is anything that we needed while we are here.  They are British ex-pats and live here full time and can introduce us around town.  So I spent about half an hour talking to Mike and learned a little about town.