Sheep Guarding Llama

We did not figure out until this evening that this past weekend was the switch to daylight savings time in most of Europe.  So we moved from UTC+1 to UTC+2 which surprised us and today everything was off.  I didn’t realize that time had switched until I went to join my afternoon conference call and it was an hour away still.  Very confusing.

We had big plans for today but Dominica had insomnia last night and we did not end up getting to bed until rather late so we gave up on the idea of doing anything at all and just called it a quiet day at home.  It is sometimes difficult for us to just relax while here, we are in Spain, after all.  It feels like we are on vacation and we need to go out and do things.  Go somewhere, see something, make use of the time.  But obviously we can’t be doing that all of the time.  We need to settle into a life here. This is our day to day life, not a vacation.  We have to get over the feeling that we always need to be doing something and be content to just sit at home, work, do school or whatever and go to bed.

One thing that is very handy is that we have absolutely no desire to watch television or anything like that.  It is so hard to do that that there is effectively no chance of us falling into that pattern.  We have nothing to watch and no easy way to watch it.  So that is very healthy for us.  I am glad for that.

Our landlords told us today that they decided to upgrade the Internet access here since we were having so many problems.  So the ISP is supposed to be coming out sometime this week in order to upgrade the physical equipment here at the house so that we can move up to better speeds.  We have WiMAX coming to the house now but they need to put in a better antenna for the faster speeds so a technician needs to come out.  We are very hopeful that that will fix a lot of our problems.  Our connection is so rough now.  We are having a terrible time getting things uploaded and it is hard for the kids to watch YouTube or do anything.  It makes working very hard.

The girls pretty much entertained themselves all day.  I guess that they needed a down day too.  Dominica spent most of the day reading.  I camped out on the terraza and was basically there all day.

For lunch I cooked a pizza in the oven for the girls.  For dinner Dominica made bocadillos con patatas, cebollas and pimientos.  That was really good.  Liesl and I had gone to the market to get fresh pan (bread) for dinner and new clothespins so that we could do more laundry.

We got the girls into bed in the guest bedroom around a good time.  Luciana put herself to bed at nine thirty.  Liesl we put to bed at ten thirty.  They are enjoying the guest bedroom much more, I think, because they can easily snuggle and watch YouTube together.

Quiet night for us.  Dominica sat in the kitchen reading.  I sat on the terraza working until it was quite dark.  I love the lights of the little villages around the valley.  It is very nice being up here late at night.

Surprisingly, town never gets quiet.  I can hear people yelling and talking and playing around town even as it approaches midnight.

We are obviously still suffering from jet lag, to some degree.  Everyone slept in until ten thirty and only woke up then because Liesl was awake and tried to sneak down the stairs but she woke us up because it is hard to be quiet on the metal spiral staircase.  Liesl came down and climbed into bed with us for a little bit.  Shortly thereafter Luciana came down and climbed into bed with us as well.

We started the day, as late as it was, up on the upper terraza enjoying the sun.  It is bright and warm today.  Very nice for sitting outside.  We thought about going for a drive somewhere but mostly decided that we just wanted to relax today, especially as going somewhere might mean that things would be closed seeing as it is Sunday.

We talked about what we are going to do next weekend because we really need to be “on the ball” for our weekends because there is really limited opportunity for us to do things and if we wait until Saturday morning to start making plans, it is too late.  One of the problems with the Spanish siesta culture, which is still very strong here in Andalucia, is that if you drive somewhere in the morning you arrive in the middle of the afternoon when people are just shutting down for a few hours.  So you end up with nothing to do until five or so which means that it is basically evening before you do anything even if you start early in the morning.  This also means that if you want to do dinner or anything and then to drive home that it will be extremely late and you might be getting home at four in the morning or something crazy like that.

So we decided that for next weekend that we are going to go to Arcos de la Frontera on the Atlantic Coast in the Cádiz province.  Arcos de la Frontera is one of those “must see” towns of Andalucia and highly recommended by Rick Steves as well.   It is considered the most beautiful of the “white villages” and it is also well known for its Holy Week activities including a major procession on Saturday and a running of the bulls on Easter Sunday.  We really want to see all of that so we are booked at a Bed and Breakfast there for Friday and Saturday nights so that we can really get a chance to see everything there.

We are going to leave Cáñar on Friday morning and drive to the coast before work. Then I will work from Arcos on Friday evening.  It will be a light day for us with just a drive and then dinner in the town.  Then we will have all day Saturday and Sunday in Cádiz province which will be really fun and cool.  It was on our list of places that we really needed to see before coming to Spain so we are quite excited to get to see it.

Dominica felt like spending the day reading a book on her iPad up on the terraza.  The girls were happily entertaining themselves.  I felt like seeing the village a bit more so I took the GoPro and the Nikon AW100 and set off for an adventure around Cáñar.  I walked all over the village today logging about five miles according to my iPhone’s pedometer.  That does not sound like a lot until you see the continuous elevation changes that I was subjected to.  I was pretty tired by the end of it all.

My first outing was just to film, in Ultra High Def 4K for the first time, some of the streets and alleys of the village.  That alone was quite entertaining as the houses and streets are really beautiful and interesting.  You never know where a little back street will take you.  Maybe a dead end, maybe to a vista, maybe out of town or maybe to a plaza.  My first outing led me to discover the village school, a major new construction that is a huge observation deck on the lower “point” of the village sticking out into the valley and the “big” playground in the village that we did not know even existed.  It was a very informative walk and going to be really useful to us to know where this stuff is.

I was very amazed to discover that this little village, that seems so stuck in the 1600s, has active construction going on and quite a bit of it.  This new observation area construction is a very large public work for such a small village.  This is not at all something that I was expecting to find.  They do not have any hotel or tourism infrastructure so this is really for the locals and a scale that you would never see in the US.  The amount of public works in such a small place is really impressive.  Not only is this current, but even on a Sunday people were out working on it.

I came home for a bit then went out again.  This time I found my way out of town the “back way” to the east which turned out to be the GR7 – the big walking path that leads through the region.  This is basically a “foot highway” like nothing you ever see in the States.  This is well maintained, well marked and in some cases well paved with better construction that most American roads.  Like the other construction in town that I saw, this foot path had some of the largest infrastructure work going on that I have seen including another observation deck far outside of town and a brand new fountain being installed.  And all this so recent that some of the concrete was visibly still drying!  There is a lot of new construction going on in such a tiny place.

The walk up the GR7 was really cool.  I did not go too far but went far enough to leave sight of the village and go around the bend of the mountain so that I was in the “zone” of the next three villages.  It was a neat walk and I got to know the area quite a bit better from it.

I went back to the village and did more exploration and filming there.  I really managed to see a lot of the east side and lower portions of the village.  There are so many interesting little streets and plazas and hidden little things here and there, especially with all of the water that pours through town.  That water, running off of the mountain, supplies all of our drinking water which is awesome as the water is always cold and delicious.  It feeds all of the fountains which are all over town too.

After I was back for a while and snacked on bread and cheese we took the girls out to check out the new playground.  This was rather a long way for them and over some rough streets but they did really well.  It was awesome that I learned about this today because this made it far easier for us to get the girls out and to get some exercise.

The bigger playground is not all that big, but much bigger than the one high up in the village near the church and the bar.  This one has a large slide, two swings, some better bouncy things that the girls like to ride and a few things to climb on.  It’s very good for a village of this size.  The girls were really excited and had a great time playing on it.

I had to take Luciana on a long walk back up the hill, which she did great on, to use the bathroom because she forgot to go before we went down to the playground.  That she managed the walk alone was impressive and that she did it while not having an accident was even more impressive.  She got a lot of hill climbing in today.  I am very proud of her.

When Ciana and I returned to the playground where Dominica had stayed with Liesl we found it full of kids.  One local boy had joined Liesl and was playing with her and three families and their kids from Granada were there so there were easily ten kids on the playground.

The girls had a wonderful time playing with all of the kids.  They were very happy.  Dominica and I spent half an hour or more, maybe even an hour, hanging out with other parents who spoke some English, and we attempted some Spanish.  They were all from Granada.  One of their spouses commutes daily from Granada to work in the national park here.

Once we had had enough of the playground we took the girls down to check out the local exercise trail, at Liesl’s request.  There is this really neat and well done exercise trail that starts at the bottom of town on the side of the road leading into the village and goes for some ways.  It is extremely attractive and well done and very surprising to find in a place like this.  I have never seen anyone using it and can’t imagine that it is very popular. It feels completely out of place but is really nice and extremely modern.  Liesl and Luciana had a great time checking out the equipment on it.

From there we walked all the way up the hill again and took the girls to the small, upper playground so that they could play on the few bouncy things there.  The girls have given names to the equipment there (the cat is Lula, the elephant is Luna or something like that) and they want to visit them every day.  They are so weird.

After that we came home and Dominica made dinner for everyone.  Breaded tuna steaks and pasta with broccoli for us.  The girls at inside, Dominica and I ate out on the lower terraza.  It was dark by the time that we were eating.

After dinner Dominica sent me to the market which was still open even though it was nine in the evening to pick up some dessert.  She was hoping for ice cream which they advertise on their door but they had none so I just brought home some chocolate instead.  Milky Bars which you cannot get in the States.

We retired to the lounge as it was getting cold outside.  It was nearly midnight by the time that I managed to get all of the day’s pictures uploaded and SGL updated.  I got some of the days video starting to upload.  The vast majority of the video cannot be uploaded as it is 4K and long format and requires extensive formatting to be useful at all.  I shot enough footage today with the GoPro that it was take nearly a week of around the clock uploading to get it onto YouTube!  That will not be happening.  I have a couple thirty second shots done with the Nikon that are uploading through the night and a couple shorter GoPro things that I made specifically to upload while we are here that I am going to attempt to kick off in the morning before we head out for our morning trip.  So if you are checking the YouTube channel, look for a few short Nikon shots to appear during the Spanish “night” and some more, hopefully, to appear during the American night.

We got the girls to bed around ten thirty.  They have been so sad that their iPads do not work in their own bedroom.  Tonight we are trying them out in the guest bedroom to see if they are able to sleep well there since the iPads work really well there.

Sadly, our old iPad, the “orange iPad” as the girls have long called it because of the orange case that it is in has died.  At least as far as we can tell.  It ran out of battery a few days ago and we have been unable to charge it.  We have tried many outlets, adapters, cables, etc.  We’ve tried connecting it to a laptop.  Nothing, nada.  It looks like after five years it has finally died on us.  Sadly dying in Spain means that we have to make tough decisions about whether to bring it back to the US with us or whether to throw it away here and it really sucks that it is the largest and heaviest of all of the iPads and that we brought it with us, which was a big deal on the planes, just to have it be completely useless the moment that we arrived here!  And, of course, now the girls only have a single iPad of their own which causes no end of issues.  We have to deal with this quickly upon returning to the US.  Luciana was so sad tonight that I gave up and gave her my iPad Mini.  Chances are that is just hers now.  That is a bit of a problem, though, because it does not have a protective cover so I feel like letting the use it is a little bit like just throwing it away.  Not sure what else to do at the moment, though.

Dominica and I managed to get to bed at midnight.  Better than we do most nights.  I am quite worn out from all of today’s hilly walking.

We all slept in more than we had intended to this morning.  I have found that sleeping underground in a completely encased “cave” makes my body very unaware of the passing of time and I cannot tell if it is four in the morning or noon!  It is very disconcerting.  Normally I am very good at just naturally knowing what time it is at all times, even when I am sleeping.

What we have discovered is that the master suite is converted from what used to be the animal cellar beneath the old house.  There used to be farm animals down here and that is why the cellar has its own ground level entrance onto the main square!  This is apparently very common in Cáñar for the houses to have been traditionally designed to work this way.  The cellar had been completely separate originally.  When it was converted to be part of the house a hole was cut in the floor of the original downstairs floor of the house and the circular stairway was added to allow you to descend into the cellar.  The cellar has windows but they are all closed up and it would be awkward to have windows open at that level.  So the basement is really sealed off and completely dark.  It stays very cool, though.  At least so far.

Luciana was the first one awake this morning.  She called down that she needed me so I had to get out of bed.  Once she had done her morning routine I went into her room and hung out for a while until the girls were both awake.  Dominica got up at some point while I was in there and took a shower.

Our plan today is to drive around the region and explore.  We did not have a really solid plan but we knew that we wanted to take the opportunity to go see things around the area.  It took until noon before we were really able to get out, into the car and underway.  Maybe even later than noon.

We finally decided that we would head down to the first road and head east on the north side of the river to visit the nearby towns that we can see so close to our own village.  The drive proved to be pretty crazy with tight, twisting roads everywhere.  The distances are very small but the speed at which we can progress is very, very slow.  Often we are only going twenty to thirty kilometres per hour and even at that speed it feels just a tad reckless.

We got to drive by the two tiny towns that are directly to the east and from the road near them we pulled over onto the wide part of a shoulder and took some pictures back towards Cáñar which was pretty cool to see our village from that angle, far up on the hill.

We drove for a while and the road took us through the next valley over which contains three very touristy, but beautiful, villages where the road that we were on actually goes right through them, which was really neat.

We decided, when we got to Bubión, the second of the three tourist villages, that we would park and see town.  There is a museum there that we are very interested in seeing so we were hoping that it would be open.  There were a lot of tourists in town, which was very surprising as we have seen nothing like this in our part of the valley.

There was a big, easy to use parking lot where we left the car and then looked around for a place to eat because none of us had had anything yet today and Luciana had been requesting restaurant food (she had no idea what she wanted, just nothing in the house.)  We looked at a few different places but there was one with a lot of seating options right where we were and their menu looked nice so we tried them out.

Dominica did not want to be out in the sun so we sat in the indoor dining room which was odd because there were a lot of people eating outside and only us inside.  Dominica was feeling a bit woozy from riding in the car on these roads and settled on just having a tropical salad.  I got the fried hake with poor man’s potatoes and a big side of awesome vegetables (that’s a description, not their name.)  Liesl got a tortilla Española.  Luciana ordered the noodles with no sauce and just some butter.

It was way more food that we could reasonably eat.  Liesl barely touched hers and ended up sharing the noodles with Ciana which was fine as there were more noodles that the two of them could possibly have eaten together.  The good thing was that all of our food was awesome and even the girls were very happy with their food.  They are consistently doing extremely well eating real, local food and not needing store bought food in any real quantity and really liking the different foods that we get here.  (Fish fingers have proven to be quite a hit with both of them!)

We talked to our server and he explained that he museum was closed for many hours because of siesta just starting.  We figured that since this town is so close to ours that it would make sense to just return on a weekday when more things are open and there are fewer tourists milling about.

It was really neat from Bubión was that we could see the tall peaks of the Sierra Nevadas that sit above our town too but are blocked by the mountain on which we sit.  The snow is really thick and heavy up there and it is obvious where the snow came from that got us on Tuesday.  These mountains are really high, much higher than anything that I am used to in the States.  These are much more like the Rockies than like anything in the eastern United States.

After Bubió we got back on the road but Dominica felt that she was unable to take any more of roads like this so instead of looking at more Alpujarra towns in our region she wanted to run down to the Mediterranean coast.  That meant driving back the way that we had come.

We drove south right through Órgiva, I am getting used to getting around there now, and then west along the mountain retracing our path that we did in the dark in the opposite direction on Monday night.  She guided me to the coast town of Salobreña which had a castle that she wanted to see, but I had been unaware that that was the goal.

Navigating around Salobreña proved to be pretty difficult and being siesta time meant that everything was closed but the tourists were out in force and it was difficult to get around or park.  We found the streets leading to the castle impassable so gave up there.  We did drive to the shore but did not get out, it was packed with tourists.  It was pretty, though.

We ended up just giving up on Salobreña and using the trip to do some shopping at a larger store – a Dia Maxi, that was located right along our route out of town.  That actually worked out really well.

On our return drive we avoided going back the way that we had come and instead took the A44 (towards Granada) one exit further up so that we would come back on the north ridge of the valley (the one on which we live) rather than coming up the south ridge.  This route is more highway and less winding small roads and takes us right through Lanjaron which is one of the places where we had really seriously considered a few places to rent before we settled on the small, remote village that we are in now.  In reality, Lanjaron is right next to Cáñar but there is a mountain leg between them so they cannot look at each other nor drive easily between them.

Lanjaron is about two third the size of Órgiva but is a very bustling place as it has the big water bottling facility, loads of hotels and services catering to a very booming tourist economy and amazing views.  It is a spa town so has long been a center of tourism in the area.  The town is positively lovely.  Just driving through it is very impressive.  Even though it is slightly smaller than Perry, back home, it feels like it is just loaded with stuff to do.  And the views are just amazing.

We did not stop in Lanjaron today, though.  We looked around just enough to have an idea of what it has to offer and how far away it is (not far at all) and we are thinking that maybe on Monday or Tuesday that we will come back when the crowds are smaller and spend a day here at that time.

As we left town there was a picnic areas on the ridge facing the town with the most amazing views of the village.  So we pulled over and I took a few pictures and videos and the girls had a great time running around as we were the only ones there.  The picnic area was very clearly built to be an observation platform for the village.  There was a very large and very cool map of the area there as well.

We stayed for probably half an hour before driving back to our village.  The girls were ready to be back home by that point.  We had done a lot of twisty, turny driving all afternoon and they just wanted to be in the house and do their own thing.

We parked the car and took the girls to the village playground for a little while.  They had been asking for that all day.  I have no idea why as there is so little to do there but they crave it for some reason.

As we were walking the groceries back to the house one of the locals stopped me and talked to me for half an hour or more. Dominica and the girls managed to get back to the house on their own while I was held somewhat captive having a long and meandering conversation.  While I was there the local orange and potato vendor drove by and stopped and sold us a bag of oranges for just two Euros. Everything is just so cheap here!

Once I made it back home we had some snacks and I set about getting the day’s pictures and stuff uploaded.  It takes so much work to get that done.  I really have to manage it a lot.

We sat out on the terrace, Dominica and I, for maybe half an hour but it was getting dark and a little colder and we decided to come inside for the evening.  It should be warm enough to be outside all evening in a few days, no need to push it now.  It will be warmer than we want it to be in no time.

Liesl and Luciana set themselves up in the guest bedroom and were literally camped out in there watching YouTube craft videos (we are baffled as to how they find these or why they are interested in watching them) from the time tha they got home around seven until they went to bed a little before midnight!  They are so funny.

For dinner Dominica made some soup from a mix that we got at the store today and we ate that with some local crusty bread that I got from the local market just before they closed this evening.  We are all stocked so that we do not need to shop tomorrow since most everything will be closed, we assume.  Liesl came and tried the soup and bread and loved it.  Who would have guessed that our picky Liesl would love Mediterranean vegetable soup and a baguette dipped into it?

Dominica and I retired to the lounge and spent the rest of the evening down there where it is warm.  She read a book and I worked on getting our media for the day uploaded.  I got all of the pictures done and managed to get all of the SGL updates done for both yesterday and today.

I also worked on getting some GoPro videos uploaded to YouTube.  I am still really impressed with how good the videos coming from the GoPro Hero4 Black turn out.

We are not sure, yet, what we are going to do tomorrow.  It is Sunday and we have the entire day free.  We will likely go out for a drive but to where, I am not sure.  A lot will depend on how we feel in the morning and when we wake up.  If we can get up at a reasonable time in the morning maybe we can make it to someplace really big and interesting like Granada, but a place like that take some planning and might be more effort than we are prepared to exert at this point.  We are here for nearly three months which, in some ways, means that we have a lot of time to do this stuff but, in other ways, means that we truly are in a time crunch to get to see all of the stuff that we really want to see before we are no longer in this region.

We think that next weekend we are going to go out to Cádiz province and spend some time at Arcos de la Frontera which has a big festival and a running of the bulls which should be pretty cool to see in person.

I had problems getting to sleep last night and was not able to fall asleep until nearly five in the morning and not until after I had decided at four thirty that I would take a hot bath to see if that would make it easier to fall asleep, which it did.  So I did not get up until eleven this morning, although this was fine as Dominica was only just getting up then as well.

The weather has changed today and it is gorgeous.  Spring has finally arrived here in the Alpujarras region.  We were so excited, we opened up the entire house and spent the entire day outside on the terrace.  It was awesome.  This is what we have been looking forward to, more of what Americans think of as a Spanish experience.  Warm, sunny and spending all of your time outside.

I ended up having a busier than normal day at work today.  There was a bit to be done.  But I got to do all of my work while sitting out on the terrace.  Dominica even set up the big table up there and we put up a nice, big umbrella.  The girls came outside too and spent a lot of time out there with us.  It was so nice.  I am really loving this.

For lunch we mostly did fresh bread and cheese (pan y queso) up on the terrace.  We are loving getting fresh ingredients every day.

At seven we went for a short hike up to the top of town.  Liesl had made me promise yesterday that today we would go up to the irrigation system above town where we had been to a few days ago and watch the sun set from there.  For some reason she really, really wanted to watch the sun set from there.  So we all went up there.  It was very pretty and a nice bit of exercise.  The view from up there is out over the reservoir to the west which we drove along during the night on Monday to get out here to Cáñar.  So we have been there but have not really seen it.

I worked until dinner time, then around nine thirty we went out and walked to the “other” bar in town that we had not yet tried.  There are really only two bars in town that are normally open.  One is “always” open, one is “normally” open and one is only open on special occasions and we have never seen it open.

The bar was pretty busy tonight, maybe more than a dozen people there, in fact.  The Spain – Ukraine Football match was on and a lot of people were watching or half watching that.  Luciana liked that the game was on but just called them the red team (Spain) and the yellow team (Ukraine) and kept wanting to root for the Ukrainian team simply because they had the good sense to wear Luciana’s favourite colour.

We got a fried fish in tomato sauce and French fries ración for dinner.  It was a very large plate when it arrived.  Dominica and I also managed to order wine, but just one glass each rather than a bottle, which was better.  And cheaper.  We’ve now learned to say “copa del vino” which, because we are in Granada province (also true in Almeria province) it comes automatically with a tapa per glass.  Sadly, they did not know that we are vegetarian and the tapa tonight was something similar to chili on bread and some potato chips.  The girls ate the potato chips but we had to skip the tapas.  The server figured out that we were vegetarian, but it was too late 🙁  We are unsure how to convey that in the situation where tapas are included.

The food was very good, as was the wine, and we had a nice time at dinner.  We were really impressed when we got the bill and two glasses of good wine, two tapas and a full serving (a ración) of friend fish and French fries, enough to have fed all four of us, came out to be roughly fifteen dollars!

After dinner Dominica made pancakes for the girls. Luciana has been begging for them for days.  Dominica had found what she needed to be able to make them at the grocery store, Dia, in Órgiva yesterday although there is nothing like maple syrup available here in Spain.  But in a cupboard Dominica had discovered traditional British golden syrup, also known as light treacle, which she figured that she would try and it turned out that Luciana loved pancakes that way.

After the pancakes, we went up to the terrace for a bit, Dominica and I.  It was dark now, being around ten or eleven at night, but the twinkling lights from the other towns proved to be really magical.  Ógiva down in the valley and Los Tablones to the east of it are really lit up and we can really see Bayacas and Carataunas to the east of us up on the mountain too.

While we were out on the terrace, Liesl came up just to hang out with us in the dark.  We heard some loud booms and managed to locate fireworks being shot off on the south side of Órgiva which was pretty interesting to see as we were far, far above the fireworks and looking down on them.  We could see the flashes and count six seconds before the sound would reach us.  The display did not last for very long but it was rather interesting, at least.

We are all very excited that the weather has changed and we are prepared to really experience being outside in Spain enjoying it as it is meant to be enjoyed.  While we were at dinner tonight Dominica noticed that my face was red and Luciana felt me and said that I was pretty warm.  Apparently, even though it is only the first nice day of spring and even though Spain is much more north than Texas is, the sun got to me and I have a slight sun burn.  Nothing that hurts, but I had no idea that I was getting that much sun today.

Tomorrow we plan to do some exploring of the region.  It is our first weekend day since arriving in Spain so we will take the Opal out and do some driving.

I got a great night’s sleep last night.  I was actually asleep before midnight, I think, and do not remember waking up even once all night long before I got up just after eight this morning.  I feel much better today.

It is still a bit on the chilly side this morning so I moved into the lounge and worked from there.  I got SGL updated and got to work on some video editing.  My first GoPro video from Spain is going to be uploaded this morning to YouTube.  I am very impressed by how good the GoPro looks.  That thing takes amazing video.

Dominica started to wake up at ten thirty.  She really needed the sleep.  Liesl got up at about the same time and came and asked me to take her to the market so that we could buy yoghurt.  She and her sister have been going through a lot of yoghurt every day.  We have bought two four packs every day that we have been here!  They love the no-preservatives yoghurt here.

I took the two girls to the market this morning.  They were very excited to get to go and thought that it was great fun.  They love that the market is right out our front door.  We bought bread and yoghurt and Luciana picked out some cookies to try.

Around noon we were finally ready to head down to Orgiva to do some shopping.  We are getting low on cash and we need that to do much of anything up here on the mountain so it was pretty important that we find some.  And we wanted to get some groceries beyond the small amount available at the little market next door.

The drive down the hill was the first time that we have seen the approach to Cáñar in daylight and Dominica was suitably impressed that we had done it in the dark.  The road is very windy and twisty and scary with big drop offs all over the place.  She agreed that the average American driver would be unable to navigate it given the requirement to do so in a stick shift vehicle.

It is not very far, maybe seven kilometres to Orgiva, but the drive make it take fifteen or twenty minutes.  It is a big of a stressful drive.  Driving in Orgiva itself is no picnic either.  Lots of “one way at a time” narrow streets, some with lights and some with “you just have to know when to go” driving.  Lots of people and dogs darting into the streets without warning.  No idea where you can park.  And, of course, we had no idea where we would find a grocery store or an ATM.

We drove nearly all of the way through town, which is not saying much as it is a very small and dense town, when we thought that we spotted a grocery store.  We also had to wait for someone pulling out of a parking space which was awesome because we were pretty sure that that meant that we would be allowed to park there. So I darted in and we lucked out that the store was a Dia, which is a major grocery chain in the area.

Grocery shopping was pretty easy.  We did not need all that much, just some basics and to let the kids pick out some things that they might want.  We probably spent no more than thirty minutes grocery shopping.  We got fruit, paper products, toddler wipes (you can’t buy those in Cáñar!), cereal, chips which Luciana requested and a few odds and ends.  It was most of a shopping cart and I was pretty shocked when the total turned out to be only forty four Euros (less than fifty dollars!)  That would have been closer to one hundred dollars in the States.  We were pretty happy about that.

There was no ATM in the grocery store, though.  That presented more of a challenge.  So we continued driving the way that we were until we left town and I had to pull a U-turn and drive back into town and go all the way through and out the other side still not having found an ATM or even a bank.  This worried us a little.

We drove into town again and tried going down what I would call “restaurant row”, a cobblestone street full of food venues and people everywhere.  Traffic was so heavy that we came to a complete stop for a couple of minutes almost instantly.  We spotted what we thought was an ATM so Dominica decided to just hop out and hope that I could make it back with the girls to pick her up.

The girls and I ended up driving all over the little, one-way side streets before eventually making it back past restaurant row and being able to pick Dominica up.  Thankfully there really were ATMs there and she was able to take out money and get back to the street and hop in as I went by, stuck in traffic again.  That worked out well, surprisingly.

From there we decided to just drive back up the mountain to Cáñar.  On the way up we stopped at a scenic overlook to take a few pics and ended up having a herd of goats come down the mountain to right where we were!  It was really cool to see traditional goat herding right there in our village.  The girls really enjoyed that.  I got a great picture of Luciana posing in front of the goats and one of Liesl posing in front of Orgiva.

We got home from Orgiva and opened up the house.  Dominica is feeling much better today and the cool air is not bothering her.  It was in the fifties today and no snow or high winds.  She even did laundry this morning and had the clothes hanging out on the line to dry as everyone does here.  We moved the kitchen table out to the lower terrace so that we could eat and relax outside which was really nice.

We spent nearly the entire day sitting out on the lower terrace enjoying the weather.  I took my laptop out and worked from there which was awesome.  I look forward to being outside a lot at this point.  The weather is supposed to be much better tomorrow, too.

Dominica and I snacked on break and cheese in the afternoon.  We also made a batch of fish fingers which the girls both loved and devoured!  At one point Liesl and I ran to the market and got another huge wedge of the local cheese and some cookies that she wanted.  The cheese would have been easily thirty dollars or more in the States, it was only four Euro here in Spain!  Everything is so much more affordable.

Dominica decided that she did not want to go out for dinner tonight so she attempted to use everything that we had in the house that was getting old and was not going to last much longer.  She made a big thing of amazing, fresh bruchetta and a large thing of poor man’s potatoes which is a local favourite.

I worked outside until it was very dark and cold.  Then, when dinner was ready, we ate in the kitchen and closed up the house.  The day with sunlight was nice but by the time it was late, around eight this evening, it was too cold to stay out there.  After we ate we retired to the lounge with the heater on low.

The girls spent pretty much the entire day playing on their own in the lounge.  They are great at entertaining themselves here.  They love that the house is so open.  They often talk to people outside the windows.  They don’t know how to say much but they know to say “Hola” to people outside and everyone always says “Hola” to them as well.

The girls are continuing to do really well with trying new foods and actually eating what we have.  We were really worried because this has completely disrupted their eating patterns.

The girls went to bed at midnight tonight and Dominica just a little while later. I stayed up until two thirty getting some posting done and getting the SGL blog caught up and attempting to get the last of the day’s media posted to YouTube.

We found out this morning why the posting is taking so long, the Internet access here, which is a stationary WiMAX connection down to Orgiva, is only 300Kb/s upload speed!  That is horrible.  So we are actively working on getting that speed increased.  Hopefully getting it at least to 600Kb/s will be no problem.  Much faster than that is unlikely, though.  We can only get 128Kb/s on our cell phones.  The signal is as solid and strong as can be, but there is no 4G service here so going to a better plan would not help us at all.  So we are stuck using the solid, slow, free service that we have.  At least it is free and reliable.

Tomorrow is Friday.  We are hopeful that we can do something this weekend although we have no idea what it is that we might want to do.  If nothing else we will probably take a drive around the area at least on Saturday.  And I am hoping that we can try out a different place for tapas tomorrow night too.  We’ve only eaten out once so far in our entire time that we have been in Spain!  How crazy is that?  Today is our fourth day in the country and we did not eat at all on our first day (except for train station food in Madrid, which doesn’t really count) and our second day we had just that one meal out and since then we have eaten at home.

We were talking today about how odd it feels being here and trying to keep in mind that we live here and are not vacationing here.  We have this kind of nagging feeling that we need to be somewhere to doing something like seeing a sight or whatever.  But just being at home, doing normal things is what we are here to do.  We need to just get used to doing normal things and actually living in Spain.