Sheep Guarding Llama

It started raining, the first real rain for us since the day that we arrived and it was raining so much, before I went to bed last night and it rained all night.  This morning I found the outside world very wet and Cáñar completely encased in the clouds.  No sun at all this morning.

It is much colder and I used the kitchen table to work today instead of going outside.  It is too cold and wet to think about doing that.

A very quiet day for us today.  We did nothing special.  I had a lot of work to do so was a the table all day.

It is Thursday and work ended up being very slow this evening.  There was a lot going on and many people were out sick so no one had any time to work with me which left me kind of stuck for much of the day.  So I did not stay up nearly as late tonight and was able to get to bed at a more reasonable time, around one or two in the morning.

Tomorrow is Friday.  We are staying home tomorrow but will be traveling first thing Saturday morning to go to Sevilla.

Today has to be a really “normal” day.  We have settled in.  We are pretty much used to everything.  We are really just not starting to get the hang of being a family in Spain and what that means and how we deal with it.  The kids are just treating every day as normal now.  It is working well.

Did four lessons on DuoLingo today.

Up at nine thirty today.  Got up and showered, getting used to this Spanish style shower at this point.  The kids were up before ten thirty.

I feel like our family has hit our stride, as of today, here in Spain.  Today was productive, real productive like it should be.  So far a lot of our time has been spent dealing with the whole concept of being in Europe and in Spain and kind of freaking out about the whole thing.  I was able to effectively work all day today.  Liesl did great in school today.   Dominica was productive today.  Luciana was happy and entertaining herself learning about craft projects all day.  We are starting to live a normal live here in Spain now.  This was an important breakthrough for all of us.

Our adventure this morning was that Dominica was doing the laundry upstairs and had opened the umbrella on the terraza.  It was a pretty windy morning and when she went up there at one point she discovered that the umbrella was gone!  She called for me in a panic and I ran up to the terraza.  Before I got there she had located the umbrella – over on the neighbour’s roof!  It was caught in the laundry wires there, for the moment, but was struggling to break free and was going to be flying over the village in no time.  Any second it could be on its way someplace truly inaccessible.

Thankfully the neighbour’s whose roof it was on is connected to us and I had a means of getting there by climbing up on our terraza’s railing, three stories above the stone-surfaced plaza and marble steps, and climbing onto the tiles of their roof edge and onto their roof which is another half story above our terraza.  I made it to the umbrella just before it took off and had to fight it to stay under control.

That made for a little bit of an exciting morning.  Later on, Dominica fell down the terraza stairs, but only right at the bottom and managed to only hurt her left arm a little.  She is fine.

I had a very productive morning getting a lot of work done.  Liesl had a really good school day.  She was happy and cooperative and flew through her work doing really well at it.  At one point she said, after doing a lot of reading, that she wanted to be done with that and wanted to do math.  So cute.

I got a new article submitted today.  Hopefully that will be published tomorrow.

The day suddenly turned into evening.  Had a relatively busy evening at work.  I wasn’t tired and ended up working until three thirty in the morning and then took another three hours before I felt like going to bed.  So nearly six thirty in the morning before going to bed

I was up early this morning.  It was a crisp, cold morning.  I went up to the terraza and worked for a while getting posting updated and getting some uploading going.  I had enough time to basically get caught up before the power went off around nine.  We’ve had this happen a few times and it only lasted a minute or two so I really thought nothing of it particularly.  But the power did not come back.

I decided that I would take the time to go for a walk since there was not that much else to do with there being no power and half of the house asleep.  Liesl wanted to come with me so ran and got dressed very quickly.  It is pretty cold out today so she needed warmish clothes and a jacket.

While Liesl was getting ready, Luciana woke up and wanted to come with us.  She did not want to be left behind.  So we had to wait for her to get ready too.  That took a bit longer, but eventually she was ready and we were able to set out.  The power was still not on and Dominica was still in bed.

The girls and I went on a walk around town, explored several places that they have not been yet.  I took them down to see some of the fountains and a little waterfall on the east side of town.  They were really up for walking so we walked the GR7 all the way east of town until it came to the observation deck there and the newly poured section ended.  There were new work done since the last time that I was there.

It was a couple of miles walking with the girls.  Maybe more, easily three miles I guess.  My mobile phone was dead so I was not able to take it with me to use as a pedometer like I normally do.  It was a good walk, though, and it wore the girls out.  Well it wore out Luciana.  Liesl was still going pretty strong even at the end.  They are both getting to be pretty good walkers.

We went back to the house when we heard the church bells ringing again, which they stopped doing while the power was out.  That is a very handy way to let the entire town and surrounding countryside know that the power has returned.

We got back home and I did a little work and Dominica got the girls ready to head down into Órgiva to do some shopping.  It was after noon when we got back from the walk and after one before we were able to head to the car and drive down into town.

We had problems finding parking, it was busy in town.  We were running late enough that it was actually becoming siesta.  We did not think that the supermercado would close for siesta, but even they do (the Dia, that is.)  We made it just in time to run in with the barrier half down and shop very, very quickly.  It was a very rushed shopping excursion, though, we got the necessities but nothing more.

We had planned on eating in town since we were down here and have not had any time to explore Órgiva on previous trips down the mountain.  We parked on “Main” street and walked the little row of restaurants there to see what looked good.  They were all nearly empty.

We looked around a bit and chose the Cafe Nemesis II.  A very odd name, to be sure.  It was a nice little place, very friendly people.  The girls got pizza and Dominica and I got a lasagna sort of thing.

After lunch we decided to try a pastry place on the other side of the street.  We sat outside, got some treats and coffee and relaxed for a bit.  I took a walk to see when things would open and the shops all said that they would open back up at five.  It was getting late enough that we got more coffee and decided to just wait it out.  The girls were freezing, even with jackets on, but were able to tough it out.

Once five o’clock rolled around we went to the Alpujarras Market which is the more European (rather than Spanish) supermercado.  They have a lot of British foods, for example, here.  We shopped there for a little bit.  The big find there was a power strip which is going to come in very handy.  I found it and showed it to Dominica and she was like “perfect!”

We came out of the market and checked the electrical store that we were told was the only place in the region that would sell a razor (I need one pretty badly) but they did not open when the sign said that they would.  It was about twenty minutes after five.  So we gave up on them.

We walked back to the car and paid the parking box (it’s a trust system) and drove out of town.  As we drove past the electrical store, it was open!  Argh.  I turned around and drove back.  I had to do some awkward street parking and run into the store.

It turns out that the store had nothing like a razor whatsoever.  The other thing that I was told that I would definitely be able to get there are power adapters.  No, not at all.  Half the store was, indeed, dedicated to selling power adapters.  But they were all, every single one of them, UK to European, Italian to European or Swiss to European but not a single one was US / North American to anything.  The shop owner, who did not speak a word of English, had never heard of a US power adapter and insisted that I try to use a UK one instead.  So that was a complete bust.  No way to buy anything remotely useful that is powered in Órgiva.  How a region with a population of over fifty thousand people can’t have a single town with a single store that sells anything is pretty amazing.  Where does everyone buy the most basic things around here?

I had to turn around on a busy intersection to leave town.  That was amazing “Spanish” driving if I do say so.  Dominica is regularly impressed with my driving here.

We got back home at six.  It was chilly and overcast so I worked from the kitchen table rather than the terraza.  Today is the coldest day of the week, we are told, and it is quite cold.

Liesl had a hard time getting school done today but she did it.  Our evening was pretty slow.  I ended up working until three in the morning.  Got quite a bit done, though, so that was good.

Just a nice, quiet day in our home village today.  I was the first one up, long before anyone else.  I opened up the house and found that we were up in the clouds this morning.  No sun, no anything, just a dense fog obscuring even much of town itself.  It was very nice but only forty eight degrees which was pretty chilly.

I set myself up on the terraza with my fleece on and got started trying to get SGL updated and our weekend pictures uploaded to Flickr.

I worked for an hour or two before everyone started waking up.  As the sun came up it slowly burned off the clouds and by afternoon it was bright but still pretty hazy.

At ten this morning our tech from the ISP in Granada arrived to install our new Internet connection!  This is very exciting.  We ended up having to have a dish antenna installed on the side of the house and our connection changed from connecting to the little tower at the top of town to instead connecting to the big, giant tower on top of the mountain to the south.  Our connection was given a four fold boost in download speed and a twenty times increase in upload speed!  What a difference this is going to make.

I did a lot of writing this morning.  For lunch we just cooked up some pizza for Liesl and fish fingers for Luciana.  Of course they never want the same thing at the same time.  Liesl ended up having three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches throughout the day today too.  That girl was hungry!

It was pretty cold all day.  By the evening we came inside and even closed up the house because it was so cold.  I hate having to do that.  I like having the continuous fresh air.

The girls put on their new Flamenco dresses and modeled them tonight.  I got pictures posted right up to Flickr and Facebook.  They are so cute.  Those pictures are the highlight of the day.

Most everyone was into bed around eleven.  I had a ton of work to do and was mostly being productive so ended up staying awake until nearly three in the morning getting work done for the office.  It was a really long, exhausting day for me.

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.