Feliz Cumpleanos(Rick Martin) - A happy birthday in Puerto de Santa Maria,Spain -24th April 2016

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April 24^thand that special day that comes around for Gretchen has arrived, her birthday!

And we have to spend part of it on the road south to a town near Cadiz called El Puerto de Santa Maria. They love their long place names in Spain and it’s often fun when you are trying to make them out in their abbreviated form on the signposts.

Our apartment near Espartinas just outside of Seville has been a great place to stay and again we have had everything we wanted to make life easy and at a great Air BnB price. Maria Jose (not quite sure why she is Jose as we thought that was a man’s name) has been a lovely host and we have had good conversations with her and her English is very good. She has a daughter studying architecture in Auckland (would have thought Seville had more to offer an architecture student) and hopes to visit her one day soon so perhaps we will meet her again.

It is a fairly short drive south and the instructions for our next place to stay which is through booking.com are a little vague. But we will wing it and see what happens when we get there.

After trouble initially finding Gretchen’s birthday from the small pile Leigh gave me I located it and the birthday celebrations started with breakfast on the terrace.

We had had a Skype call with the Goodhue’s last night which was 24^th their time and it was good to catch up and see what Brayden was up to and see how much more he is developing.



The roads south took us around the outskirts of Seville but still close enough to recall our visit there yesterday and almost smell the sweet scent of citrus that seemed to pervade the air.

There are not a lot of towns south on the A4 but we did pull off at Las Cabezas de San Juan(there we go again those long Spanish names for towns)and found the local park a couple of streets behind the main road and had lunch in the park in the heat of the ever increasing temperature. What made it hotter was that there was no shade from the palm trees which were on the other side of the path from where the seats were, someone slipped up in planning there.

One thing the Spaniards don’t do on Sunday is move fast, if they move at all. With the supermarkets and shopping malls closed it is family time unless they are employed in an essential government business or perhaps work in a restaurant or service station as these are about the only places open. One wonders whether this might change if the PM has his way and starts to make changes to things like the time zone anomaly and also the siesta time in the middle of the day when business almost grinds to a halt.

One element of Spanish life today is however moving fast on the roads and they are those who love to ride their motor bikes.

During our drive south we encountered a number of groups of bikers all well behaved we must say as far as the traffic rules and taking chances were concerned.

The A4 passed through some fertile land where it appeared beans as far as the eye could see in many instances were growing. There were also olive tree orchards and all the while irrigation was bought to where the crops and trees were either by pipes or in the fields by those great lumbering booms gently spraying out water as they inched their way across the field.



According to the road signs there was an airport at Jerez de la Frontera(another mouthful) but we never saw it and nor did we really catch much of the town as the road neatly skirted around it to allow us to continue on at a steady speed in relatively light traffic.

Soon after though we arrived in El Puerto (we will shorten it for the blog) and it wasn’t before we realised that although we had seen quite a number of motor bikers out on the highway all the rest of them were here celebrating a weekend of whatever bikers do when they get together in an event that we later discovered had been running since Friday and ended this evening.

We hadn’t realised that the Spanish Motorcycle Grand Prix was on this weekend at Jerez, the town we never saw, and that the crowds had spilled over to El Puerto just down the highway.

The town was abuzz and everyone seemed to be enjoying the bright sunshine and warm temperatures by sitting outside many of the cafes, bars and restaurants that lined the main road into the town and then seemingly in even greater numbers in the narrow streets that Gina decided we had to take to get to our penthouse apartment. Yes we have gone upmarket with the penthouse to celebrate Gretchen’s birthday but still within the BBA V3 budget.

We drove up a street that took us to the narrow street with the descriptive name of ‘Jesus De Los Milagros’ where the apartment was located. However driving into it wasn’t an option with people everywhere enjoying the cafes and bars.

Every other narrow street we drove down either had no parking available or were just too narrow to park and walk back to the building where the apartment was.

Then a moment of opportunity as ahead of us a car was backing out and we grabbed the spot.

It wasn’t too far to walk back to ‘Jesus ‘street. However all there was to the building which apparently housed 7 apartments was a solid timber door and 7 buttons to push which we guessed were for the apartments themselves.

But before we pushed a button to see what happened we telephoned which had been the instruction only to get an answer phone message all in Spanish of course and a list of numbers that rattled off so quick we had no chance to take even one of them down.

There was nothing for it and as we noticed the top floor windows slightly open we thought that perhaps cleaning might still be going on for our arrival.

So button #7 it was and lo and behold there was a reply and a few moments later the cleaning lady appeared at the large timber door and let us in.

Using the miracle of translator on a cell phone we worked out that if bought the car back to ‘Jesus’ street we could unpack and then find a spot in one of the public parking areas on the riverfront.

An hour or so had passed and by now the crowds had dispersed a bit, perhaps for siesta time before they came back to life this evening, and we were able to get Peggy into the street and stop outside the timber door we now had keys for.

With everything delivered to the spacious penthouse we drove away to take a €2 per day car park which we thought the budget could stretch to. This we must say was considerably cheaper than the car park 100 metres closer to the apartment that was €15 per day! Surprisingly the employee in the ticket office suggested the cheaper one up the road!

Back in the penthouse and knowing we didn’t have to drive to find dinner we sat back and relaxed with Sir Cliff’s Celebration bubbly and nibbles.

Finding a restaurant for the celebration dinner was easy with the bikers in the town and the place abuzz and Gretchen had done some homework by finding a seafood place that was established in the year of her birth, how appropriate.

This dinner was on the kids who had given us a travel card pre loaded and we enjoyed warm garlic shrimps (for Gretchen) and swordfish (for Grahame) with a huge green salad we couldn’t finish.

It wasn’t the usual birthday for Gretchen but she couldn’t expect what she might have been treated to at home with family and friends but she did get dozens of messages on Facebook and emails from those who don’t subscribe to FB which made her day memorable all the same.

PS a very short video from YouTube today,just seach for Ricky Martin and the title of the blog

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