Around Ronda

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I’m back from a delightful little weekend away. Ronda was beautiful, and anyone who comes to Spain should take at least a day to go and see it. We planned on taking the 1:45 train on Thursday afternoon. The whole trip was not very well planned out though, which was difficult for me to deal with. I just remember when I was planning our trip to Xi’an in China, I spent several hours planning out where we were staying, what restaurants we would eat at, and what sites to see. I found out when we were leaving Ronda on Wednesday night at nine. This was just a bit more stressful because I had been planning on meeting some others at one on Thursday to buy plane tickets for our Paris trip. I had to buy mine that night and just hope they could get the same flight as me.

Cat said to meet at a café a couple hours before the train was scheduled to leave to work out the details of our stay. We were going to book a hostel then, but they couldn’t connect to the internet on their iPhones, and Chris’s laptop wasn’t starting because it was covered in beer. We went to a nearby internet café to try their computers, but the website said that no hostels were available for Thursday night. I was going to look on another site, but a worker, who Chris was asking for directions to the train station (another thing we didn’t know), said we needed to leave now if we wanted to catch the train.

We started walking, but there was construction on the road we wanted, and we couldn’t see a way through. The map showed a path through a campus so we looked for that. We kept walking until the road turned left (not the direction we needed). We had walked all the way to the other end of the campus. The train station was there, we had just walked the long way around. We stopped maybe seven different people along the way to ask where the train station was, and they kept leading us in the right direction. It took us forty-five minutes to get to the train station, and we got on the train about five minutes before it was scheduled to leave.

Once on the train we could relax and eat our bocadillos (sandwiches) our señoras made for us. Two and a half hours later, we were in Ronda. On the way, we consulted the Spain guidebooks Lyanne and Cat brought and decided we needed to get to the central plaza and the office of tourism. We took a taxi there and asked the tourist information where to stay. She gave us two: one for €25 per room and no breakfast and one for €15 per bed, breakfast, and a good view. We chose the view, and what a view!

Ronda is one of the oldest cities in Spain, originally founded by early Celts in 6^th century BC. It is divided in two by the Guadalevín River which has carved out a canyon over 100 meters deep with the city on top. Our hostel, El Tajo, was situated right on the edge with a view of the Puente Nuevo (new bridge) which spans the canyon. Just our luck, with absolutely no planning we get a really cheap hostel with the best view in town.

We dropped off our bags and went out exploring. We found a viewing area on one side of the city with some great views of the countryside and mountains. We continued walking around the newer side of the city and found the main drag with all the restaurants and shops. We found a grocery store and bought some stuff for sandwiches and headed back to the hostel because it was getting cold. When we got there, the two other people staying at the hostel were in the living room. The man was a recent retiree traveling Spain and the girl was from Ukraine. They seemed nice enough, but it was a little awkward sitting there with them. We just ate our sandwiches and played a card game until they went to bed.

We slept late Friday morning, had breakfast, and went out exploring again. This time we crossed Puente Nuevo into the old city. Armed with a tourist map, we wandered around the eastern side until we found a house where a Moorish king lived. For €4 we toured the garden and went into the mines. I’m not sure if anything was actually mined here, but there was a path that cut into the rock and stairs that wounded down, down to the river. It was pretty cool because we were going deep underground, but there was always a little light from windows cut in the wall to let the light in as we went down the cliff. About two hundred stairs later we came out on a metal grate hung over the river just a few feet below our feet. Here it was quiet and cool at the foot of the canyon with the clear blue water flowing by. Just beautiful.

The climb up was not as fun as the climb down, but we made it. We spent a couple more hours walking around, but once again, the cold pushed us back to the hostel. We spent the rest of the night watching Spanish television. We got hooked on a show called Su Hermano Mayor. I assume it’s like the show in the US Big Brother, but I’m not sure since I’ve never watched it. The show’s host helps teens with anger issues. It was pretty funny because the two girls for the shows we watched were crazy! They started screaming at the slightest provocation and threw things and punched the walls. Very entertaining.

Late Saturday morning, we went back to the old city and climbed down the canyon on the western side of the bridge. This path led down to the river as well, but there weren’t stairs for us this time. We had to use our rock climbing skills for the last bit, and I almost fell, but we reached the river next to one of the waterfalls to rest and enjoy the view. We were wondering how we were going to climb back up when we found a rope attached to iron brackets nailed into the rock for just such a purpose. We walked back up the path, resting every few minutes because it was pretty steep and went back to the hostel. We had to check out at 12, but they let us leave our bags there while we walked around one last time. We picked up our bags and headed to the train station. Since we had been in such a rush last time, we wanted to make sure we weren’t late for the train. In hindsight, we could have gone a little later because waiting two hours in a freezing train station is not the most fun thing in the world.

It was such a relief to be on the train for two hours because it was the first time I had been warm all weekend. I loved Ronda, but I would suggest going later when it warms up. Now I have a whole day to hang out and do nothing before class starts tomorrow. More like a day and a half because on Mondays I don’t have class until 6:30 at night. Before you think this is ridiculously easy, Tuesday and Thursdays I have three classes starting at 8:30 in the morning, each an hour and a half, in addition to an hour each of Tutorías (learning colloquialisms), Fonética (phonetics), and Granada Seminar classes in the evening. I am going to be very busy.

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