The white towns of Andalusia

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Andalusia, Southern Spain, is a vast area of contrasts; craggy sierra mountains and lush green valleys, enormous hydro lakes, and windy little, sometimes dangerous, roads and modern expressways and interchanges. Most interesting has been the very obvious history – from paleo through Arabs, Christians, inquisitions and Romans. But, I guess, the agricultural life goes on and on.

There are more olive trees than anywhere else in the world, along with wheat, sunflowers and vineyards. It is so green and gorgeous now; of course with the cold and the rain, but we are reliably told that it will brown off now that the sun seems to have arrived. The garden at the vinca (villa)has heaps of herbs and vegetables, but the irises have finished and it is only the roses left.

Apart from the cities, like Cordoba and Granada, so far all we have seen are the white villages. Lots of adobe type homes all jammed together, any colour you want, as long as it is white. Most have black wrought iron window grates, and many, of course, sport geraniums, carnations, ferns and other bright decorations.

These villages seem to perch on the top of hills, I suppose so they could be defended in the old days and the houses are clustered very closely side by side, and usually on very steep and narrow alleys. Driving through these tiny streets can be fun as one skirts dining tables, children, randomly parked cars and strolling people.

And, how lucky have we been? This is not just the time for lovely flowers, but is also the time of festivals. Every city and town seems to be celebrating Corpus Christi this week, and we have lucked right into the middle of all sorts of lovely rituals and celebrations. These involve huge crowds in their best clothes, and in many cases these are traditional flamenco dresses for the ladies and gaucho splendour for the men. Religious icons are carried shoulder high around the towns and villages all accompanied by great excitement from small children dressed in the most gorgeous outfits (it did look like lots of little girls were wearing their first communion clothes and new little lockets).

As described the other day, the vinca is simply lovely and we have heaps of room with lots of bathrooms and plenty of space to sit around and blob. We found the heating was pretty efficient, which is hard to believe now with the temperature nearly 30 degrees. Some of the team have been extraordinarily brave and jumped in the pool, but I have noted that none stay in for long.

However, sitting on the sun loungers or under a tree, or in the courtyard, or under the logia on comfy furniture, is simply bliss. I could do it for days. And the washing has dried in no time at all on our trusty old travelling washing line hung for now between two old pomegranate trees (Really?? Pomegranates??).

Life in the vinca has been extremely pleasant. Harmony continues to prevail, and things just happen i.e. dishwasher gets filled or emptied, meals are prepared, drinks are served and generally everything is continuously tidy. This is such a good group of people to travel with – everyone lends a hand and there are no whingers. And, there are so many laughs!

Meals have been fantastic as people are relaxed and feeling a little creative make enormous dinners, and the dining room is simply amazing, with huge candelabra and fine paintings and heavy old furniture. This of course makes the food taste and look better. And, things like watermelon are just sooo sweet and juicy. Yum.

Tonight we have an elaborate meal of leftovers. Some of Pip’s Netherlands friends are visiting for the night, and we have an enormous chicken dish along with a variety of other really nice things from the fridge. We are trying to use up everything, rather than just leave it all behind on Tuesday morning.

Tomorrow is really our last day here, so we are planning a visit to some nearby old caves with prehistoric paintings, along with sadly repacking the bags and getting ourselves ready to move on.

So on Tuesday morning, from here, Ali and John head down to Malaga and onto Dubai. Thank you Jenny for your book, it will be left in Dubai with Ali’s friends. Sue and Pete head up early to Portugal and the Grahams and Boffas along with us head over to Seville for three days. It will be sad to separate, but it has been great fun.

In addition to eating and drinking to excess, we have managed to fit in a great deal of Hassan’s ‘learning and discovery’ in Ronda, Granada, Cordoba and some smaller towns like Zahara where we had a great time today at a Corpus Christi festival. I’ll write about all that in another blog.

Travel is always, without fail, a series of sitting somewhere for a long time in order to get to somewhere interesting. So, just like we did in Morocco (and Europe and SE Asia in the past) we have sat in cars and buses for hours in order to reach interesting destinations. Also, as always, we have seen far more than we expected and have had such great adventures being there.

As well as the tourist stuff, we have managed to navigate through supermarkets, restaurants and attractions with a very poor handle on the Spanish language - the Spaniards have been unfailingly kind and warm, and have helped us when we have needed it. I must say we have used a lot of guesswork, for instance I cooked a casserole with unidentified meat - tasted fine, but we could not really decide what it was. We are so much more adept at French, Italian and German - even if it is only a vocabulary. Still, we survive and keep going.

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Photos

Dining room at Los Alamos vinca
Yes that is a tapstry behind, and note the lovely candelabra.

Blobbing by the pool
Our men in action.

White village in Andalucia - Zahara
Dear little white homes

Los Alamos
The pool is behind us to the right, this looks directly into the sunroom, the logia on the right and a conservatory on the left. Rabbits live in the caged area on the right. I think they are future dinners, rather than pets.