Crowded House, Rain and the birth of a butterfly...oh and a golf rant....

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The alarm went off at 2.15am after a few hours of lying awake farting. I'm not sure that was the sole reason I didn't get much sleep but it didn't help. Claire was very appreciative as always though. I then regaled Claire with the story of how the word holiday comes from the Ancient Greek translated as Holey Day because in olden times the Greeks spent their days off making holes in cloth. Thankfully these days we get to jump on aeroplanes and jet off somewhere interesting as I can imagine me getting quite bored of making holes in anything except David Cameron's head never mind a piece of cloth.

After saying goodbye to Lia and Bod we set off in search of roadworks so we could be diverted and this time we were successful. They tried but they didn't manage to make us miss our plane.

We are off to sunny Spain so I have quite a range of songs to sing to Claire. Don't tell her though as she's excited enough already. In a strange turn of events we are staying in one place for the whole seven nights! Weird I know-who has holidays like that any more?!

Our accommodation for the week is free as we are visiting a resort where they are going to try (again) to sell us the modern equivalent of a timeshare. We already attended a presentation in Birmingham, were given a £50 M&S voucher and now have to spend a few hours being told the same things so we can say no again.

The apartments are supposed to be luxury so for free I suppose we can put up with it. We are currently sat on a Monarch plane where there isn't enough legroom for a gnat never mind a 6' 3" bloke. Hopefully no-one else will get on as the seat next to me is still free.... More on that anon.....

Damn....we are being surrounded by golf w###**s....oh how I deplore these people with their stupid bags and their loud mouths.....and their talking about the horrendous waste of existence that is golf. If they start I'll try and wind them up by talking about windmills and getting the ball down the slope in proper golf....the crazy variety.

There is still an empty seat next to me though....and it's one seat further away from 'them' too...I've already heard a 3-wood mentioned and ensuing laughter....grrr!!!

And the seat with infinite legroom stayed empty until the seatbelt sign went off and then I plonked myself in it and stretched my legs out like nobody's business! I even fell asleep at one point!

Monarch managed to do something Qatar Airways could learn from....we got on the plane, it took off (on time), we got to our destination and even got our luggage at the other end. If only it was that simple eh Qatar?

So yeah, arrived at Malaga, spent almost a whole second having my passport checked....seriously! The guy hardly looked at it which is a good job as I'd brought Barack Obama's with me, having bought it on ebay*

*this is a lie

Picking up a hire car at the airport is always simple. There's someone waiting for you with a big sign with your name on, they take you to the car, you get the keys and off you go. Well not always....and not today.... After a lot of stomping round we finally found a courtesy bus which was nowhere near the place it was supposed to be and were taken the short distance to get our car.

Claire had to pay for fuel that we might use and a refuelling charge that we won't get back. €25 to fill up a petrol tank!!! Then there was the small matter of the €950 deposit.... And the guy being on the phone to some thick tourist most of the time he was serving us.

And then he gave us a car with only 4km on the clock which is less than our car had when we bought it brand new. BUT it is a Toyota Aygo...really slowly..... This place is really hilly and it really isn't the place for a Toyota Nogo. It's been a struggle especially around our resort complex but more of that later. And probably a week's worth of ranting about the Nogo too....

We need to talk about Crowded House first and their abysmal song about always taking the weather with you. I'm from Stoke you cretinous peckerheads! Why would I want to take rain and cold with me?? This time we just brought the rain and boy has it rained! All day.

The slow shutter speed photography has been put off to another day...despite it actually stopping raining just as we arrived back at the apartment...

Oh yeah, our apartment....it's pretty snazzy and we have an upstairs, two bedrooms, a garden terrace and a sink JUST for washing our backsides in.

The kitchen is bigger than mine at home so I might just take it with me. So no Crowded House, I won't even take the kitchen with me so don't start!

We have been given the day of our presentation where CLC world try again to sell us an apartment we really don't want. They do give us a free breakfast though and if we don't turn up they fine us €500 so we'd better go I guess! We're trying to sort it around our planned trips whilst taking the crappy weather into account.

On arrival at Club La Costa we expected there to be a big reception area where we would be greeted and the usual formalities taken care of. But there are many receptions and no signs to say which we should be at so it wasn't until the third building we stopped at that our formalities were sorted.

After getting far too excited about having a big kitchen (and having soft boiled eggs with soldiers!) we set off to Mariposario Butterfly Park in Benalmadena. Slap bang next to an impressive Buddhist Temple the entrance was decorated in a similar Oriental style for no apparent reason.

Inside were quite an array of impressive butterflies, an iguana, a tortoise and a totally unrelated and bored looking wallaby. Claire followed me round scaring away any butterflies I was trying to take pictures of so she can win Photo of the Month at our camera club.*

*this is also a lie.

We listened to one of the staff do a talk and actually saw a butterfly being 'born' as the girl shook it gently out of it's chrysalis. Quite impressive!

Back out in the rain we were looking to either dine out or find a supermarket that was open. As it's Sunday the big supermarkets were closed by this time so I pulled into Fuengirola so we could turn our noses up at the touristy food on offer and get a few supplies at a small shop instead to eat back at the apartment. Oh...we did have some ice cream though....typical tourists at times I'm afraid.....

Claire is now planning my activities for tomorrow so I'll probably have to be up even earlier than today (probably before I've gone to bed) and might make it back to my big kitchen before midnight. Did I mention the kitchen by the way?

PS Claire has just read this and reckons it's about 5% about what we've done today....quite high for me I'd say!

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Comments

[Andy]

What's wrong with golfers?
Good to hear from you again. Nowt wrong with a few lads heading abroad to play gowf! Just wait for the return trip. Seen it before - they will have DT's through too much alcohol and not enough ordinary fluids! Looking forward to hearing how you're gonna pay for this timeshare thing! Bet your one is up a back street with bin views! Ha ha!

[Wadey1966]

Gowfers...
It was the blokes themselves....turds to a man! Send us a few Scottish tenners and you can share our timeshare sometime!

[Hugh Walton]

Quite agree with you!
We once had a horrendous encounter with these golfing types when I won a free holiday to the Algarve. They were almost without exception, male groups who'd been allowed to leave their wives at homes for a week. One can only imagine how delighted the "women" as they were called, must have been to let them go. They all wear silly trousers and put a "y" at the end of their names - you'd have been Wadey - and make complete prats of themselves in restaurants, I was ecstatic when the week was over!

[Wadey1966]

The 'women'....
Their wives are apparently in Fuetarventura or however you spell it....or so they said....but I'm not convinced they're married....