Smurf Village in the Clouds with Skip Cats

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As we're in an area famous for white towns, known as 'Pueblos Blancos' (although they generally have brown roofs which makes Glyn angry) we decided to head for a blue town. Not just any blue, but Smurf blue as we were going to Juzcar, where the two Smurf movies were filmed.

Sony had asked the town if it was ok to paint it blue with the promise to return all to white once finished. But the town folk voted to keep it blue and so it remains awesome! There's Smurf paintings on the walls, and giant Smurf models scattered liberally around the narrow and steep streets for it is in the mountains. Also, it is. The entire town that is blue, not just a few streets as I'd expected.

The town was practically silent and empty when we arrived. I saw three tiny kittens playing in the sun but by the time I parked up, some rat-dog had chased them away. Juzcar is off the beaten track and keeping it blue makes financial sense for pulling in the tourists I presume, as white towns are as common as sunburnt tourists in high season around here. There was one bar open and I was disappointed that it was brown inside, but it did have Smurf posters.

Given that today was the first sunny day in Spain since we'd arrived, it made sense to drive up into the nearest cloud. The first hour was constant uphill and the highest we got was 888 meters above sea level, but we could gaze downwards where the sun lit the scenery below. We'd forgotten the cable to connect our own music to the car and so listened to local radio stations, wow those DJs are so excitable and though I didn't understand the advertising, I want to buy what they were selling, it sounded AMAZING. We briefly listened to BUM FM, because you would, wouldn't you? It turned out to be just chatter so we settled for Rumba FM and then the party started.

Juzcar was off the beaten track so I got to drive up and down really narrow hill roads, dreading the rare oncoming traffic that never slowed down. It's not even mentioned in my DK Eyewitness Travel Guide and I've not seen any leaflets about it and so we were the only tourists. The few people we saw were in the bar, an old woman going uphill with a stick (this is common in Spain) and a very physically fit looking postie. But to Glyn's sheer delight, it was full of cats. He loves it so much when I find cats when we're abroad and he can never wait until the next one turns up... Or so I like to think. These cats were clearly feral but some looked Siamese with creamy fur, blue eyes, but stripey tails. Most unusual. I saw a bunch of them hanging out at a fine selection of skips and went over for a chat, some were more sociable than others. One skip was rocking gently and I peered in to see a mass of mad furry coats as worn by adorable felines all scrapping for the finest finds of the skip. They all guiltily leapt out at once, a mad scramble upwards and outwards, a feline frenzy that Glyn missed as he'd rather walk back to the car.

Obviously the day could not get any better than this, but I tried and so we headed for Ronda, "One of the most spectacularly located cities in Spain, sitting on a massive rocky outcrop". I knew it had to be good or Glyn would not be happy after his disappointment of Alhama De Granada and his disdain of brown roofs on white houses. It looked boring where were first arrived and I parked completely in the wrong end of town by the dull high street shops. I was ready to leave before all hell broke loose, but Glyn offered to drive in the necessary tight circles around town before we could find anything interesting. And I'm glad he did.

The olde worlde part of Ronda is pretty smart and has yet more cats. We knew we found it because that's where the inevitable cobbles start. And after parking, the route was uphill, a steep uphill with many steps, so I knew we were heading in the right direction. This place was more touristy but you could see why - constant cobbles. When we got to the gorge area and viewed the 18th century bridge spanning it, even Glyn was impressed. Phew! They do seem to have liked building towns on precarious precipices around here, apparently it was a form of defence, but it looked like hard work. Just live somewhere less prone to invasion, that's what I would do.

At a cafe Glyn ordered the drinks in Spanish, so the waiter presumed he was fluent. Ha Ha. Glyn ended up being told what he was getting for lunch (some variations of tapas) and had no idea what was coming. I'm happy to point at the photos on the menu and got a veggie paella that did not look like the photo, but it was nice enough.

I was hoping to get to Garganta Del Chorro before 3.30pm as they have some sort of walkway over 100m over the gorge that apparently can be booked on the website. Only the website is utter shite and I gave up, hoping to get tickets on location - silly me. But also we don't have a decent map and our satnav doesn't recognise many places, there's hardly any road signs and the Spanish don't like to give anything away. I think most people visit places on coach tours around here, so they don't cater for people in their own cars - there didn't even appear to be much information in Spanish either. You're just expected to know where to go and what to book, and you get shrugged at if you don't. It can be exasperating.

We both took turns at driving over tiny mountain roads that the neither the satnav nor Google maps believed in. And the Toyota No-go was unimpressed. Thus we didn't arrive until 4.30.

But there were cats!! Begging (and getting) food from tourists. A few rat-like dogs too. Now the local maps on notice boards were as helpful as the cats at giving directions, but we soon headed the right way, noticing that people coming towards us ALL were wearing white helmets.

There was some guy taking the helmets from them, but no one stopped and asked why we didn't have helmets. Naturally we headed upwards along the Guadalhorce valley which my guide claims is one of the geographical wonders of Spain. The Garganta deal Chorro is "an immense gaping chasm 180 metres high slashing through a limestone mountain, at times only 10 metres wide." Oooooh. So yeah it looked nice enough but I guess the helmets were for those going over the walkway that we were too late for. I've no idea why they needed helmets, but we were able to walk close enough to get a good look at it even if we didn't go on it. People were walking along precarious paths carved high in the walls of the gorge and I wondered how their helmets would help them if they fell in. They're not big enough for boats unless you are a cat.... Aaaahhhhh!

We returned to our car and to many roads already travelled but eventually made it back, stopping at Lidl where the prices were insanely cheap - I got a bottle of white wine for €0.99 and it's actually ok!

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