Smurfs, getting lost, goats, no rain and Lidl in Andalucia

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Day 6 is SMURF day!!! And I was allowed to lie in until 7am!!

Juzcar used to be one of the famous white towns which are dotted around the Spanish hillsides but then along came Sony Pictures. They were making a Smurf movie and wanted to paint a whole village Smurf blue. The residents of Juzcar voted and Sony must have spent a long time painting every building in town.

When filming finished Sony came back to repaint the village but the residents voted for it to stay blue. Consequently Sony came back for the sequel and Juzcar gets more visitors now.

It took a while to get there and not just because it's uphill and we have a Toyota Aygo. The roads were very bendy too so we got trapped behind the one thing that was actually slower than us, a petrol tanker, for quite a while. Claire was delighted with the delay as firstly I was able to repeat ad infinitum the bits of Smurf songs I remember and then we discovered Rumba FM on the radio. Oh happy day! Sadly the rumba ran out as the station appears to have only limited range so it was back to good old Dippety Day, Dippety Doo....come on, join in.....Dippety Day, Dippety Doo....

Eventually though the white towns were bypassed and a quaint little blue village appeared before us and yes, it was all Smurf blue! There were also paintings of Smurfs, statues of Smurfs and Smurf memorabilia outside peoples' houses. Despite it being after 10am there was only one bar open: no cafes, no restaurants and even the tourist information was closed. Mind you, as we were the only tourists, I guess it wouldn't be worth opening.

The bar sold us an ice cream, an espresso and a splendid little tapas with eggs of some description. And we used the facilities in return. We wandered round the rest of the town taking pictures and I'd highly recommend you visiting here as it's very photogenic and has a great story of course. I suppose we'd better watch some Smurfs films when we get home....

We then headed to Ronda which has a delightful old part of town which we found eventually despite Claire parking up in the city centre....I'm still not sure why. Anyway, the old bits, cobbled streets, ramparts, castley bits and meandering narrow alleyways eventually lead to a splendid, incredibly tall and ornate bridge. All well worth visiting despite the problems getting out of there as the roads are reeeeaaaaally narrow and twisty as well. Guess who had to drive for that bit?!

Later a huge herd of goats came swarming towards us and Claire stopped to let them and the goatherd past but he just looked at us like we were nuts. Later when I slowed to let a flock of excited sheep and lambs go past me I did get a nod from the shepherd. All part of the experience!

We then planned to get lost and completely miss our destination by literally miles and boy did we succeed. Our satnav had never heard of the place, it didn't feature on the map of Spain that came with the car and the guidebook maps are rather limited. But we eventually found El Chorro Gorge which is a gorge....in El Chorro....

Other people had found it first and we'd arrived too late to do the walk across the bridge. We'd tried to book this online but the English bit was in Spanish and even when we translated bits it didn't explain what you were getting for your money.

So we eventually found the entrance and wandered in. There didn't appear to be any information in any language and we walked in expecting the guy at the entrance to stop us but he just let us walk in. As we walked along it became obvious that we were the odd ones out as everyone coming back was wearing a hard hat. And I mean everyone.

We carried on.

We got to a view of the bridge across the gorge and there was a security guard there who just looked at us. We hung around expecting him to say something, we logged into the free information wi-fi (in English on the post, in Spanish only when you logged on) and we took some photos.

We knew it was later than the last trip in (or over?) so we turned round and went back to the car. I have this app on my phone where I get paid for doing over 7000 steps a day. Claire has made me walk up that many actual steps each day never mind me taking steps on level ground! She slipped up a bit earlier in Ronda when she said 'I'm glad I made you come here'.....yes, note the 'made you'!

I was treated to a visit to Lidl on the way back which is even cheaper than back home. Some stuff was bought in for our evening meal and it is only just 9pm and I've already nearly finished my blog. I see a bit of relaxation time ahead! Maybe....

Oh, nearly forgot....in a bizarre turn of events....it hasn't rained today....which is the first day that has happened since we got here.....hooray!

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