Adios Espana. More free holidays please!

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Day 8 and it's time to go home already. Where has this week gone??

Can't say we've sat on our backsides and done nowt though eh. Wouldn't want to be a holidaymaker now! I've decided that's worse than being a tourist as at least tourists go and see things; at least they have some reason for living. Unlike the man in beige I saw earlier....head to toe in beige....if he'd had socks and sandals on as well he may as well just lie down and die as he's obviously given up in life.

Anyway, we checked out of our apartment which we have had free for a week thanks to CLC world. We couldn't fit into their definition of a holidaymaker...obviously....so we had seven nights accommodation for nothing. Even I can afford that! I wouldn't say no to another free holiday if you're reading this...

We have certainly got out and about and today was no exception as we headed up into the mountains. I would class this as very brave given our sloth of a car (Toyota Aygo....nowhere fast....) which keeps getting overtaken by paint drying when going uphill. And no I don't have any idea why drying paint is going uphill, it just is okay.

Due to having all our luggage in the car and obviously not in the boot as that is only big enough to fit a tin of paint in we didn't want to leave our sloth parked up anywhere the local banditos could be tempted by our visible luggage. So we headed to Las Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada mountain range where we could have brief stops to take photos.

The scenery is spectacular and snowy peaks showed themselves as we baked in the sun beneath. I think the highest we got was in Trevelez which was over 1400m above sea level. This was a village famous for its cured ham so, as we'd stopped here for a wander, I decided to sample some.

My cured ham starter came after my main course and was a huge chunk of bread with some quite tasty ham plonked on it, no butter though. Claire's vegetarian bap came with bacon and pork on but we couldn't work out who'd made the mistake so I helped her out and ate the meat for her. What a good husband!

With more stop offs for photos we headed all the way back to Malaga Airport and dropped the sloth off with more than 1200km on the clock. It had had 4 when we picked it up. A lot of those miles had been spent holding up donkeys and slugs although we did once overtake a lamp post which fell over with shame and embarassment poor thing.

I have enjoyed speaking Spanish which is actually a very easy language if you don't mind getting punched. All you have to do is add an o onto English words, say it in a really over the top way and no-one will understand a word you say. Genius.

Seriously though, how could you get bored of speaking Spanish? It's such an expressive language, full of emotion and vim that, as Claire says, who cares what they're selling on the radio, they make it sound so good I want to buy it!

We have had 8 jampacked days in the Costa Del Sol with only three being free of rain but it's been great. Some things have wound me up but that never takes away from the experiences we have, the things we see and the fun we have together. This part of the world is great away from the scummy holidaymakers and it it is easy to keep/get away from them. I could quite easily live down here (sorry Mum!) as it's got almost everything you need and what it doesn't have it makes up for with other things.

We just need someone to put on some punk gigs and we're away!

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