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Published: April 11th 2012
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Spain is different!
Saw a few of these massive cut-outs beside the highway during my little road trip. Couldn't resist taking the obvious photo... I'm glad to be in Cádiz now. It's quite a beautiful city.
Getting access to good internet has been difficult for a while now and the past couple of weeks have been very trying. I gotta say, I don't quite get the whole Semana Santa thing. It's quite a large and important festival across a large part of Andalusia, but it didn't make a great deal of sense to me. The streets in Seville, one of the bigger Semana Santa locations, were packed with people witnessing the processions take place. Every day of Holy week has them throughout the afternoon with the most important ones taking place on Good Friday, beginning at 1am. Essentially, hundreds of penitents head from their chapel to the cathedral wearing robes and masks with pointy hats, carrying big candles and a bunch of guys follow them carrying a float with a scene from Jesus' passion and another with Mary and these often followed by a band playing drum and trumpet music. I think maybe you have to have grown up with the tradition to get, or at least be Catholic.
I got to Seville by car. I had this idea of buying a car
Costa del Sol
This is the kind of madness our modern western fetish for the sea leads to like you hear about backpackers doing in Australia, but ultimately I was convinced, or convinced myself, that this might be too difficult a task and also I would have to try and sell it again in less than three months time. I hired a car, a manual. I always felt that I would be able to adapt reasonably easily to driving on the wrong side of the road, but was not so confident about needing to change gears with my right hand. But the difference between hiring a manual and the cheapest automatic was just too prohibitive, so I bit the bullet and got the manual. And had a crash.
Driving the streets of Valencia is insane! I'd figured once you get on the highway, it'd be much like driving on a highway in Australia. So my plan was simply to stay away from big cities. And I'd done it! I'd made it out of Valencia. Juan gave me a call to see if I was still in Valencia and wanted to catch up and mentioned that he had a book with him that I'd been reading a little bit of called "Ghosts of Spain". Enticed by a book,
I returned to Valencia. And so, had someone run up the back of me while I was waiting for a parking space. He didn't really speak a word of English. So after spending ages trying to decifer each other as well as the accident incident form he whipped out and having me leaf through my Spanish phrasebook trying to find anything that would help me in this situation, we finally called the police to make sure we could sort this situation out. He'd filled out the accident form and pointed at it saying "firma!" Signature. I thought maybe he'd just filled it out saying it was all my fault and I wasn't too keen to sign that. Anyway, I got a replacement car the next day, a VW Polo. A step up from the Skoda in my book.
The book was good by the way Juan. I've finished it now.
A lot of the terrain for some way out of Valencia did remind me of Australia. Indeed, apart from the lack of sheep and Gum trees, I might have been in any one of a number of places somewhere west of the divide. Later on, I did even
White hill town
Genalguacil again... start seeing a few Gum trees. I wanted to head for some more unique terrain and now armed with the knowledge from Juan's book about a complete replica of The White House which the King of Saudi Arabia had built at Marbella, I decided to make a bit of a detour from my original plan. Plus it would give me an opportunity to check out Malaga where I'd booked in to do a Spanish language course in April and as the days were quite sunny, I thought it might be nice to take the car for a bit of a cruise beside the beach.
This was a monumental mistake.
Malaga is a pain to drive around in. I gotta say, I'm a bit worried about being in Malaga for my two week course in April too. It seems mostly a bit of an eyesore, it's hard to get out of, at least while still following the coast (there's just a couple of ways in and out, just to trap people there in my opinion). In my cruise-beside-the-beach idea, I imagined something like the Great Ocean Road or maybe northern NSW coast or even something more built up like
Genalguacil
After escaping from Marbella, I came across this beautiful town in the hills of Andalusia. Was immaculately kept as though it were a place tourists would go to, but less fake and funnily enough, with no tourists even though it was a Saturday. the Sunshine Coast. What I got was an endless stream of brick and concrete. Resorts that extended from Malaga to Marbella and then some. A good 60km at least. For all I know, the same monstrosity extends just as far in the other direction. Kinda wish I'd stayed around La Carolina and the Despeñaperros National Park a little longer, instead of being in a hurry for the coast.
Perhaps I was just not keen for that kind of a driving test and Malaga minus a car will not be so bad. Certainly it was that much of a shock and oh-shit-what-have-I-done moment that I didn't even stop or see much of Malaga and spent pretty much all of my time there trying to figure out how to get out of there. Driving in a major Spanish city is an interesting task at the best of times. There's plenty of one-way streets. Don't know the exact way to wherever you are going or miss a turn and it's quite a task getting back on the right track. And touch parking is definitely NOT out of the question. In fact it's kinda obligatory. Touch repositioning is even sometimes an option. So
Just the odd mural
Genalguacil seemed to have a good deal of artwork (not the weird, distinct public art that makes sure you notice it's out of place you find in just about every city in the world these days). I'm thinking perhaps it was an artists town. Bits and pieces of walls were painted, but generally not to the extent this one was. I was very careful where I tried to park a hire car.
Anyway. After quite a crazy and unfulfilling time driving from Valencia to Seville, plus the rather bizarre experience of Semana Santa, not to mention being a little under the weather for a couple of days, although I still got to see a little bit of Seville and Seville is quite a beautiful city, I found my way back to Cádiz which I had stopped at for a few hours in the car on my way to Seville. And it is a beautiful city also. More beautiful than Seville and steeped in history. And I will stay here for the week I think.
The next week is shaping up to be a whole lot better.
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