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Another good night’s sleep in a very spacious and comfortable apartment in the rather unique location (for us) of a golfing resort.
Before we had breakfast on the terrace we hoofed it down to the golf course to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately there was some cloud and the sun took a little longer than expected to break free of the cover. When it did though it produced a light rosy hue on the apartments that line the golf course and a similar result on the Rock in the distance.
While we were taking all this in we had spotted a man above us on the golf course fairway itself with two Alsatian’s one of which took an interest in us heading our way barking quite loudly. The man didn’t seem to do anything as the dog got closer to us and then we noticed that thankfully the Alsatian was wearing a muzzle. He stopped about 10 metres away from us and continued to back but when we took no interest he sloped off back to his owner.
The man appeared to be taking photos with a large tablet. But then we heard this whirring noise overhead and looked
up to see a drone slowly gliding by about 20 metres above us. It wasn’t a tablet for photos he was using but some sort of control panel for the drone which continued on its way past us and disappeared from our view.
We headed back to the apartment and ate our breakfast on the terrace watching the pool man clean the swimming pool.
The area we are staying in looks to have been developed by different companies or developers and some of the developments including one of about 15 apartments across the road have never been finished and sit looking rather forlorn and in an untidy state. Those that have been finished have been built to a very good state of design matching the hilly landscape well and with materials that look like they will last.
Our destination today is Cordoba and our route initially on the A7 will take us along the coast towards Marbella.
We then took a left hand turn and started to climb the Sierra de Tolox part of the Sierra Nevada chain that splits the coast from the interior.
It was a slow but steady climb with the summit
being reached at just over 1000 metres. Unfortunately the hazy horizon meant that getting clear photos or video of the scenery back to the coast was not an easy task.
We had heard about a village just off this road that had been taken over and used for the filming of the movie version of ‘The Smurfs’ those blue coloured creatures that seem to have been around forever and in our kids younger years had their own TV series.
Any road off the main road that had twisted and turned to get to its summit was likely to be narrow and a challenge to drive. But as it turned out the road to Juzcar, the village in the movie, was quite tame in terms of those the BBA have taken before and in fact it had a guard rail on the downside of the hill and in places it looked like it might have been widened which may have been the result of the movie company having to bring large trucks with equipment in.
It was 9km to the village and we weren’t disappointed when we arrived.
Every house had been painted ‘Smurf’blue and since the
movie was made in 2011 the houses have stayed painted the same blue colour. Except for one that is on the edge of the hillside village which was painted white!
We took a walk through the village admiring the murals on the walls all with a Smurf theme. We did wonder how the people that make movies find places like this which is hardly within sight of a main highway but buried as it was 9km off the main road.
Juzcar was certainly a different looking village to others in Spain where the predominant colour for a house is either white or terracotta.
However we had another town to visit before we got to Cordoba so we drove the 9km back to the N34 and headed for Ronda, a short distance away, and reputed to be one of Spain’s most spectacularly located cities.
What we hadn’t realised was that Ronda is in two distinct parts, the old and the new and it was the new part that the N34 delivered us to.
We drove into the town expecting to find signposts that would direct us to what we had come to see and experience but
all we found were one way streets leading to nothing like we had expected.
After driving around for quarter of an hour and not even being able to find a car park for us to then walk and find the tourist office we thought to heck with this we shall forget about what we had read and keep going towards Cordoba.
However a couple of kilometres down the N384 we pulled over at a rest area to have lunch and it was there that we had the notion to reconsider our lack of ability to find the old part of Ronda and worked out a plan to go back.
Actually it was a simple plan that we should have realised in the car while we drove around looking for that car park. Simple enough put one of the streets from the guide book reference we had on the sights of Ronda into the GPS and ‘Bobs your uncle’!
And that was the way it turned out even though we did drive past and over the most impressive Puente Nuevo looking for a car park!
A car park in a building found(not Gretchen’s most preferred options
as these types of buildings leave little room for error when manoeuvring a car)and we set off through a lovely park with tall trees showing off their still spring leaves to a promenade that makes this place so special.
Ronda was initially built on a massive rocky outcrop, something not apparent when we drove in on the N34 from a different direction, and the old town straddles a precipitous limestone cleft.
The drop over the cliff is similar to that of being at the top of the Rock (Gibraltar) and is not a sight for anyone with vertigo.
Today, with the warm sun shining and no wind, it was inspiring to watch birds soar below us as they caught the thermals to give them their flight. The view out across the valley was as you might expect quite amazing.
Equally so however was the sheer drop of 100 metres from the 18
th century bridge, the Puente Nuevo, that was built to join the old and new town as the town expanded.
Ronda’s history goes way back but it was also one of the last bastions of the reign of the Moors to fall to the
Christians in 1485.
There are two vantage points to get a real feeling for the 100 metre drop that the bridge spans and it was on the western side that we our feelings about ‘selfie sticks ‘again arose within us. We are so pleased our family did not buy us one of these contraptions to take o holiday so we could post endless ‘selfies’as the BBA V3 continued on its way around Western Europe.
It seems to be that people from Asia are inflicted with the need to own and use one of these pieces of apparatus. The problem is that in reality the people using them are only getting repeated photos of themselves and not the scenery and all the history that goes with the location when they use them to take a photograph. And that is even more so when there are groups of 5 or 6 people in the ‘selfie ‘and the background is crowed out!
However we did enough space for ourselves to take in the views from the two advantage points and after a bit of a stroll through some of the narrow streets we headed back to the car to carry
on our way decidedly please about our lunchtime decision.
Driving away from Ronda, once we hit the countryside again, we noticed the sight of some herds of sheep alongside the road with no fencing and being looked after by a shepherd as used to happen in the ‘old days’. We haven’t seen a lot of animals such as sheep, cows etc in Spain and we wonder just where all the animals that surely this vast country must have, are farmed.
We joined the A45, the main road from Malaga on the coast to Cordoba, near Antequera and drove north.
After descending from the mountain range that we had driven up from the coast we had the feeling of being in an enormous valley that just seemed to go on and on and on fringed by mountains to the east and more rolling countryside to the west.
Once we reached the A45 the arable land gave way to acre upon acre of olive trees. In fact between where we joined the A45 and Cordoba, which was about 100km there was nothing but olive trees.
They are a hardy tree needing little care and once they are
well established no permanent irrigation to enable them to produce their olive fruits.
What is amazing is that these billions of trees (throughout Spain but particularly in Andalucía) have their fruits of olives all picked by hand, manual labour! And here we were thinking the kiwifruit industry that does well in the area we live in NZ is labour intensive at harvest time. Kiwifruit has nothing on olive picking!
We were so blown away by the olive trees that were all around us on the A45 that the 100km to Cordoba passed by very quickly.
For her own reasons Gina took us to our destination in an upmarket hillside suburb about 300 metres above the city via a circuitous route although it did give us a chance to get the layout of this ancient city into our heads for some walking we plan to do tomorrow.
Our apartment was located in an establishment almost at the end of the road before the city ran into the bush and had been constructed in 4 levels down the hillside. Our apartment was on the bottom level, well this is the BBA V3 and ‘cheap seats ‘often come with
the price we pay for a good night’s sleep.
The establishment must have been built in two separate stages as we took one lift down just one floor and then had to walk along a corridor to another lift to continue our journey down another 3 floors. All quite unusual.
We thought we had our room after stumbling along the unlit corridor until we realised that the owners used the type of lighting that you need to push a button to work and it stays on until you get inside your room, all very energy efficient we are sure! However the card swipe thing didn’t work and it was only after Gretchen went back for more instructions up in the two lifts while I minded our luggage in the darkened corridor until I found the button to push for light.
She returned 5 minutes later and by that time I had worked out we were at the wrong room and all was resolved.
Tomorrow we explore Cordoba on foot and take in the Great Mosque, the Mezquita, now a cathedral.
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Tim and KJ
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Uncle Bob's origins
Question from Tim for you.....what is the origin of the expression "Bob's your uncle"?