Saturday 28 August 1999 We depart from Rotterdam Airport with Transavia Airlines for Malaga. The flight has been delayed by one hour. Around 7:15pm we're airborn and on our way. The flight takes about 3 hours and we land at Malaga around 10pm. It takes quite some time for our luggage to emerge from the conveyor belt. We're glad that we rented our car with Hertz instead of Avis, because there is a 50 yard's queue in front of the AVIS desk, whereas we get instant service. Our rental turns out to be a Renault Mégane. We drive into Malaga's city centre in search of the hotel we have booked. Our first experience with Spanish signposting is not very good - it is a bit of a puzzle. At last we do find the hotel. Hotel Carlos V is simple and rather noisy. After having installed our gear in the room we go out and have a drink in the pub around the corner. With a bit of tapas (Spanish snacks) we enjoy our first warm evening in Spain. Sunday 28 August 1999 We have breakfast in a café
further down the street. When we walk back we're treated to a procession. An
enourmous crowd preceeds a large statue of the Virgin Mary carried by group of
musclled lads. The vicar leads crowd in a song with the help of a megaphone.
After this display we get on our way to Ronda. Again the
idiosyncratic signposting plays tricks on us, in our attempt to leave the city.
But we manage to find our way and soon we find ourselves in a impressive
mountain range: the Sierra de la Nieve. De roads through the mountains quiet and
winding. In Ronda we find a hotel across from the Alameda park (almost every
self respecting town in Andalucia has a Alameda, as it turns out).We head for
the city centre, situated beautifully on a mountain plateau. The plateau is cut
in two by a canyon. A bridges connects both sides of town. Because of the heat
(temperatures soaring to 35°
C or 95° F)
we cut short our sightseeing and go for lunch at the Parador of Ronda. A Parador
is a typical Spanish phenomenon. These are historical buildings like castles,
palaces, monasteries or stately homes converted into four or five star hotels. Monday 30 August 1999 We oversleep a little (was it last night's
delicious wine?) and get up at nine. After breakfast we go on a drive around
Ronda visiting some "White villages". We drive into the Sierra de
Grazalema, a Natural Park. We first get the village of Grazalema, the centre of
the Park. It is a nice little town with a pretty square and church. We move on
to El Bosque (another village like that) on again to Zahara de la Sierra. Zahara
seems to have been splashed on to the mountains when viewed from a distance. Tuesday 31 August 1999 Today we head on to Gibraltar.
The road down south out of Ronda takes us a beautiful mountain range. As we have
read that accommodation in Gibraltar itself is heavily overpriced, we look for a
place to sleep in La Línea, the Spanish town that borders on Gibraltar. La
Linea is a quite an eye sore and a bit of endurance test for finding appropriate
accommodation. In the end we do find a reasonable pension (Hostal La Campana)
not even 800 yards from the border crossing. We walk into Gibraltar. You can
take your Back in La Línea, we treat ourselves to a lovely Paella. In the couse of the evening it gets colder and quite foggy. Woensdag 1 september 1999 We drive on to Tarifa. It is but a small town on the Costa de la Luz. This Costa runs roughly from Algeciras to Cádiz and has relatively quiet and broad sandy beaches. The water is a bit on the cool side. This is not the Med, but the Atlantic. Tarifa is especially sought out by windsurfers, because of the unrelenting sea wind. We find a room in the Hostal Alameda, over the restaurant by the same name. Centrally located and fairly good. The town is not a real sight, but has some nice side walk café's. The beach is the real attraction. And that's where we are headed this afternoon. We spend part of the evening having dinner at Taberna San Mateo, run by Germans, serving a good meal.
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