It's officially Spring and as temperatures increase - so will our travel frequency. The new season started with a trip to Spain; in addition, we planned extracurricular adventures in Ronda and Gibraltar. The reaming half of our vacation would be dedicated to relaxing on the beaches of Málaga. Unfortunately, we got off to an unsettling start, arriving at the airport 32 minutes early. Narrowly making it in time for Ryan Air's (strict) 30 minute boarding cutoff. Fortunately, there were zero people in the security line. During boarding, I realized I didn't have my wallet after passing through the metal detector. When I went to ask the security agents about my wallet, they were confused as to its whereabouts. Turns out, it never made it all the way through the baggage X-ray machine - an embarrassing realization for all parties involved. The rest of our journey was without errors and went relatively smoothly - sans some intermittent turbulence throughout the flight (I suppose we had to fly through the permacloud to find sunshine).
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| Panoramic from el Balcon de la Alameda del Tajo |
Before checking into the hotel, we stopped at a local Lidl (grocery store) to purchase some wine. Walking through the aisles was sweet music to our palates and wallets - wine averaged €2.50 a bottle (as cheap as €0.99 for champagne). After grabbing what our arms could carry, we continued to the hotel. It was early morning and the exceptionally rude front desk employees declared it an impossibility to check-in to the hotel for another three hours. Given the waiting time, we thought it'd be best to head to our first extracurricular activity, tour the city of Ronda. There was a the possibility of adding a visit to Cueva de la Pileta, but our information was limited to Julie's note, "cave with old drawings."
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| Gazebo on Alameda del Tajo |
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| Puente Nuevo |
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| East side of bridge |
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After a two-hour drive, we arrived in Ronda, a quaint town in the Andalucia community of southern Spain overlooking El Tajo Canyon. We started our tour by walking through Alameda del Tajo, a cliff-side balcony above the valley. We briefly enjoyed a free harp concert by the gazebo, but mostly enjoyed the view. Around the corner, we made our way to Puente Nuevo - the "new" bridge, and main attraction of the beautiful village.
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| West side of bridge |
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| Opposite El Tajo Canyon |
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| That's a huge bridge |
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It was mid-afternoon and we decided to grab a quick lunch, but the restaurant had atrocious service - even after flagging the waiter - twice. He seemed more adamant about cleaning old tables and rummaging aimlessly around the two balconies on the east side of the bridge. Our patience wore thin and we decided to head to another establishment. We settled on a restaurant on the opposite side of the bridge - a location where we had an entire balcony to ourselves (with the better view, side with the waterfall). With our remaining time in Ronda, we went down a path to get another vantage point of the top attraction, perused some souvenir shops, and walked around Plaza de Toros, the bull fighting arena. The city was a pleasant surprise, plus, we still had enough time to investigate these "old cave drawings."
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| Street of Ronda |
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| Horse carriage going over Puente Nuevo |
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| Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Mercad |
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We plugged the address into the GPS and started making our way to Benaoján, a small community about twenty minutes from Ronda. While driving through the town, we came across an area where the road turned into a cobble stone pathway, nearly unfit for one-way traffic - unless you were on a golf cart. Leaving our fate in the hands of technology, we continued with the dictated directions. Eventually, I took an incredibly sharp right-hand turn onto a "street" where I obstinately refused to go any farther. Our rental car was small enough for most of the alleyways, but we had been funneled deep into this constricting maze of a town. Our problem, how were we to get our car around this small 90-degree turn in reverse, with approximately 10 centimeters clearance on all sides of the car - which had no rental insurance.
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| Made that right-hand turn. Honk Honk! |
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| Roadside goats grazing |
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| Fluffy Cloud |
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Adding to the pressure, a car full of people that stopped and repeatedly honked their car horn while vigorously wagging their fingers at us. Clearly, we realized our mistake and were trying to turn around, but the incessant honkers and finger waggers didn't seem to understand. At one point, we switched drivers as stress levels continued to rise. Then, a second car came-along, a-honking and a-wagging their fingers at us. The hilarity continued as a third finger-wagger came out of her home and expressed her dissatisfaction from her balcony. Finally, we made the exit - no damage to the car - only our ears. Luckily, a gentleman approached from a third vehicle, presumably to ask us what the hell we were doing. I asked him if he knew where Cueva de la Pileta could be found. He told us to follow his car as he would lead us in the correct direction - assisting us until the final kilometer (he will never read this, but we are absolutely grateful for his help).
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| Cave entrance |
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| Starting our tour |
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| Two of the many paintings inside |
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The parking lot at the cave was empty, with exception to the one car we assumed belonged to the employee working. Shortly after our arrival, another couple was going to join our group, but backed out at the last minute due to poor footwear decisions - heels and caves don't bode well for ankles. We have visited one cave before while on vacation in Sardinia,
Neptunes Grotto, but that was sufficiently illuminated and had acoustics throughout for guided tours. Cueva de la Pileta a far different experience. Aside from the light in front of us provided by our three flashlights (including our guide), the darkness engulfed everything else. Our guide provided excellent detail of the features used by the prehistoric denizens and explained the paintings and their estimated age. It was incredible how well the paintings have been preserved knowing they range in date from 10,000 to 25,000 years old. When we left, we bought two postcards with pictures of (some) the paintings we saw.
Visiting Ronda and Cueva de la Pileta made for a most enjoyably day, adequately covering the three hour waiting period for our hotel room to be ready. Upon our return to the hotel, the front desk staff was still a nightmare to deal with, but the service staff in the restaurant was the polar opposite. We called in early evening in anticipation of our drive to another country the following day, a territory under British Imperialism and full of monkeys.
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