Friday, April 25, 2003
Celebration time! Our thirty day return tickets expire today and we’re not on a plane! Not that it was a very real possibility, but the thought did occur a couple times. I told Rhona that there would be days when we would question if taking this trip was really such a good idea… and then other days when we would say… ah… this is it… this is why we came. Sitting in the truck in a steady downpour the last couple days in Seville… yeah, they were in the first category, for sure. Found out that the Spring fair isn’t the week after, but two weeks after Holy Week. So we dried out as best we could, packed up, and hit the road for the south. Rick Steves talks about the small towns of Southern Spain, so we decided to follow his advice and take a look. You will find some of the looks we took in the Yahoo photo album in a new folder called Rhona’s Ronda. We picked Ronda as a destination for two reasons… alliteration, and, home of the only recommended campground in the region.
The Sierra Nevada Mountains (the originals) run across the bottom of Spain. The area was a battleground for thousands of years, between the Moors, the Spaniards, and the Romans. Forts on the peaks controlled passes through the mountains, villages grew at the base of the forts. They call them Plueblas Blancas, White Villages. The town of Ronda straddles a deep river gorge, at the edge of a cliff perhaps three hundred feet about the valley floor. An ancient stone bridge crosses the gorge, connecting the old side of town from the new. From the bridge, along edge of the cliff, walkways have been built, like connected balconies, on the new side of town. Closest to the bridge is a huge modern hotel. The walkway continues around the corner from the hotel to the city park…. I’d guess three hundred yards of stone terrace overlooking a spectacular view.
Ronda is pretty well overrun by tourists. Rhona and I did learn a valuable lesson though… We arrived at the campground late in the afternoon, got set up, and it was about 3:30 before we decided to make the walk to town. By that time the town was pretty much tour bus free. So we have a new rule… when visiting the targets of tour busses… either go in really early, or late in the day when they’ve heading back to the barn.
We checked out a small museum dedicated to the local bandits that roamed the area up to 1935. Reminded me of one of my first heroes, Zorro…. Robin Hood type characters, hiding out in caves, robbing the rich and helping the poor. Most of the displays had English translations, explaining the reasons that banditry was so popular in the area. They were local men who knew the rugged mountains, the land was controlled by absentee owners, and the area was pretty much a no man’s land between the Moors and Spaniards for centuries. They had the means, the motivation, and the opportunity. Evidently some of the bandits did occasionally rescue a damsel in distress or help a starving family, newspapermen and novelists of the day did the rest. Sounds a lot like the Old West.
After the long uphill walk back, we had a wonderful meal in the campground restaurant. Not your average campground snackbar… a gourmet meal with good local wine. Rhona had an Endive and Roquefort salad and scrambled eggs with mushrooms, ham and shrimp. I ordered a mixed salad, figuring I’d get a variety of greens, and got one of the most spectacular salads I’ve ever eaten… Tuna, salmon, egg, tomatoes, yes the variety of greens I had in mind… little baby pickles - can’t remember what else….Rhona was just as happy with her endive… at this point we both thought that maybe we’d made a mistake ordering an entrée. But they came and were delicious… Mine was chicken breast in a mushroom sauce that I guarantee had never seen the inside of a can.
The next day, yesterday, we drove to two of the closest White Villages, Zahara, and Grazalema. As we drove up to Zahara we could see a small town of white buildings clustered near the top of a steep peak, below a huge Moorish tower. The road from the valley flow twisted and turned, several times we had to crowd over to the edge of the road/cliff to slide by oncoming cars. By the way, I’ve gotten used to driving on the right side of the car, and it really comes in handy for roads like that one… I keep my side close to the edge, and the other guy can look out for the rest. Anyway, we parked at the bottom of town and walked in. It’s clear that the people of Zahara are quite aware of what’s going on in Ronda. We did see a couple tour busses parked on the outskirts.
I think that it’s not a matter of a small village trying to gussie itself up to pick up a few dollars selling T shirts. Heavy money is being invested all over Europe in the tourist industry. Seems to me it’s a phenomenal business. In the campgrounds we are seeing the middle class Europeans, either retired or on holiday. They drive large motorhomes, some approaching American size units, diesel powered, satellite TV equipped. The majority seem to be German, but here in Spain, the Spaniards are a close second. Thirty years ago we didn’t see much of a Spanish middle class, and certainly not in the campgrounds. We see a lot of French families, Dutch, and of course the New Zealand and Aussies… those guys are everywhere.
We parked at the bottom of the village and walked up the winding stone streets, heading for the tower. It was a tough walk, mostly winding narrow stairs, but the views were amazing. See the Yahoo photo album for confirmation. We checked out the tower, I was a bit disappointed to see that it had been restored to the point of redoing the stone stairways (something about walking on stones that have been hollowed out by centuries of footsteps) and wiring installed for lighting. Don’t want any tourists to get hurt, I’m sure. Really can’t blame anyone for that decision. The view is original, that’s for sure.
Then we took the small side road to the next town, Grazalema, without knowing what we were getting ourselves into. The first clue was when I realized that the words written on the road were the names of bike racers… . In Northern Spain we had followed a narrow winding road that was obviously part of the route of the Tour of Spain… this was a southern leg through the Sierras. Just absolutely amazing. Tims, Jr & Sr, Eric, you would have been blown away. Mile after mile of the steepest winding uphill you have ever seen. The old Bedford just kept chugging away… this thing has serious grunt. Temperature gage went up just a notch, but held steady all the way to the top. Up and over and down to another little village of sparkling white houses.
We parked in a restaurant parking lot just outside the village, and walked in. The focus of this place is the plaza, with an overhanging balcony looking out at the valley below. We had brought a little picnic… I said, damn what I really need is a nice ice cold bottle of beer… Rhona said, well, too bad… it’s siesta time, everything is closed. We walked up a narrow street, and there was a doorway in the shadows… turned the handle… a little pastry shop… yes… ice cold quart bottles of Cruz Campo, the local Seville beer.
After our picnic we wandered through town. Stopped in at the restaurant, another fantastic view of the valley below and the mountains surrounding.
Cruised back to Ronda in the late afternoon to have a little campground dinner to make up for our extravagance the night before… The way it works is… okay, so we paid 35 bucks for dinner one night (not bad by American standards) but the next night have soup and bread, maybe $1.50 total, okay so we’ve got 36.50/2= 18.25 a day… plus our 20 dollar campground fee, and there is still money in the budget for a little wine and beer.
The next day we left the campground relatively early for the trip back to Seville with a stop in Acros De La Frontera. This is one of the larger of the white towns. We parked by the open market at the bottom of the village, and once again, we are climbing steep winding little streets. They’re not cobblestone like you would think, but paved with very small rocks, mortared on edge… with light and dark ones chosen to make geometric patterns. Very good traction, but tough on the feet by the end of the day.
We found the tourist office in the main plaza at the top, near the big Moorish castle. Got a map and set off wandering. We had read a couple things about the town… Rhona was interested in a convent that sells cookies through a little revolving door in a wall. Sure enough, we found it. She talked through a slit in the door to a Nun… well, we suppose it was a nun, we couldn’t see her… she did speak very good English though… Anyway, this rounded little door swung open with a package of cookies, Rhona put her money on the little lazy susan table, and the door swung shut… So cool to do something you’ve read about in the guide books…
My particular interest was a bar/restaurant in a cave. The guide book did not give directions… No, I would not ask the Tourist Information lady. Even if she gave directions, in these little towns the maps don’t look anything like the winding little streets anyway… Just too weird… So we wandered. Found this fantastic view point… tried some nun cookies… great… Wandered some more…
Down, around a corner, looked up a tiny alley, and there it was… can’t remember the name, couldn’t spell it anyway… A very cool place, literally. Did I say that the three days in the area of Ronda were the best weather we’ve seen? Bright sunshiney days? Broke out the shorts?
Anyway, a dynamite lunch of barbequed chorizo and, well, meat in sauce in a bowl… it was all good.
We had thoughts of finding the campground that was supposed to be nearby and spending the night there… but decided we’d better head back north. This Spring Fair is a big deal, supposedly a million people are expected to come… so we were a little concerned about the campground filling up. But we zoomed up the tollway (cost us 4.85, definitely worth it this time) and found the other campground in Seville. The little place we had stayed the week before was nice, but there was some kind of Dog Pound or something nearby, and the noise of barking dogs really got on my nerves. Well, that and the zooming motorcycles outside the campground walls. So we traded those sounds for airplanes taking off… the new campground sits right at the end of two runways of the Seville airport… well, they make sort of a narrow v, and the campground is in the middle. Actually, not too bad. Rhona says she did hear some dogs, but nothing like the other place. No loud two stroke engines… that’s a big plus…
So, we are back in Seville… rained again this morning, but it’s stopped now. Looks like its time to sleep all day and party all night… we’ll see
3:10:47 PM 
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