When we got back to the hotel, Kane, Caprice, and Steph were getting up (that's a lie: Kane was definitely still sleeping and trying to continue sleeping), so we all ate breakfast and started to gather our things to get ready for checkout. We had kind of a lot to figure out that morning, because when we arrived at Jardines the evening before, there had been no one to turn in the room deposit or required paperwork to, and because we wanted to figure out whether we could cancel our hotel for the next night and rent our place in the Jardines for another night. Why, you ask? Well, the affordable place we had found in Ronda was only for four people, and we had five. Potentially a problem (the cheaper hotels aren't very lenient with the number of people you have staying for the night). Long story short, the room was non-refundable, so we were stuck with our 4-person situation in Ronda. But that's another story for another time. As in, a little later in this annoyingly-long post :)
Our plan for the rest of the morning was to try finding Istán, the first of the Pueblos Blancos that we had wanted to visit. The Pueblos Blancos (or the White Towns of Andalusia) are scattered throughout the province of Cadiz, often situated on ridges where they overlook the surrounding countryside. According to highly reliable sources (I just forget what they were), I think they're located where they are for defensive purposes (it's substantially easier to see your enemies coming when you're up high, rather then tucked into a valley). Anyhow, the last leg of our journey, visiting these pueblos, was going to start with Istán, but Frestón decided to make the road to Istán undiscoverable.
Ah. I haven't told you about Frestón yet. Frestón is the reason anything went wrong on our trip. Whether it was losing our way, or someone tripping on a curb, sandwich cheese getting sandy, or dangerous giants turning into windmills right before they were attacked, it was Frestón's fault. Consquently, he's one of Don Quijote's greatest enemies as well.
Well, after meandering pretty much aimlessly through un montón de (that means a lot, just in case you're wondering) golf resorts, we ended up in a town a good deal southeast of Istán. The group consensus was that going to the beach would be a great alternative, so back to the beach we went.
This is where we spent the next couple of hours! We swam, laid in the sun, invented a environmentally-friendly food refrigeration system, and ate. Much better than driving by golf resorts trying to find a magically-hidden village.
Our next destination after the beach was the small pueblo of Parauta (pronounced "pa-ROW-ta," because the vowel "u" is a weak vowel, according to Kane, and also, but of lesser importance, the Royal Spanish Academy). One thing I really liked about our trip was that we had the opportunity to see lots of different landscapes and terrains. Once we left the coast, Rocinante took us into a rugged mountainous area, thriving with forests and rough mountain faces.
We didn't really know much about Parauta before heading there, save having seen a picture on a Google image search, but it turned out being a really tiny town. We got there during siesta time, so we probably saw about 5 people and 3 cats in the hour and a half we were there. It was really peaceful...but almost too peaceful :)
After wandering through the whitewashed houses of Parauta for a while, we hopped back in the car and started making our way to Ronda. Upon entering the city, we had a bit of trouble find our hotel, so I hopped out of the car at the McDonalds we drove by and snagged their wifi so we could orient ourselves. Kane pulled a loop through the surrounding streets while I used Google Maps, and in a couple minutes we were on our way to find parking. This is where we had to start being sneaky. Because we had rented for four people, I headed out back to McDonalds while the rest of the crew checked in. First step completed.
After we all met up again, we headed towards a tapas place that had been recommended to us. It was called El Lechugita, and it was really good! The prices were really cheap, the portions weren't too small, and the food was para chupar los dedos, as Jacob Miller would say. Having eaten dinner, we found the main street in Ronda, hoping to find a market to buy some breakfast and lunch food. However, after walking up the street for a while and asking a less than personable lady about a market, we realized that things close pretty darn early in Ronda. So instead, we walked to the east of town, not too far from where we were, and looked out into the gorge. Ronda is perched on top of a big canyon, so there are some pretty incredible views out into the surrounding countryside. But more on that later.
This is where things got a little tricky. We needed to all get back in our hotel without the hotel owner seeing me. We had spend a bit of time out, so we thought that maybe he would have already left his office for night, but, just in case, we had Kane, Caprice, and Steph enter first. Tori and I waited down the block and around the corner for about ten minutes, then walked back to the hotel to try to enter. Right as we got to the door, we saw the owner disappear down the hallway. Perfect. From there, it was a simple matter of running in and up the stairs to what would be Kane's and my room (in the girls' room, Tori, Stephanie, and Caprice slept horizontally across their two twin-sized beds; apparently, it wasn't too comfortable...).
As we had to check out the next morning, we once again had to be sneaky. This time, our plan was to have the four legitimate hotel-goers check out at the front desk while I walked out, talking on my phone in Russian (essential part of the process). The mission was a success. We packed our stuff into the car, headed back towards the lookout point over the canyon, and ate what you perhaps could call breakfast (lots of Maria Doradas with an off-brand type of Nutella). We then went sightseeing for another half-hour (we knew we were going back to Ronda later in the semester [earlier today, as a matter of fact] so we tried not to spend too much time there) and then headed out.
The drive to Grazalema was rather enjoyable; the road weaved in between forested cliffs and hilly pastureland, while we played "would you rather" with some pretty absurd situations. Tori tried convincing us that we'd rather give up our ability to walk than our ability to drive, but we weren't falling for it. Pretty soon, we arrived in the beautiful town of Grazalema.
Grazalema is one of the bigger Pueblos Blancos, and we happened to visit during Día de Andalucia (this holiday was the whole reason we had a four-day weekend). There was live music and dancing in the village square, so as we walked throughout the town we could hear it drifting up the narrow, hilly streets. Quite the experience!
We ate tapas for lunch, and then started walking back to our car when............we found the start of a trail up into the surrounding hillside! Naturally, we started climbing it. The view from up there was gorgeous (I try not to use that word too often, but it really is fitting here). I wish we could've kept climbing to the top of the mountain, but alas, our schedule was telling us it was time to move on.
Our last stop for the day and for our road trip was going to be the town of Zahara de la Sierra, but because we had spent more time at Grazalema than intended due to our hiking escapade, and also had gotten a pretty good share of whitewashed buildings in the preceding 24 hours, we decided we'd be fine with just stopping a little ways out of Zahara and getting pictures from a distance. We first found a little turn-off a couple kilometers out of the city, took a few pictures of Zahara, and then had our own photo shoot.
We then tried to get a bit closer towards the pueblo and came upon a dam. We turned into a dirt turn-off with a small utility building right past the dam to see a car with three older people in it, all laughing about something. We soon realized it was because the fourth person in their group, an older man, was finishing going to the bathroom in the bushes behind the building :)
We walked out onto the dam and enjoyed the tranquil view of Zahara in the afternoon sun, reflecting in the inviting water of the lake. If I had been wearing swim shorts, I think I would've jumped in. Also, we found out that the pier structure that we were near would echo really well. Pretty entertaining (well, for me at least).
When the time came, we piled back into the car for the very last segment of our trip (well, if you don't count returning Rocinante to the airport). Kane and I listened to Big Country (Béla Fleck!), as it seemed the most fitting for the landscape we were driving through, and various other solid jams (as the youth say these days). A few hours later, we were entering Sevilla, just a few days after leaving, though it seemed liked it had been at least a week since we embarked on our voyage. We dropped Caprice and Steph off in Los Remedios, and then got back on the road to the airport to return our trusty steed. That was probably the most emotional part of the trip...he had grown to be our friend, and then just like that, we had to let him go. But such is life :)
In short: some 700 km, 3/4ths of a tank of gas, two Dia stops, lots of rusty anchors, many wrong and more right turns, several sunsets and one sunrise, and most importantly, many wonderful memories later, we were back in Sevilla, still in a daze from our wonderful road trip. I'm not really sure how to conclude these past three posts, except to say that God was good, and his hand was evident in every turn of the way, whether it was a view of an incredible landscape, or us miraculously finding our way to one of our hotels. It was definitely a trip of a lifetime, and one that will nunca be forgotten!
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