We hit the road on Friday, several hours after ending school for the day. Kane, our official driver (shown above), and Tori (also above; smaller, yes, but just as delighted), our CFO, headed up to the airport to grab our rental car and then met the rest of us around 5:30 at our houses. Kane, being the pilot, and I, being the navigator, realized very soon that we didn't even know where to get on the highway, because the directions we had printed started at the center of Sevilla, where we of course were not. We figured it probably be a good idea to pull over (five whole minutes after leaving Los Remedios, Caprice and Steph's neighborhood) and pull out the big guns (the giant roadmap Tori had wisely acquired from Ana Bello).
Here's Kane and I trying to figure out how to get to the highway. Obviously, we ended up finding the highway, but our first detour served as the first indicator that not having internet WALLLLRRRUUUUUUSSSSSS (← props to whoever did this...Haley? Anyhow, this is what happens when you make a habit of posting status updates about walruses for your friends in the student lounge; your blog gets hacked) access to Google Maps would prove to be a challenge. Half an hour before leaving I had downloaded maps to the regions we were visiting using an app called Offmaps, but I found out soon enough that it doesn't hold a candle to Google (for instance, half of the streets in Jerez were missing).
Some of the sights along the way! Top left is us leading Los Remedios, and the rest are pictures along the carretera.
Speaking of Jerez, that was our first stop (besides our initial self-orienting stop at Parque de los Príncipes). We had wanted to find a bodega for Kane in order to try some of Jerez's wine (his family owns a vineyard, and Jerez is known for its wine), but because of our late start, not much seemed to be open by the time we pulled into town. After spending a little time finding the city center, we parked and headed out on foot. I ate my liver pâté bocadillo while we searched for a place to grab dinner (dinner #2 for me).
Our first encounter with a Spaniard on this trip was rather interesting. I saw a younger couple walking towards us and thought it'd be a good idea to ask them about a good place to get dinner and buy wine. The man simply told us to follow him and began to lead us towards what was apparently his go-to for drinks. Moments after starting to follow this guy, I began to get the impression that he wasn't really a man of similar valors to that of Don Quijote. I'm not sure whether it was the fact that he openly called a woman we passed on the street a word that rhymes with "ruta," the fact that he asked us whether we had a lot of money with us, or the fact that he didn't know what a walking bass line was but apparently plays bass (he told us he's in a band), or a combination of all three, but I didn't feel to comfortable around him. Needless to say, after we arrived at the smoky, fluorescent-lit, bar he was recommening, I quickly explained that we hadn't had dinner (one of the first times I used "es que" to start an explanation; slight redemption to the 15 minutes of time we lost on this first escapade!) and we headed out.
From there, we walked farther into the center and found a nice little area called the Alameda (which means "grove" in Spanish). There were three tapas bars/restaurants at the end of the plaza, and all the owners were outside watching us while we tried to decide where to go. Talk about a comfortable situation :) We chose the second one (despite Stephanie's distrust of the owner of that particular bar; I don't know, I liked him :) and had a nice dinner (although it was accompanied with not free bread and not free water; the most awkward aspect of eating out in Europe is the facial expression the waiter gives you when more than one person at the table asks for tap water).
On to our stay for the night. We didn't really know much about this place before getting there, except that it was called Camping Roche, was an hour-ish south-ish of Jerez, and that we needed to be there by 11 pm. Well, we learned a couple more things about Roche quickly. First of all, it's almost impossible to find. Second off, the roads in the area aren't all paved. Thirdly, the foresty area around Roche would make a great night-time setting for a horror movie. Anyhow, 10:45 rolls around and we're still rolling around in the middle of nowhere. After asking a waitress, a bar-frequenter, and a security guard (all in three different locations), we found ourselves on [what I'd have to be almost lying to call] a road. Finally, by the grace of God (really, there's no way we would've found this place on our own), we come upon a gated driveway with a sign that thankfully said Camping Roche. By this time, it was a bit past 11, but who we hoped was the owner was still standing (somewhat ominously) in the doorway to the office. All of us but Kane, who stayed with Rocinante, got out to speak to Ominous Man. He wanted to take our passports, but we were fortunately able to get off with just giving him my ISIC (international student identification card; sounds a lot more official than what it actually is).
20 minutes after arriving at Camping Roche, we were able to accomodate ourselves in our "house" with the lights on (because 10 minutes after arriving at Roche, Kane and Caprice had to go back to the office to ask out how to turn on our electricity). The place wasn't the greatest, but hey, we were tired, and it was home for the night. It was that night that Kane found out that I snored and we both found out the "house" didn't really have much insulation (translate = it was cold). Regardless, we woke up in the morning, paid the rest of our bill (and got scolded for not reading the booking reservation online well enough :), and headed out to try to find a beach.
Here's us outside our place at Camping Roche! That's what our "houses" looked like. What was I talking about? Ah, the beach. Using a map we found at the front office (which was a lot less ominous in the morning), we ventured off to find the Atlantic.
This is the first place we came across! If you want to experience the wonders of the 21st century, click here to see exactly where we were wandering wantonly (well, "wantonly" wasn't what I wanted to write, but the alliteration warranted it).
It was so nice seeing ocean again. It was like eating cream cheese frosting after not having it for a couple of
These pictures are artsier. You can tell because they're in black and white.
From there we decided to head down the road and try to find a beach where we could actually get down to the sand. Along the way, we found a whole bunch of antiquated anchors, which got the US Navy's anthem stuck in my head for the rest of the trip. After spending some time watching the girls bench-press anchors (I had pictures of it, but they somehow disappeared), we made our first stop at a Dia. I bought food for multiple meals for exactly 5 euros, and we bought frozen pizzas and other food for lunch and dinner on the group tab for under 4 dollars each! Super barato. And I love it when purchases come out to an exact whole dollar/euro amount. It happens a lot more often here than in the states (because of the whole tax thing).
After the market, we found a beach in the area. It was really pretty but pretty windy so we decided to go back to Rocinante. You can see the lighthouse we were at in the background of the top picture.
Ah, maybe I should explain the name of our trusty steed. Actually, no, I'll leave that up to you to figure out. This would be a good time for a LMGTFY link, but I'll take the liberty to not be that smart-alecky.
Maybe the plethora of wind turbines should have tipped us off that this was a windy area. It was pretty cool driving by all of them, because we don't have too many out by Santa Barbara. And they're a lot prettier in the daytime than in the dark, because at night all you see of them are these agonizingly annoying flashing white lights (although Kane, Tori, and Steph liked them, apparently).
We were actually really glad that we didn't choose to spend our beach time at the windy beach, because we stumbled upon one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been to. While get closing to Tarifa (a city on the southern coast; we thought for a bit that we were approaching another toll road :), we saw what looked like sand dunes over to the west. We went to investigate, and turns out they were!
It only seemed fitting to eat lunch and hang out here; entonces, we did.
There were so many awesome aspects of this beach. For instance, I loved the plants. We don't have much in the way of tall grass or sweet-smelling honeysuckle bushes growing on our west coast beaches, so seeing Punta Paloma, thriving with verdant (there's a 12th grade vocab word) flora (I feel like you'll appreciate me using that word, Rafa), was truly a privilege.
Here's the whole group!
I was pretty jealous of these paragliders. Imagine the view they got!
Unfortunately, the time came to leave the dunes and head out to our place near Algeciras, located on a stretch of coast called Getares. But that's for the next blog post! Now I need to get some studying in for Grammatica and Tres Culturas! I can haz two tests on Thurzdayz.
Tsa luego!
No comments:
Post a Comment