where Ed saves the life of a goat and other fence related matters

Well now, another brilliant and sunny day. We leave the little Hotel Ronda with the smiling sisters and head for the hills again.

I should say a word about these sisters – there were four who once lived in this house with their mom and dad. And now two have taken on the project of converting it into a tiny hotel. Here’s one of them, showing me the gallery of family photos from years gone by.





It’s exciting for me to see these later in life projects take shape and develop into something quite excellent. Investing in an old home and turning it into a guest house has to be an enormous headache, at least at the inception of the project. You can see how proud these families are when things finally take shape and guests walk away with smiles and praise.

Alright. We’re out of the hotel. Like yesterday, we don’t bother with breakfast or lunch. The sisters serve coffee, cookies and fruit, so it’s not really true that we’ve had nothing to eat, but we’ve been rather lax at attending to meals in the first half of the day.

Today as well, we pick up a trail – this time one that starts from the very lovely part of the old town – the San Francisco area.





The official well described circuit for this hike isn’t long – maybe three hours at most. But we want to extend it. We’ve read that the tiny village of Cartajima is just beyond a summit to the southwest and that there are trails to it. So why not keep on going west, scale the mountain and extend our hike?

So long as we’re on the official circuit, we’re fine. It’s a different kind of walk – the vast spaces of yesterday are replaced by, at first, the many many olive groves, followed by craggy hills, covered with wild bush and Spanish pine.

















The silver sage makes an appearance again and there are added clumps of wild iris.





It’s all very pretty, but eventually the path narrows and it’s hard to stray from it as the olive groves and forested lands are enclosed. Wire fencing is common here and there’s lots of it.

And then the path we felt sure would lead us to the summit dead ends at a remote farmstead, where one older man is working the fields and a younger one is setting out on a hunt. With a Yorkie.











Ed asks for directions and we get some suggestions from the farmer and even a very helpful set of directions from the young hunter: go back down to the fountain, turn right over the little stream and you’re on your way!

Ed thinks we should turn right ahead of the fountain. I’m doubtful, but I follow along. We go through thickets, past olive groves, up rocky inclines and we are about to give up – surely this isn’t a path at all, just someone’s land... But as I look up the hill, I see a goat thrashing every which way, looking as if she’s butting her head against a fence. As we get closer we see what has happened.





She managed to not once, but twice put her head through the fence and now she is terribly entangled in it. It’s not clear how long she’s been there, head woven through the links, wire choking her at her throat.

Ed says – okay, time to get her out. To calm her is a challenge, but he does it and then, with the utmost patience, pushes her head, horns and all, out one link then the other, being oh so careful, because when she gives the final thrash to free herself, his hand stands to get slashed, right there along with her throat.





One last gentle push of her nose and she’s out! She doesn’t wait to say good bye but saunters madly back into the forest, free, so very free and it just warms your heart to see her unharmed.

And yes, it was a wrong turn. But the goat is off and running thanks to this wrong turn and if that isn’t enough of a reward, we look up and around us and Ed points to this across the hill:





A beautiful ancient aqueduct, almost hidden in the thicket. A breathtaking sight.

But the climb is otherwise a failed effort and so we continue down to the fountain and follow a road to the right from it. And we come to a dead end once more. And we back track again and this time we run into a young woman who appears to live in a house on these hills. Just keep going up, you’re on the right road!

Are we? We go back up. Dead end. There’s a fence, we can go no further.

Ed’s puzzled. She lives here. She must know. He pokes around some and finds a very secondary path. Up we climb, on slippery terrain with rocks jutting out on both sides of what may or may not be a path.






And then another fence stops us short. Ed tries to find a way around it but the thicket is dense. We're stopped short again.






We go down once more to rejoin the main path. Two men and a dog are walking up towards us and they look like they know the land. But we’ve made four attempts to find a way to scale the mountain and by now the afternoon light is getting quite low. Still, we have to ask. Do you know how to cross the mountain to Cartajima?






They do. One tells us – you could do it once. You could find paths up the mountain, but so much of it has been fenced off now that you’re not going to be able to get across. There are trails, but not from anywhere near here.

It’s nearly 4 pm and am happy to give up. Ed refills his water bottle at an ancient artesian spring and encourages me to do the same before the hike back.
How do you know it's safe? I hesitate.
People have been drinking from here a thousand years back.
Yes and they're all dead. Still, I drink it and it is cold and deliciously refreshing


We retrace our steps back to Ronda. There is a Tapas bar in the San Francisco area of town that the sisters highly recommend and I suggest we stop there for a breakfast-lunch meal. The sun is warm and the tables are packed with a lively crowd.I'm in love with the warm sun on my neck.







We order scrambled eggs with asparagus (and shrimp seem always to be added to this), shrimp on a stick and cheese and smoked salmon. A superb meal for a few coins.


 



Since the light is still with us, I suggest we explore the bridges of Ronda. There are three: the oldest -- sometimes called the Roman Bridge, sometimes the Arab Bridge -- is at the lowest end of the ravine.






Next and somewhat higher up is the so called “old bridge.”






Climbing to the old bridge, you can see the ravine up close and in your face. And, too, as you cross to the other side, you have before you the highest, mightiest, most impossibly steep “new bridge” (from the 18th century).






Hemingway referred to this bridge it in For Whom the Bell Tolls. People lost their lives in building it and in being thrown from it. And truthfully, it is sort of frightening to be on it, looking down toward the ravine. (Ed would not agree with this at all. Oh and by the way, here, by the bridge, he finally finds a cat that does not run away from him.)






And now we’ve paid our respects to the gorge and the bridges. We’re satiated with the wonderful Ronda foods, we’ve hiked the hills to the west and to the east. The sisters took good care of us at their little hotel in the old town. Down to the treats left in our room at the end of the day. A fine set of days indeed.

So, just one more meal – a small pizza to share, nothing more complicated than that. A wonderful pizza from a brick oven, with a local Vino Blanco.






The moon shines over Ronda, beautifully, dreamily.





Early Monday morning we leave, on a train, continuing on the same line that started in Granada, following it to its end on the coast. And from there, we’ll take the bus to Tarifa.

take to the hills

Idle times bring forth idle questions – how is it that Spain is such a social nation, such a familial place? Oh, maybe not in Madrid – who knows what takes place there, behind the formidable walls of tightly packed buildings. But elsewhere?

It’s Saturday and again the streets are packed – initially along the pedestrian shopping street, then flooding the cafés and restaurants, outdoors until the sun sets, then indoors for another round.

I smile as we pass this young man – holding hands with his girlfriend, but, too, with an arm around his mom’s shoulder.






This grandmother is waiting for her children and grandchildren to arrive. I know this because a second later they do arrive and the kisses come and the loud banter begins. [They are not quiet here, in the south. Animated and boisterous, their voices carry in a friendly, outgoing way. I am alive! – as if to say. I am here with you, bursting with things to say!]






Sounds carry. Ed and I do a trail hike – not too long, some five hours of walking and just one hour of it uphill. This is what I knew about Ronda: it offers fantastic walks in the hills that surround it and you don’t need a car to get to a good path.

[Though I have neglected here showing off the real reason visitors come to this town. It's to stare down at the gorge and admire the incredible old bridge that spans it.]












Why was it built? How was it built?

But we're walking away from it all. Among greening fields and olive groves at first...































...the sun is dazzling, the cool air is perfect for hiking. I’m down to a tshirt early on, regretting the jacket and scarf.






As we get higher, the olives give way to oak trees – not used for cork here. Not yet anyway,

Goats. Now we come across the goats, with their funny beards and curved horns.






They run away as we get closer. They like their own company. They move in packs.






We go off trail to follow a path that climbs a mountain – a hill really – and it offers lovely views, some vines, too. Wines and sherrys are made in the terrain between Ronda and Jerez.











But the road ends before we reach the summit. There is a farmstead...



 




 



...and the farmers and their daughter watch us walk the road as their dog barks and barks. They pose for a photo too, grinning in their doorway.






We ask if we can climb the hill to the top, even as there is no road or path here.

Yes, yes, go there, it is a bonito view! Down to Ronda!

So we climb further still, carefully finding solid stepping places between rocks and clumps of wild sage and at the top, the view is indeed so splendid and the air so breezy and warm that we spend a good half hour perched on a rock, me in the sun, Ed in the shade of an oak tree.







And the sound carries so well that we hear the roosters and the baby goats from the valley below. It is oddly soothing, even though it sounds like there are wailing babies somewhere there, in the distance.






We go down the mountain and resume the looped trail. There are the occasional joggers and mountain bikers here. Fitness is on people’s minds. I saw that in the Lorca park in Granada where every few steps we’d come across signs telling you how you might stretch or exercise. True, a vast majority is sitting around tables eating, drinking, but there are those who, like us, take to the hills.






And in the evening, late late evening, as we look around again for a place to eat dinner, this other question comes to mind – how can a restaurant survive with prices like these? We choose a very nice little place with a set menu – 11 Euros per person, including three courses (we pick huge raw vegetable salads, but it could have been soup or paella, then for the second course a fish baked in lemon juice and olive oil, then a flan for dessert) and including a glass of wine and all taxes and service charges? Where in there is there room for profit?






Ah, the mysteries behind the Spanish way of life, in the land where oranges are plentiful and the sun keeps shining down on us day after day.

from Granada to Ronda

I had been meaning to get up for a sunrise this entire trip and I think I forever would have felt the regret of not doing it here, in Granada. Especially since we are a five minute walk from perhaps the best vantage point in town toward the east and toward the Alhambra. And, too, in this part of the world, the January sun rises at a hefty 8 o’clock.

And yet it’s not easy to get out of bed. Our guest house, among its other stellar qualities, has the best pillows I’ve ever slept on (by contrast, at home we have the oldest, lumpiest things in the Midwest and possibly the whole continent). Still, it is our last morning here and I note a thin band of clouds at the horizon – always a good thing at sunrise. So I’m up.

I walk up to the small square by San Nicolas. A handful of our old hippie friends are there, drinking coffee, talking amicably.

We wait and watch.

Perhaps my memory is not serving me well, but truly, I can’t think when I have ever seen such blazing color in the sky. (The photos here are exactly right – I compared each one to the scene before me.)

It’s a trilogy of stunning vistas that grabs your attention – the fire in the sky, the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada, not so white now in the light of the rising sun, and of course, the Alhambra, taking the back seat at first, emerging ever so slowly from the shadows of the night.





I can’t get enough of it (and therefore, you’re likely to get too much of it).





Slowly, the color fades and the sky becomes lighter. I leave, but the image is now set in my head: Alhambra, dramatically emerging, under a blazing sky.






The morning is quiet for us. Because it’s a holiday, the breakfast helper is off and the matriarch is there, tending to the morning buffet and I chat with her (no, I do not speak Spanish, but I understand it because it is so very close to Italian and in any case, she speaks fluent French) about this great project of the hotel.

It’s a family business. Mom and dad, both doctors, two daughters and a son – all lawyers. Six years ago, the house of their dreams, of her dreams really (an old Arab sultan’s home, predating at the foundation even the Alhambra, she tells me), is finally for sale. They give up their professions and together plunge their efforts into the running of the guest house.

To say they do a fantastic job is the understatement of the year.

But she wont part with the recipe for the orange liquor.
Too complicated, she tells me. Besides, you can’t get the base liquor anywhere but here, in Granada. It’s her mother’s secret recipe. Darn.






For the remaining morning hours, Ed and I work, each in our favorite place (I’m downstairs in the living area, he’s upstairs, propped by the puffy pillows).

And then it’s early afternoon: time for our hike to the train station. We pass the café where we had lunched twice during our stay here. The owner waves and wishes us a good day. I have a tiny regret about leaving. We could idle away another day, another week perhaps? No, not this time.


Down we go, past the morning scenes of a southern city in Spain, where oranges are as common as potatoes are in Poland and where people wear thick coats and wooly scarves when the temperature dips to a cool... fifty-five.











The train is there, waiting. A last wave to Granada and we board the local for the 2.5 hour ride to Ronda.

Say what? Where’s Ronda? Well, if you went toward the Mediterranean coast on a diagonal, two thirds of the way there, you’d pass Ronda.

Traveling in the off off season is interesting because much of the world of inns and guest houses closes down for the ‘cold months.’ Since we avoid big hotels like the plague and our budget is deliberately quite small, but my taste for clean and honest quite high, this poses limits on where we can go. I spend many lonely hours on the Internet in early fall tracking down places and writing emails to see who would be open for business. Ronda, a hill town quite known for its very unusual location, has one such place.

So we’re speeding along to Ronda, past....






...right: olive groves... and I think how easy it is to get attached to places. I missed Seville when we left it and now I’m thinking how terrific it would be to sit on a sunny bench in Granada.

Never get too comfortable, never get too comfortable...

We get off the train in Ronda and my immediate reaction is quite negative. The town is too big for us! It’s fine to be in Seville, in Granada – you expect cities there. But here, in Ronda, I was hoping we’d find quiet.

We walk from the train station to our even tinier hotel (Ed is delighted – it’s a one star place, meaning, the bottom of the heap) and along the way, we bump against the festive crowds. So many people! For a town of 30,000, Ronda seems to have gathered all of them here for one last hurrah.

So I’m a tad disheartened by this. Ronda was to be our escape. Instead, it feels a bit like a smaller version of... a bigger town. Pretty, yes, definitely that. But it takes a good while for the street to clear of the rush of cars so that I can take a photo.


 



 



Except, as my senses adjust to the new reality (it’s not Granada and it’s not a quiet), a good, kind face begins to emerge.

Start with the hotel – called the Ronda. A family home, recently converted to a guest house, with spirit. Similar story as in Granada, but the Ronda is humbler, much much humbler. The owners live on one part of the house still. There are five rooms that they rent out and each has a splash of color and a contemporary art piece. It’s very very simple, but truly delightful.


 




 




 


On my Escanaba scale, it’s half the price of an Econolodge (coming in at 66 Euros per night, with great WiFi!).

The owner is intrigued by my name and background. Poland... ah, Poland. Nice country. But you seem more American... she says. Do I? I suppose I’m no longer surprised.


Then, too, you have to know this about Ronda: it’s location is crazy fantastic. It’s perched at the edge of a deep gorge.







Who would build a city here is beyond me, but there you have it – Ronda is actually one of the oldest towns in Spain, having, too, a Moorish past, greatly influencing the present character of the town. It brags at being also the town that made bullfighting fashionable, but we'll pass on exploring this further. There is, however, an old arena here and bulls are... prominently featured all over town.






We get our bearings in the late afternoon and note that Ronda has more eateries concentrated in the center of town than possibly all of Madison. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but not a huge one. And they are very well priced. Set menus (3 courses) for 10 or 11 Euros, tax and service included. No wonder the whole town is engaged in a continuous moving feast.

Yes, it’s a holiday (Three Kings) and people are out and about, buying up the cakes...


 


...pausing at cafés, shifting then to tapas bars, and finally to the bodega for a full evening meal. And I see that fashion runs high here. At least in the shoe department. Women like their heels, even when pushing a baby carriage over cobbles.











And children are dressed up. Girls wear ribbons in their hair.



 


This is the way of the old world. Put on your fine apparel and spend your day in the company of others. No wonder we appear so... American, me with my comfy walking shoes that do well in cities and mountains alike, Ed -- well, he’s looking a lot spiffier since a friend took pity on him and gave him some dollar barrel t-shirts. So far, no tears.


Ronda's looking lovely. And the same moon shines over her as the one over Granada.






We go out again, after nine, in search of dinner. This small bodega wins...


 



...for its menu -- with paella and shrimp pal pal. We’ve become great fans of both.











The bodega is, predictably, family run – a five table place that fills quickly with people who probably prefer to have someone do the cooking for them on this day, on most any day.

It’s a delicious feast for us and we leave happy, bantering about what place to eat on the next day and the day after.

Ronda. What a splendid little town!