I was awakened this morning at 5:00 by people just returning from the White Nights. At 6:00 I am out wandering the streets with the drunks, who are still out full force after last night’s binge. My early café is open, but the inside is packed with youngsters trying to sober up, so I get a cappuccino and sit out on the sidewalk. Amazing: The town is trashed, but the cleanup is in progress. These town celebrations must be great for the local economy, but what a mess. It looks like they have called out every street cleaner today, and in fact, as I walk back about an hour later, the entire city center looks sanitized and purified, neat as a whistle. I find a couple euro coins on the ground; my lucky day. So as I drink my fancy little coffee, I watch two drunks slowly stagger by, falling all over each other. One loses his shoe, and he has a hell of a time just letting go of his buddy, then getting turned around and actually putting it back on. Well, half-on. Good enough. I see his friend has a bloody head. They stagger off up the street, bouncing like a pin ball from wall to wall in the narrow alley.
You know how a Mercedes is a “luxury” brand in the USA? Well, I have said it for years: here, a Mercedes is just a vehicle. For example: the Mercedes Trash Truck. The garbage truck that slowly cruises through the street picking up all the individual cans and dumpsters filled by the guys with brooms, the garbage truck is a Mercedes. I wonder if the guy feels superior to the guys in the next town over who drive an Audi or Volvo?
They have hose bibs buried under the street, accessed by a metal plate. Guys come along with long, hundred foot hoses to wash the streets down after the broom guys are done.
The town shines in the early morning light.
Today my cappuccino comes with whipped cream and chocolate powder, a treat.
I just love to sit at a café and watch the light tilt in, hit and shift on the front of the white buildings, building into a soft glow. The glow becomes the color of whip cream, the cobblestones are the color of cappuccino.
As much as we would like to stay here in Tarifa, we must move on today to Ronda, one of the “White Hill Towns” in the Andalucía region.
So we picked up the 9:30 bus, going 18KM to Algeciras, where we missed out connection to La Linea by one minute. As we pulled in, we watched as the La Línea de la Concepción bus pulled out right in front of us. But we easily killed the 45 minutes till the next bus, and by noon we were walking across the border into Gibraltar. Through the haze, pollution and fog we can make out most of the Rock of Gibralter, rising 1400 feet above the airport. The airport is across the border in the UK, so we had to show our passports as we walked in, and again a half hour later as we drove out in our white Fiat 500, named Henry. The license plate reads HRY. Thus, Henry.
Henry drives well, though a little underpowered as we soon find out.
They have this free parking garage just outside the town center, and bright signs lead you directly in, and best of all there is no one around to “guide” or “help” you find your way. Nobody pops out of the stores to shove things in your face, and no one is yelling “Francaise? England?” at us.
Casares is a charming town, charming as in “I wish we were spending a night here.” They are having an art fair, so huge canvases are being set up throughout the town. There is a little town square with a fountain that you can drink from, and a shade tree with red umbrellas and tables tucked under it. There are three cafés and a bar fronting the square. We just have to sit a bit.
Bar Nuevo.
They have sandwiches, pizza, and something called "Chicken in Kentucky Style."
Tempting...
So we have cool wine, goat cheese and tomato for Gail, ham croquettes for me, and we listen to the low energy buzz of people sitting and talking. The light through the trees shifts in beautiful patterns on the olives.
The water bottle is blue glass, and it has mountains in a raised pattern around the base. The bottle is the color of the sky
It is a beautiful place.
We just can't tear ourselves away. The low level buzz from the cafe and bar. There is maybe one other tourist couple here, period. The rest is just a life well lived, happening around us.
Righteous.
I take the sky blue bottle, and we fill it at the fountain. We walk up to the church and ruins at the top of the hill, walking through crooked streets lined by white houses. I just hope Ronda is this nice. We refill the water on our last pass through town, then head back to Henry.
So now we find out what Henry is made of, and it turns out: not much.
The little village roads are steep steep, cobblestones, and we came down and in OK, but heading out of the parking garage, from a stop, we actually have to burn a little rubber as I slip the clutch to try to get enough “Ooomph!” to start up the hill in first.
We barely make it out.
Good thing, as Gail would have gotten pretty sweaty pushing…
The road is so steep and winding that we spill the blue bottle of water all over the car before we even leave town. I'll have to get a cork for it.
We wind up, down and around, passing through white town after white town. In Gaucin we hit our junction and turn right on 369 to Ronda. Twenty KM, then ten, five and we come around a curve and then a town, sliced in half by a huge granite gorge, opens up in front of us.
Our Hotel for the next four nights, Enfrente Arte, has provided direct and easy instructions, and it is no problem to find the place and a parking spot almost right in front of our room.
I could almost do an entire blog post on this very cool, so unique place. We have never, in all the places we have traveled, all the many hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs we have found, stayed in such a unique place.
The room and entire motel is filled with Art. I think there are 18 rooms total, over three levels, and every room is different. For example, our room had a giant carrot (or perhaps tomato) rocking chair, mirrored Andy Warhol - like wall hangings, beads and ribbons in front of the balconied window, and a Dali clock and lights. Hats and musical instruments are turned into lamps and lighting, there is quirky and fun art and statues everywhere; a tower of old TV sets show slides of whatever, and they have a camel bench in the middle of a thick bamboo thicket. There is a multi-level pool with red women-butt chairs and a blue hand shooting water out of the wall, and a pool of fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet, Multi leveled terraces looking out over a valley that looks like Tuscany, Italy; one terrace had tables made of surfboards. There is a sauna, and a bar stocked with tea, sparkling water, a real espresso machine and coffees, a beer tap, and wines; white, rosé and red as well as white and red dessert wines. It is self-serve, all included in the cost of the room. A Picasso sitting room with big screen TV and a projector for the occasional movie, a library stocked with books and hundreds of bottles of wine. The breakfast room has a car in it (the dishes are in the trunk) and a 1950’s record studio slash aquarium theme that has to be seen to believe. As you enter, the front half of the car is facing you, at night the headlights are left on to guide you in.
It is truly an amazing place, and I am wondering if we will every tear away from it to head out into town?
Four nights here.
Eventually we do find our way out and into the town of Ronda. We cross the Old Bridge (built around 1300) which is closer to us, and wind around looking at this and that. Our hotel gave us a free ticket in to see the old Arab Baths, back from the times when invader from Northern Africa ruled here. Then we crossed back over the New Bridge (built in the 1700s) looking down, down hundreds of feet into the canyon below.
We decide to try out two tapas bars tonight, based on recommendations, and both are excellent for different reasons.
But we will only return to one.
First we go to TragaTapas, which is a kind of high end, gourmet sort of tapas bar. Here is what I mean: we have one stick of white asparagus, with a wasabi sauce and sprigs of spinach. That alone cost €6, about $8.50 US. But it was really really great! We had Brie cheese with bitter orange marmalade, and Smoked sardine on bread with tomato. Three tapas plus two glasses of wine set us back €17. Though it was expensive, it was delicious, and the presentation was artful.
Next we went to El Lechuguita, which is the local neighborhood hangout. There is a tiled sign out front, but it is such a plain, almost empty hole in the wall that we almost walked right past it. It is really really unimpressive. There are a couple barrels and chairs outside to sit at, and they have a menu of 79 tapas, 62 of which cost €0,80 a piece. The last seventeen cost between €2,50 and €5,00. You use a little order sheet, checking off which tapas and how many you want.
I order #4, bacon with cheese, #28 harvestfish roquefort, #38 chicken with spicy sauce, and #53 toast with smoked red pepper with tuna. Gail orders #41 melt cheese, #42 goat cheese and raspberry and #57 Russian salad. The food is delicious, but the presentation is nothing: just drab looking little sandwiches and snacks crammed on the plate. But the taste? Excellent. So, seven tapas, two glasses of wine, one Sangria and a gas water sets us back an incredible €10,50.
Yes. Ten fifty.
We will return for sure.
El Lechuguita was absolutely packed, spilling out all over the street, whereas the first place had exactly two customers, and I knew them both. During our second tapas experience, we got to talking with a couple from Antwerp, Belgium. They were surprised to find we were from California (they guessed England or Germany) and they said that not many American tourists come round this area. They are in the process of buying and fixing a place in Frigiliana, near Nerja which is our next stop. We agreed to stop by on our way through. The one guy pointed out that it has been called the “Most Beautiful Andalucian town” for several years running, his partner told us that they are both moving there full time within the year. The second guy borrowed a cigarette from Gail.
I don’t smoke, he says.
Neither do I Gail says.
It’s just part of the scene here, he says.
The other guy and I just look at each other, smile and shrug, as Gail and the second guy both light up.
I told them about Casares, they haven’t been, and after a nice talk we all shook hands and went off our separate ways; Gal and I arm in arm uphill, they head arm in arm downhill.
We walk up and down the main shopping pedestrian street, “strutting our stuff” with the locals (and are they NOT impressed, let me tell you!) then head home to sleep.
It is well past midnight before we turn in.