DAY THIRTY:
My friend Katie lived in Barcelona for several years. She told me that the people in Southern Spain speak a different kind of Spanish, almost with a lisp. A softer version than the Mexican Spanish we are used to hearing.
Well, Katie was right. “Gracias” becomes “Grathiath” and “Bueno Diath” is the greeting for the day.
Tho, Bueno Diath!
Adioth, Ronda.
We are up before breakfath is quite ready, packed and waiting to hit the road for the coath. With a little luck we will be on the beach, thwimming and thleeping by 13:00.
We have Doth díath y doth nocheth in the beach town of Nerja.
I should have been born here, then I wouldn't have had to take speech remediation for my lazy "S" and "R" sounds when I was a kid.
I know in Germany the southern dialect is totally different from the harsher northern speech, and the same goes for Italy where there must be five or six differing versions of speech.
The A366 road from Ronda to Coin is one of the prettiest mountain drives I have taken. I wish we would have stopped to take photos, but then we would have never made it to Nerja. The road was pretty narrow, went up into the higher, white rock peaks, and would around there above timberline before dropping into a pine forest. We went along cliffs and deep valleys, and through a couple cute towns. There was a dead Ibex (mountain sheep) on the side of the road, and we passed few other cars. The town of Coin was nothing to write about, but the trip was beautiful.
We caught the A7 - E15 freeway and upped the speed to 120KM. Through five or six tunnels, and along the coast by Málaga.
I am glad we decided to skip Málaga, it is a huge city of tall buildings.
Nerja is about 60KM east of Málaga, maybe a 30-45 minute drive. But what a difference. It’s not that w are in a sleepy sort of fishing village or anything, but it is a smaller, manageable size of town with great beaches.
It is easy to find our place for the next two nights, Hostal Don Peque. We are right down by the beaches and the “Balcón de Europa” which is a kind of town square right on the top of the cliffs, looking out over the ocean.
The town center itself is pretty compact: a plaza flanked by the municipal building and El Salvadore Church, cafés lining it all, and the Balcón extending off to the cliff. There are two main shopping streets going off in a V with a few connecting streets. The city parking is all underground, right under the plaza.
So we got our room, big, bright and cheery with a nice sized balcony over the street. There is a shaded, rooftop terrace with views over the city and ocean. We drop our stuff, rent two beach towels, grab an umbrella just in case we can’t get one on the beach, and head out.
We are going to the largest, most popular beach today, Playa de Burriana. It is at the edge of town, about a fifteen minute walk. When we get there two things hit us:
It is beautiful, wide and sandy, backed by palm trees and bars, modern white homes climb the hills.
It is crowded, all the available umbrellas and beds taken. It is a good thing we brought our own umbrella and towels.
We find a spot and shoehorn in.
We spend about four pleasant hours swimming, sleeping and watching everybody. About 18:00 the beach is pretty cleared out, so we decide to head into town as well.
A quick shower and change, and we are back out to catch the 19:30 parade of the Procession of the Virgen del Carmen.
Now, I don’t act like I get this stuff at all, in fact it is about as mysterious and common sense to me as Ramadan. But Virgen del Carmen is one appearance or rendition of the Virgin Mary, but this one is the patron saint of fishermen and boaters. So what do you do if you are a fishing village in Spain? You worship this saint, and hold a parade every year in her honour. They do this in all the little fishing villages here along the southern coast. We just happened to be here for this one. So they have this big statue of Carmen, who is really Mary I think, and they unload her out of the El Salvadore Church, carry her around town veeeeerrrrry slooooooowly with mostly mournful music playing, until they get to a beach and load her into a boat, and in a test of faith row her back to the starting point.
Thus, everybody is protected and ready to face the sea yet another day.
So here is how it actually looked to me:
About 18:30 the plaza in front of the church is getting packed with people. At 19:00 a band comes drumming and horning by our hostal, really slow and loud. I watch them from our patio as they make their way to the front of the church. At 19:20 we are around, behind the crowds, trying to see as the Virgen comes slowly out of the church to much fanfare. We give up and move down the street, around the corner and up the next street, kind of in the barrio, where she is expected to come through.
Sure enough, you can hear the drums beating and the mournful music way in advance of the actual procession. Motorcycle cops clear the way, and soon the first band slowly staggers into view.
Sincerely, it is a slow, side to side stagger. Not a march. There is a barefoot guy with a medal leading the brass and drum band.
They go v-e-r-y s-l-o-w in case you did not get it yet. As in we are about ready to give up even though we see them right there.
They slooooooowly stagger by, the music building and fading, becoming more impressive, the drums so loud you feel it in your chest.
Four special boys carry a wooden boat, with a golden Virgen del Carmen, on a platform with handles. Kind of like how Cleopatra is carried around in the movies. Then a bunch of boys with oars go by. The girls with blue scarves around their heads. The girl carrying a sacrificial? basket of clams, flanked by the rose-petal flower girls. Then another, louder, drummier band beats its way into your brain and chest.
Then…
floating above all, the Virgen del Carmen.
There she is, carried and held aloft by at least 32 men, the Virgen literally floats through the street.
The 32 men are all in step together, doing the side-to-side shuffle everyone else is doing, so she proceeds slowly, swayingly down the street. At her base there are bunches of white flowers, and four handles stick out front and back that the men, all wearing white caps, use to carry her.
The music as she passes is deafening, chest crushing, and somehow really really emotional.
As she passes, the faithful crowd in behind, so the parade grows longer as it goes.
This is a big thing here.
About an hour later, after they go around the block… one hour, one block… they stop in the main plaza in front of an open window that has been decked out with royal blue and gold velvet ribbons and swag. A man steps up to the microphone and sings to the Virgen and the thousands of assembled people below.
It is a very loud, very emotional song, and the bass is turned up so high that at times it rumbles and has feedback, so you get this weird sound and roar and bone-crush all at the same time.
Mysterious.
The really really big event happens when the head Virgen-carrying guy rings the bell on the center, front handle.
This is huge.
He rings the bell, then a second time and everyone lifts the Virgen up over their heads. So there she rides, an extended-arms’ height above the masses, for everyone to see, and as the man in the window ramps up his singing the entire crowd, thousands of people, break into applause.
People are wiping tears from their eyes, while they sing along.
The Virgen del Carmen is lowered ater two more bell rings, then two more DING! DING! and up she goes! to much more aplause and delight.
This happens three, maybe four times.
The song wraps up, everyone cheers, someone shouts something like “Is she our Virgen?” at which point the crowd roars back “Go Virgen, GO!” and then they call it again, and again.
The drummers start up, the horns play their mournful tune, and the procession starts off on down the street, heading to the beach.
Later, the celebration continues in a way that is fitting for a Saint: they have a rock concert set up on the Balcón de Europa and the indecipherable lyrics are drowned out by the bad guitar playing and unbalanced, over active drummer. I mean really: what says, "I love you, Virgen del Carmen" more than a bad, loud rock concert?
Perhaps the BBQ roasted chicken stix (yummy) and beer, or the huge fireworks display at 23:30 which we miss entirely because we are eating dinner at the time.
July 15 and 16 each year.
Mark it on your calendar.
Makes about as much sense as Ramadan to me, an outsider, but way more fun with all the food, drinking and fireworks!
We stop at two different places for tapas and wine, have a water break, and eventually end up for dinner at a place that was really good but skimpy on the food. The wine was the best I have had all trip (I had to ask for a robusto vino tinto and, since it was supposed to be a “wine bar” (which it wasn’t really) they did come up with something stronger than the more subtle wines we have been drinking.
Do I sound like I am complaining? I don’t mean to.
I have really enjoyed the Spanish wines, especially in comparison to the Moroccan ones.
But they are all so, so, so… table-wine like. I wanted something to sink my teeth into.
So this was OK. See the photos below.
Gail had a great salad, I had wonderful prawns fixed with garlic, but it was such a damn small portion I was still hungry. They call it Gambas Pil-Pil here, and it is really great. I am going to make it when I get home, and I am NOT going chintzy on the shrimp.
Boy, after all this Virgen excitement we don’t get to the room until well after midnight, and the partying goes on in the street right below us until about 4:00. I sleep during the times when it is just café buzz, wake when there is loud drunken yelling and crashing, and so the night passes.
And so we sleep in, me until about 5:30 and Gail until 8:00, then head up to breakfast on the roof top terrace. We eat a great breakfast with good, French coffee overlooking the ocean.
Today's Plan:
Go to Calahonda Beach by ten, snag a beach umbrella and two beds, and spend the day swimming and beaching.
So, by 9:30 we are out, down the steps to the beach, and all the umbrellas are reserved! Reserved from yesterday! Who knew?
Except one umbrella, with two beds, over here, right up by the water, on the side... in the perfect location...
... we pay our €9 fee and throw our towels down. We got the only available umbrella and beds.
First thing I am in the ocean for an early morning swim, and the water feels oooohhhh so great!
Cold, not too cold, but not hot. Just right.
So there is not much to say about today except we swam, read, slept, turned over, got cold agua con gas with ice and lemon, turned over, swam, read, slept, got cold cold agua con gas with ice, swam, slept...
At some point late in the afternoon we went back to our room to shower off, Gail checked Facebook and I wrote this down, then we headed into town.
We decided to go bar hopping, looking for tapas, and then eat at a local restaurant. So we walked out of the tourist zone, about a kilometer or two down a residential street to a cluster of bars I heard about.
Along the way we stopped at El Pulguilla. Gail ordered a white wine, and I decided to try the wine that all the locals drink. a red rioja that comes in barrels and is served cold, from a tap, like beer. It is a lighter red in color, not at all sweet like it looks, and is surprisingly good and refreshing.
The bars have these display cases that show their freshest tapas. You can choose something of a menu as well, but the best thing is get what they have out now. Gail wanted olives and cheese marinated in oil, and I had to choose between fresh squid, prawns, little anchovy sized fish, medium sardine sized fish, bigger trout sized fish, or fish steaks, ham, chicken skewers and so on. Lucky me, I chose the prawns and they were so fresh, so sweet, with just a touch of salt… the best I have had.
Looking back on it, we should have just camped out there and ate and drank.
But we were out exploring. So we walked further into the neighborhood and picked what looked like a cool old place. We were disappointed here, just drinks and no tapas. The wine was excellent, but see how quickly we get spoiled? It felt like a ripoff, even though it was a good price for great wine, because we are getting used to the food as well.
While we were drinking a shirtless bald old man came out of his house and took over the end table for a smoke. A younger guy sat out on the stoop and they talked. He had a big patch on his face. A cute girl with very short yellow shorts and crop top came by; conversation stopped, then started up when she passed. The hippy guy with a beat up guitar came out of the house across the way, sat at the table, bummed a cig and in return started playing beautiful music. Another guy leaned off his balcony above us and threw out a request, which the guitar guy laughed off, but the original shirtless bald man started to sing at the top of his lungs over the sound of the guitar.
Everyone laughed.
We walked around the corner and found a hole in the wall called El Chispa. The bar was totally packed so we sat outside in the open courtyard. There was an open fire going, banked up against some logs, in a fire pit built in an old wooden fishing boat. One guy was putting fish on skewers and leaning them back against the fire. It reminded me of the way I have cooked fresh caught trout in the mountains at home: gut them, run a stick through the mouth and drape the body over the stick, and put it above the fire.
We got wine and he brought out a plate of olives, and a plate of fried white fish and asparagus.
I ordered the Gambas Pil-Pil, the price was cheap and the serving generous.
Gail ordered a salad for €3 which was huge and had fresh tuna in it.
I had red jumbo shrimps, which I had never seen before. They were beautifully red all right, and pretty tasty (but the prawns earlier that night still set the standard).
While we were sitting there, the outside area packed up as well. I turned around and noticed they were projecting something on the back wall of the open space. They show soccer, movies or sometimes just the news there. The show was going silently, in blue and white, the waiter was walking in front of it almost like an actor, and some guy was at the entrance playing Spanish music on an accordion, like a soundtrack to accompany the wide-eyed fish skewered and lit by the fire pit.
It was like a surreal scene, a Dali painting come to life.
At the end of the meal we were given some type of a coffee or almond liquor and it tasted pretty good.
We both agreed it was a good, generous and interesting meal, well worth the walk out.
On the way back into the tourist section we found a gelato place, and got a scoop each. Then we walked into the main plaza where the crowds were going strong and a guy was playing beautiful Spanish finger picking music on a guitar.
So now I will try to describe for you:
The Perfect Night In Europe.
We have done this night so many times, in so many countries. It is what keeps us coming back, again and again.
It is late at night, the buildings and streets are lit up by strings of light, decorative lighting in the cafés and the old old street lights. The guitar guy is playing beautifully, he really feels the music, and a crowd is gathered, sitting on the public benches and in the cafés, listening. There is a low buzz of people talking throughout the plaza, people wander on by in small groups.
We sit on a bench with a view of the café nearest the guitar guy. I am watching the seating. Sure enough, in a few minutes a couple gets up to leave the front table, so we hurry over and slide right into the seats as they walk off.
Soon we have two cappuccinos, topped with whipped cream (it is dessert) in front of us, with the little spoons, cups with logos, a sweet biscuit and the sugar packet that I will pocket and take home to my friend Katie.
We are right at the side of the guitar player, looking out at the plaza. Girls in very very short shorts and long long legs walk by in twos and groups, as the young men gather and talk and look them over. Old couples sit together on the benches, leaning into each other, the cafés are full, there is a quiet murmur, but most people close by are focused on the music.
The North Africans are working the crowd, trying but not able to sell sunglasses, fake Beats headphones, and purses and watches; the women sellers in their robes and trays of crap balanced on their heads. There are two sales guys in the center of the plaza shooting these LED lit, blue helicopter twirly sparkly light things up in the air; up up up over and over, they float back down like blue stars. At €3 they captivate the kids who beg one from their parents, and the plaza is filled with little blue lights shooting skyward. Some are caught up in the tree branches where they slowly die, some just crash down and fall apart, a quick death.
The pitiful "one arm guy" with his arm tucked into his coat comes by and drops his poorly written English and Spanish slip of paper in front of us, and the next table and the next and the next, then he loops around to pick up his donations. I have seen this scam so many times, I just pocket the paper quick, and he comes back and starts at the next table over where they don't know to get rid of the evidence.
A couple moves over to our table because we have two open chairs, and smile and ask if they can sit and listen. We just smile and nod, they bring their coffees and turn the chairs and we exchange a minute of small talk, but then all go back to listening and looking and sipping.
The cops show up and the North Africans all disappear, the one armed guy has grown it back and is running across the plaza, and the blue sky light guys are suddenly nowhere to be seen. It is such a warm night. A pretty girl walks by, flowing, in a nice long skirt, tasteful top, wearing high top Converse tennis shoes. The trees, the smell of the salt air, the old building lit up, wine and coffee and conversation flowing with the crowd moving slowly by; Italian, Spanish, German, English, French and whatever else is on the air. We sit, just holding hands, leaning on each other, looking around.
And you just don’t want it to end.
You don’t want to be tired, you don’t want the cappuccino to run out or to take the last sip of agua con gas…
But it is midnight, then one, then one thirty and at some point we are going to just fall asleep right there.
But it is such a perfect night out.