Three countries in three days!

Saturday, October 8

We were booked to pick up our car from Hertz in Granada at noon.  We had high hopes after our Europecar from France.  This car was not so skookum.  It has a ding on every corner and makes a low nznznznznzn sound.  It is a Fiat Panda, which sounds adorable and is (if slightly roughed up).  The trunk is a bit bigger so that is good.  Our last car could barely fit both our bags in the trunk.  This one fits them both plus our 'gift bags', what with the platter and all.

This car does not have a navigation system.  We immediately got lost.  I mean IMMEDIATELY.  Pull over, find the map Missy lent us, pulled up the offline maps on this tablet that I miraculously downloaded on Karl's advise.  If I haven't mentioned it enough, Alisma is amazing with direction.  She has an innate sense of what direction we should be going.  She looks at a map and remembers it!  She looks at street signs and remembers them!  She actually refers to the location of the sun!

Anyway, maps in Alisma's hands and we were on our way to our hotel, Mason del Sancho, just outside of Tarifa.  But first, since it was on the way, we thought we might pop into jolly old England, otherwise known as Gibraltar.  We didn't get there until about 3pm.  There was two lines to get through the 'border'.  One for cars to declare and one for cars who don't declare.  What does this mean?  We went for the shorter line and then noticed that the declare line had yellow licence plates and the no declare line had white plates.  What colour are our plates?  In the end it didn't matter.  After a curve, the two lines merged into one.  Note:  French and Spanish drivers are very nice and let other cars merge and change lanes.  British drivers (at least Gibraltar Brits with yellow plates) are jerks who would not let the white plates merge into the line.  But I suppose living on a rock surrounded by swarthy latin men will make any pastey brit uptight.

We finally made it in. Then we got lost (England is NOT on the Spain maps).  It is tiny but the roads are very convoluted and one way and go up and up when we wanted to go down to town.  One or two illegal moves and we were back on track.   We found a parking spot which in itself is unbelievable.  Found Main Street and discovered that most businesses close at 2 on Saturday.  So, since it was now after 4, we stopped for lunch at a British pub, the Gibraltor Arms.  Alisma had a bean burger (which the waiter warned her 'had no meat') and I had chicken Bahti (when in England, eat Indian).

Proof we were in England

Dinner

Then, up the cable car to the top of the hill.

Cable car 'station'

View of the city

There are Barbary Macaques (monkeys? apes?) living at the top.  I am not a fan of monkeys (or apes) who are withing leaping and face biting distance but they are fun to watch.   They would hang out in the dark stairwells and all of the tourists would stand at the top listening.  "they're in there.  Should we go down?"  It was like a scene from a zombie movie.  There was some info posted about the troops.  Apparently they like the stairs because people pay more attention to their feet and less to the 'thieving monkeys'.  Anyway,  I led the troops down the stairs, call me Rick Grimes.

This is the first thing you see as you
get off the cable car

Baby monkey alert!

We are all here to look at the rock

An hour of climbing the ruins, watching the apes, looking at the rock and over at Africa  and then back down the cable car.  The cable car goes very high.  It was kind of scary.

Me on the Cable Car (with my 2nd new purse)

The fog rolling in from the point where the Mediteranean
meets the Atlantic.  That is Africa in the distance

We got to our hotel (Mason de Sancho) around 8pm and just stayed in our room.  We were kind of in the boonies.  There was a pool but it was surrounded by Germans when we arrived.

This was out our front dorr

This was out our back window

Sunday, October 9

Next morning we left early-ish and headed into Tarifa, the southern most point in continental Europe.  First stop, of course, breakfast at a cute little cafe.  No cured meat this morning.  I had yogurt with fruit and Alisma had a smoothie and eggs (but not with potatoes so we are making progress).

Yogurt, musli, fruit and nuts

Tarifa is a surfer town so all of the little shops in old town are funky and have fun stuff to look at/covet.  I bought a bracelet and a new camera case (hand made) and Alisma bought a necklace and a hair thing.

Wander, wander.  Then to the beach to look at birds and kite surfers.  By the way, the birding has been terrible.  But I got a couple today.

Kite Surfers

Dunes

A second city in one day.  Our next hotel is in El Rocio which is just past Sevilla.  So we stopped in to Sevilla for dinner.  Bummer, no oranges to be found. Here are a bunch of pictures of Sevilla, I have no idea what anything is.

I do know these are geese

Next town was El Rocio, the weirdest town in Spain from what we can tell. Alis ma booked us in there because it is right beside Donana National Park, a birdng hotspot.  But we arrived too late to book a tour for the morning so no bird tour.  But the town itself was so bizarre it was almost worth it.  First, just as you turn at the El Rocio junction, the highway ends and a sand road starts.  It was like driving in new snow.  I kept driving into sand 'holes' where my tires would spin and we would almost get stuck.  By the next morning I could spot the holes but the way in was precarious.

Every house and 'business' had a hitching post for horses.  We saw one horse in town and some in a feild the next day, but nothing to explain the hitching posts everywhere.  It was European Old West.

We had eaten in Sevilla so we just went to our hotel which was nice, a flower filled courtyard.

Monday, October 10.

The next morning we headed out of the hotel to the Bird Watching centre.  Which was closed because Monday.   So we walked around the walkway that divides the town from the horse fields.  NO BIRDS.  And people would not make eye contact.  The town was strangely quiet even though there were people around.  Nothing was open.  Houses were shuttered.  We eventually found an 'open' restaurant.  We walked up to the window and two men just stared at us until I asked if we could have breakfast.  What do we want?  Coffee.  Fine.  Do you have breakfast.  Just toast.  Does it come with anything (they call sandwiches toast here).  Butter.   And?  Jam.  It was like pulling teeth.  They did not want to serve us.   But they did, it was not good but it was the only food in town.  We got out of there toot sweet.

Our hotel

Hitching posts

The only nice part of town, the horse fields

A huge church

This is the road

This is the main plaza

Sand and hitching posts

St. Rocio herself.  They have a huge pilgrimage
to El Rocio each year that attracts a
million people, which if you could
see this town, boggles the mind

After we left El Rocio, we headed to the border and entered Portugal not long after  (third country in three days).   Next post starts in Faro, Portugal.