Seville, and not an orange in sight

Much to Christine's delight its our last day of driving the hire car and once we drop it off we are picked up by our host who gives us a quick tour of his apartment before leaving us to it. We stroll into the town through the city walls and looked for our host's favourite part of the city, Platza Hercules. This is a very busy part of the city full of bars, restaurants and kids playing in fountains. after a few 0.40€ beers (it would have been rude not to) we go back to the flat ready for an early start.
The next day is a confusing one for James, he walked into the kitchen to see another couple standing there, who are they?! Our host hadn't told us that he was renting out his other room as well! A nice stroll into the city took us past some lovely churches and led us to the impressive cathedral, its a beautiful city that reminds us of Valencia. Its time for a boat trip and we buy our tickets from a guy who looks like the man from Del Monte. Its not a very informative tour as most of the sights are away from the river but its still a lovely sunny day and a relaxing trip.
Mexican food for dinner and Christine decides to be adventurous and orders Chicken Enchiladas with 'Mole sauce'. Ooh what's Mole sauce? You ask. Chocolate sauce, that's what. Chicken Enchiladas with chocolate sauce. Bluergh!

The next day we are aiming for Plaza de Espanja which is supposed to be a really pretty square. On our way we pass a park with a festival on, yippee! Its not quite started yet so we continue to our original destination and the internet didn't lie, it was a beautiful square with a huge palace with a sort of half moat/baby river in front of it. We hire a row boat to go around the little river and although we crashed a few times we had lots of fun and even more fun watching other people crash! A few evening beers at the festival, which is now a bit more lively. Christine doesn't think much of her 'Monaco' beer cocktail but she is soon cheered up by a go on a lucky dip stall! Time to head back to the flat and we are ready to call it a night and see what Madrid brings tomorrow!

Time for a romantic cruise

I think Christine enjoyed rowing.

wall? What wall?

hiyerrr!

Plaza Espanya

 

Glamping in a hippy paradise

As usual we are running well behind our schedule and are over an hour late leaving La Linea to find our next stop. Luckily we manage to do the drive before it gets dark because our 'magical lake paradise' is in the middle of nowhere. The directions were pretty good but our interpretations not so much so Christine had to do a bit of running ahead of the car to see if: a) the roads we tried were correct and b) to see if the car could actually make it down them. This turned out to be a wise move since James came about 100m from getting the car properly stuck in a ditch! At least after a bit of reversing and a 57 point turn we managed to correct ourselves. The next challenge was avoiding the horses who, despite having acres of grass to stand on, thought the 'road' was a more interesting place to be. Turns out the way to make a horse move is just to keep driving at it until its face is basically pressed against the windscreen!

Our host, Buzzel, owns a large area near Tarifa, right at the bottom of Spain, and we knew that there were different places to stay on it so we'd be bumping into a few other people so we were more than a bit surprised when we got through the main gate and couldn't find another soul! Christine spots a path leading somewhere so we go for it. And there it is...our private lake and our tent sitting just behind it, it definitely fits the description. Still not a soul to be seen though so we keep driving up to a house we see sitting just over the next hill where we are finally warmly greeted by our host. He shows us round a large, communal house where we can cook, relax and enjoy the amazing view across the hillsides and over to Morocco and we are introduced to a few other guests staying there. Too many names to remember so we'll just have to bluff it when we see them!

Since it's starting to get dark we settle in to our tent. We have a wooden platform that it is sat on and a table out front so we can enjoy our private lake and a winding path through hedges, lit by fairy lights, to our outdoor bathroom. Have you ever wished you could sit on the toilet or take a shower and look it across beautiful countryside at the same time? Well that's just what we did! And how do you spend an evening in such a beautiful campsite...cover yourself in mosquito spray, eat some chicken butties, make a start on a 24 pack of slightly warm beer, stare at the stars and play snakes and ladders! Hehehe.

We woke up to another glorious day by the lake, and the site of Buzzel wandering round in his pink robe! We could have done a walk to the nearest town, or driven to the beach, but we just wanted to make the most of our campsite. It was nice to spend the day just relaxing, playing hide and seek with turtles and spot the fish in our lake and eating biscuits. We both looked a fair bit more tanned by the time the Sun went down! We were so relaxed and rested we even managed a bit of socialising with the other guests in the evening, travellers like us from Australia, Bulgaria and Germany. A boring day to write about but a very enjoyable one for us.

Excuse us, please can we pass?

Can you spot our tent?

The outdoor bathroom

The view at night from our tent

James preparing to emerge as a beautiful butterfly

Gibraltar...It's so weird!

Time to jump back in the car again and head further south, chasing the spanish sun. Since it's the second trip James is getting a bit more used to dealing with Spanish traffic and even manages to use the horn - beep beep! At least there was no getting lost in any cities this time.

We decided to stay on the Spanish side of the border in La Linea so after parking the car it was time for a bit of a walk to the town. Unfortunately the buses from our hosts' place and the town had mysteriously stopped running a couple of weeks before so it was either get a taxi or have a walk. Being the backpacking cheapskates that we are we opted for a nice walk along the beach. It was beautiful (and practically deserted) but it seemed to go on for ages, when we finally got to the edge of the town we were looking forward to something to eat and drink. Could we find anywhere? No chance. The town didn't actually seem to have anything apart from flats until we were right by the border, and that took us about another hour to get to. Fail.

We could see lots of people going back and forth between Spain and Gibraltar, and the rock in the distance (but still looking big) but we stayed in La Linea for what was left of the day and planned to cross over the next day. Maybe in hindsight not such a wise move. La Linea doesn't really have a lot to offer. Enough said!

The next day we made an early start and set out for an English adventure. On the advice of our hosts we walked down the road a bit to a place where taxis were picking up where the buses had left off. It was actually a very interesting and entertaining ride. An elderly couple, who spoke no English, were waiting too so with a bit of pointing and smiling we all worked out that we should share a taxi to the border. Christine was sat in the back next to the little old lady, and very little she was too. She kept sliding down the seats and disappearing but when she wasn't doing that she was trying to talk to Christine but even if we did speak Spanish I'm not so sure we would have understood. A standard response of "Si, si. Gracias" and a big smile seemed to be enough!

A quick and painless trip through the border and we're on English soil again (sort of). James is very entertained by the fact we have to walk over the airport runway to get to the main part of the place and has to do a lame airplane impression! It's ok though because soon after Christine sees a sign for Winston Churchill Avenue and goes all giddy so we're both going to be a bit silly today! We walked up and down the main street (and a few more times) and loved the fact that it felt like a small English town; lots of English looking pubs, quirky high street shops and English traffic lights. It was different because it wasn't raining and there was a rather large rock next to us! We soaked up a bit of the history in the morning, accompanied by a few monkeys and decided to attack the rock after a very English lunch of pie and chips (with a pint of english bitter for James, that made him happy). We did get a laugh before our pie; while monkey spotting on the high street we see one strolling along the pavement looking for freebies. An unsuspecting man is walking towards us with a carrier bag in hand and before you can say "monkey poo" the monkey runs over to him, rips open the bag and grabs some of the food that falls on the floor. It goes for the picnic bar, good choice! It's obviously a bit of an expert because it opens the wrapper with no problems and starts tucking in. The man laughs and tells us he's not going to fight a hungry monkey, at least he's still got his butties!

The cable car is well recommended to get to the top of the rock but when we see it's £8.50 each just to go up our arms get shorter, our pockets get deeper and we decide to walk up instead. It starts off fairly easy and James finds a Mantis sitting in the middle of the path to make friends with. We enjoy the views out over the sea as we get higher and eventually get to the first monkey den. They all seem very chilled out, some enjoying soaking up the sun, others enjoying the shade but we don't get too close. They have big teeth after all. We do get a bit of shock when a tour bus turns up and a woman decides to get a picture with one of the monkeys; she puts her face right up to the monkey and we both watch in horror waiting for her face to get ripped off. Luckily this time it didn't happen! We continued our climb via the Charles wall which had steps to climb up faster. They were steep but Christine has no problem, on the other hand James realises he's more scared of heights that he thought and has to count the steps instead of enjoying the view so he doesn't freeze! By the time we finally make it to the top there's another monkey den. This one reeks of poo and is surrounded by flies so we don't spend too long before moving on. James begs Christine not to have to go up more steps to Douglas point, the very highest bit of the rock and she agrees. Phew! Going down is much easier although the effort of fighting gravity and not running down is tough on the legs.

It would have been nice to stop for something to eat and drink after all our hard work but we have places to go and people to see. It's time for another drive, to the southern tip of Spain: Tarifa where we will be camping with a private lake and hosted by a man named Buzzel. Bye bye British soil!

An aeroplane...apparently 

it's like home!!

Monkey mugger

James' new best friend

All smiles before we saw the 1000 steps up ahead

James getting grooming tips

Magical Monachil and the Sierra Nevada

Time to forget the public transport and pick up a hire car for our next leg of the trip. James is the designated driver and seems quite excited to be driving, me not so much.
We set off in search of a little place called Monachil, situated just outside of Granada. All is going well until Google maps takes us into the centre of Granada by mistake, cue wrong turnings, reversing out of car park queues and me nearly crying.
Finally we make it to Monachil and our host guides us up a mountain to our little hut for the next few days. Its tiny and has an outdoor toilet and kitchen...we love it! As it is late all of the shops are closed so our hosts gives us some eggs, bread, tomatoes, wine and best of all, homemade goats cheese! What do we do with the best goats cheese we've ever tasted? We make toasties of course! A quick few games of snakes and ladders before bed (quick because James is so good at it), rock and roll babyyy!

The next day we wake up to a view of  mountains with the sun beaming down on us, brilliant. A walk into Monachil to the tiny shop takes us past a dog arguing with a rock (the dog won) and a nice bar that filled up with walkers from the Sierra Nevada. Back to the hut to make some food and take a dip in our private pool whilst watching purple bees and being visited by various dogs looking to steal food. Our host has told us that there is a jazz night on tonight so armed with torches we walked through pitch black to find the jazz bar. We weren't disappointed as we caught a few ace jazz sessions. We love Monachil!

A visit to Granada is in store today and we wait patiently for the bus ignoring the one on the wrong side of the road. It starts to reverse and heads into Granada, doh! A nice stroll to Granada it is then. Granada is pretty and we have a walk around. The tiny streets of the old town have a very African feel; lots of shisha smoke blowing around and lots of crazy people pestering us to buy their pretty 'things'. We know the Alhambra is recommended but we haven't booked a ticket and don't really want to blow our budget going in so we settle for seeing it from afar followed by ice cream, after all the best view of a castle is the outside! We miss Monachil already and are happy when its time to go back. A quick stop at a trendy bar to watch the sunset before going back to our hut.

October 15th and its my birthday!!! Yippeee! We get up to watch the sun rise over the mountains but we time it wrong so an hour later and we're still waiting! We give up and get ready to go hiking in the Sierra Nevada. Omelette and toast for breakfast...oh wait, James left the bread outside last night and its been stolen by an animal. Omelette for breakfast. On our way to Los Cahorros we find our host's herd of goats and one nearly falls asleep when I tickle it behind the ears, I blinkin' love goats i do. The hike is an interesting one as there are rope bridges to tackle and parts where you wonder how on earth to get past. There are handles in some of the rocks and parts where you have to step down into rivers or crawl on hands and knees, it definitely wasn't boring. It was up and down all the way and the high bits gave us such a fantastic view of the mountains (and James the opportunity to stand precariously on the edge of big rocks) while the low bits were full of rivers, caves and hidden paths. After a couple of hours we somehow take a wrong turn and have to navigate down the mountain which results in me falling on my butt inches away from a spikey plant, phew! Back at the hut we get changed as James is treating me to a fancy meal in town. Its a nice quiet restaurant and its refreshing to have a break from budget travelling. We toast my 23rd (ay,why are you laughing?!) With some bubbly before the waitress and other diners sing happy birthday to me. We top the night off with another visit to the jazz bar. It's been an awesome birthday, cheers James!

Enjoying Los Cahorros

Stop bouncing, you're wobbling it!

Hanging Out 

Best hike everrrrr!

King of the mountains 

Pretty food for a birthday treat 

Doing a Miley (again), oh and the Alhambra over there somewhere 

Elvis' new friend visiting our hut 

Hanging out at the pool