Day 18 began with a professional difference between Johnny and the sat nav lady. After a breakfast down the road from the hotel in a bright modern cafe, we dealt with the seventy odd emails that had come overnight for John and set off for Malaga. My boss must be at school because the torrent of "dear leaders" emails and requests have already begun. I am following my New Years resolution and studiously ignoring them till I get back to Oz.
The sat nav wanted to take us via the fast route of freeway travel along the coast. Johnny wanted to take us the winding, perilous but picturesque rout through the high sierras of the national park. After a few circuits of the city and some cobblestone driving which felt like we were inside people's front garden, we hit the open road.
The landscape quickly turned from vast green and brown plains and valleys to a rugged, limestoney landscape of enormous mountains. Their peaks, and what peaks they were, were hidden under a blanket of cloud. The mountains rose to almost 2000 metres. While it was impossible not to be impressed by them, just as impressive was the human activity. When the national park gave way to farmland, houses had been erected in remote and impossible looking sites. Some had even terraced the sides of the mountains and threaded strips of olive trees across the surface. God knows how they harvest them. The signs warned of the danger of wandering cattle on the roads but we didn't see any and quite frankly I couldn't see how they could make their way up there.
With road twisted and wound like a flicking bullwhip and after a while it took a toll on my head and stomach. We travelled all the way to Malaga at a tortuously slow 40 miles per hour and pulled in regularly to let other traffic pass. We stopped briefly at a pretty, neat hill town for coffee. The streets were empty except for three people in the pub, someone with a death wish who had taken a camper an up those roads and a couple of housewives who were sweeping the footpath outside their house. Oh yes, I forgot, there was also a guy slowly riding a huge, magnificent, dark brown horse through the town. This was the town of Yunquera. There were some mad cyclists up on that road too. They must carry spare brake pads because they would have had to use them on each descent and there were MANY of them.
From here it was a continuous descent through Coin, all the way to Malaga. By this time the travel sickness had a grip on me and each turning kilometre felt like torture but apart from walking there, there was no choice but to bear it.
Malaga was a huge, modern, prosperous city. The streets were wide but as tangled as any of the ancient laneways we had negotiated in other cities. We did a couple of circuits as the one way system was hard to understand and sat nav lady slipped up a little bit. Johnny had chosen a hotel in the centre and walking distance to sights and restaurants. It was down a private road where you had to get out of the car and call the hotel lobby so they could turn on the green traffic lights so you could enter the street. We parked outside and they drove the car off to their offsite parking place. Though a modern hotel, they had no ramp and a steep series of steps up to the check in desk.
I wanted nothing more than to put my head down so fully clothed I got into bed, while Johnny tackled a painfully slow internet connection, taking a couple of hours to research and make a booking for the next accommodation in Granada and finally Cordoba. A couple of hours later I felt steady enough for us to take a walk out and in the nearby street there was a plaza where we got a cup of coffee and a very late lunch roll. This plaza had lots of well known shops and it was a natural magnet for beggars but they went away if you refused them. I think their thinking was wrong. The people who frequented this area were people who seemed to have a lot of money. They were probably in this happy situation because they were not in the habit of giving it away. Maybe the beggars would have had more luck in a place where people may have had more experience of what it was to struggle.
We ended up taking a longish walk through the mall, down to the port and along a tourist strip to a new area full of shops and cafés. It was lovely sitting quayside, in the setting sun, watching the millionaire boats bobbing in the water and sharing a yoghurt with berry topping and pomegranate.
The sun seemed to set very quickly and we walked a lushly planted, stone paved footpath across the front of the university and imposing government buildings back to the hotel. It was another rest before going out to dinner. Johnny had located us well and not 20 metres from the hotel there were loads of restaurants. We chose a seafood restaurant that had the same menu both sides of the laneway. You could have your meal in an informal drop in atmosphere or in the more polished side. You only live once so we. Hose polish and it really was a lovely meal. We had a large plate of lemony whitebait and then when I was ready to throw in the towel, a massive plate of octopus arrived. This was seriously good food and sitting by the window let us appreciate the human parade as people went out for evening shopping, dinner or just a family walk.
Tomorrow we will explore Malaga and possibly beyond.
