El Contador, Almeria, Spain.
Welcome to a world of sunshine, where the almond trees grow, the sky is always blue and the English are invading.
We arrived in Spain almost two weeks ago on our Ryan Air flight. After a mad crush to get on the plane (everyone wants to be first as you choose your seats), we sat for three hours with whining teenagers and crying babies. To give you some idea of their annoying-level, when we got off the plane an English girl whined that ´its too hot mummy, I want to go home`. Luckily our baggage arrived – apparently 20% of all baggage on English flights does not – and we meet my aunt, Geraldine, and uncle, Christopher outside. After a two-hour drive from Almeria we arrived in El Contador.
Geraldine and Christopher have lived in Spain for two and half years now and have renovated their own house in a little village in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. El Contador is a proper Spanish village with an approximate population of 240, only 12 of which are English. The village is 1200 metres above sea level, in a basin in the mountains, and the weather is fantastic. We have endured one cloudy morning in two weeks and the rest of the time the sun has shined. El Contador has two bars, one shop and lots of dogs and cats roaming the streets. The houses look exactly like they should, with white walls, terracotta roofs, flat terraces and vine leaves growing up the sides.
Most evenings my aunt and I have taken her dog, Dexter, for a walk round the village. She speaks to all the old men who sit around outside their houses waiting for their wives to finish doing all the work. Dexter chases the cats and smells all the dogs who roam freely around the village. These dogs tend to be of the small, yappy type, my personal favourite being a little white and brown spotted thing called Manolo. We have visited the bar a couple of times and had beers and tapas. Anyway, it is very nice in El Contador.
We have explored the local areas. We swam amongst the wasps in freezing pool water, visited the fruit and clothing market, and had coffee in the cafes in Chirivel. I experienced a nerve-wracking hair colour in Velez Rubio. The nerve-wracking part resulted from the hairdresser not speaking English and me not speaking Spanish. Geraldine explained what I wanted in Spanish though and I ended up with a good colour and fringe thicker than one I have ever had before. Christopher took us out into the Sierra Nevada National Park in a 4-wheel-drive where we saw all the almond trees growing and went up into the mountains and back down again. We visited an old Spanish castle/fortress in Velez Blanco and stopped at a monastery-cum-expensive retreat hotel in the mountains.
Geraldine and Christopher have also taken us shopping in Albox. Albox has a population one-fifth English, where people migrate to so that they can hold car boot sales in the sun and speak slowly and loudly to Spanish shop assistants in English. Not that Ollie and I can talk, our Spanish is still pretty limited to ‘lo siento, no hablo espanol’, ‘I’m sorry, I do not speak Spanish’. However, we have had help from Geraldine who is fluent and are making some progress. Ollie managed to order our entire dinner in Spanish the other night with some help from the Spanish-English menu.
One of the best days involved a drive out into the mountains, up and down some very steep and windy roads to Mini Hollywood, now named Oasys we discovered after much confusion in finding the place. Mini Hollywood is a kind of themed place set up in Europe’s only desert, Tabernas Desert, where they use to film the old Spaghetti Westerns. Directors filmed parts of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Magnificent Seven and A Fist Full of Dollars here, and more recently parts from the new Indiana Jones film. The setting is amazing. I managed to upload a few photos to our new photo site and the background you see in the photos is not drawn on a massive piece of cardboard but actually exists. We saw a live cowboy show, stuck our heads in a wanted poster and stocks, went round the zoo and had some lunch in the middle of a mountainous desert.
Two days ago Ollie and I decided to take a trip out to Granada to see the Alhambra. We booked some accommodation and headed off by bus. Three hours later, having driven past solar panel fields, wind farms and houses literally built into the sides of mountains, we arrived in Granada. We managed to figure out the local Spanish buses into the centre of the city. However, we did not manage to figure out when to get off the bus and ended up backtracking for an hour, luckily only with our small backpacks, until we found the second bus we needed to catch. We made it to our hotel eventually and got to sit down in our shoebox room.
Later we explored the shopping area of the city and got some dinner in a Spanish courtyard where the Spanish ate. We sat outdoors and every once in a while the overhead sprinkler system would shoot out a spray of mist to cool the diners down but you could barely see the table next to you when it happened and the water was freezing so it seemed a bit strange. The food here has not been that great. Usually, you can choose between some type of meat, chips and reheated frozen vegetables, my stomach has been somewhat disappointed with the offerings. However, I did try gazpacho soup and, surprisingly, liked it quite a lot.
The next day I got up early to go and queue for tickets to the Alhambra. Luckily, we choose our hotel because it faced the entrance to the Alhambra, as I ended up leaving at 7.45 am and joining a queue of approximately 200 people. By the time the tickets sales opened at 8.30 the queue behind me stretched as far behind again. The Alhambra stands above Granada on a hill site, completely walled in, and contains the ruins of an 11th Century Fortress, a 14th Century Palace and some elaborate gardens. The design of the gardens include fountains, tunnels of trees and flowers to walk under, ponds and elaborately decorated garden buildings with amazing views over the city. The Fortress is the most ruined area of the Alhambra but most of it is still standing and you get to climb up to its different levels. The Palace is renowned for how well it’s extremely decorative rooms with elaborate floor tiling, Arabic decorated walls and intricate ceilings have survived. Have a look at the pictures here if you want some idea of its design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra. We left Granada that afternoon after the Alhambra on the bus to come back to Geraldine’s.
Tomorrow, we take the 8-hour train up to Barcelona to begin proper backpacking, without relatives to stay with - it is daunting but exciting.
From Ollie and Sophie.
