Andalucian Tour part 1

We would not have believed anyone if they had told us that the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Andalucia would overwhelm us - but they did!

Our eight-day tour of Andalucia encompassed Los Pueblos Blancos (the White Villages), Ronda, the Sierra de Las Nieves, the Sierra Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama, Granada, the Sierra de Las Alpuharras, the Sierra Nevada, the Sierra Magina, the towns of Jaen, Ubeda and Baeza, Cordoba and the coastal region from Estepona to Sotogrande.

That’s a lot of Sierras you may say and you would be right. We were unaware of the extent of mountainous country in Andalucia but it is widespread albeit that the highest peak is no more than 3600 metres.
We hired what we thought to be the smallest car in the world, a left-hand drive Kia ‘Picanto’, until we passed a gas-powered car. In fact we managed to pass two of them! In truth the small car proved to be an advantage in negotiating the narrow twisty roads, not only in the hills, but also in the narrow streets of the old quarter of Cordoba and Ubeda. The one significant drawback of this car is that the door pillar obstructs the driver’s sight line around tight left hand bends.

Los Pueblos Blancos or the White Villages are fortified hilltop settlements in the mountains around the Sierra de Cadiz and the Sierra de Ubrique, so called because of the whitewashed walls of their buildings in the Moorish style. They have their origins in Roman and then Moorish times and, although having hardly changed for centuries, are not just tourist sights but working agricultural towns.
The gateway to Los Pueblos Blancos in the Sierra Cadiz from the direction of Rota is Arcos de la Frontera, an archetypal white town with its labyrinth Moorish quarter. The principal buildings are mostly in the Gothic – Mudejar style and hang from the hillside, as is the tendency in all White Villages.
It was a beautiful sunny day with perfect visibility for our drive through the mountains.

We had a late breakfast in a café overlooking Arcos of tostada (toast) and pate taken from one of the many communal plastic tubs strewn around the counter. This may not sound hygienic but it was really tasty and none of the many locals there was dying around us!
In the valleys and on the lower slopes of the hills between Arcos and Ubrique there were citrus and Almond trees and Olive groves and as we climbed through the Villages of Benaocaz and Grazalema, the town reputed to have the highest rainfall in Spain, there were Oak tress whose bark is stripped and used for cork, pine and fir forests and massive sheer sided rocks rising to 1600 metres. Eagles were gliding on the thermals rising from the valleys.
The view from the Mirador at Puerto de las Polamas overlooking the sheer drop to the valley below and the lake stretching up to Zahara, where we took lunch, was magnificent and we could even see the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada in the distance to the west.

Our Hotel at Ronda, which was only five minutes walk from the historic centre of the town, was economical yet clean and comfortable. After checking in we walked past the bullring and over the famous Puente Nuevo (New Bridge) and, just before sunset, drank a beer on the balcony of a restaurant overhanging the ‘gorge’ and overlooking the Puente. After walking round the compact historic centre Miggy had excellent duck for supper while I tried the local delicacy of suckling pig for the first time. Whilst Miggy’s duck was overwhelmed in a rather rich date and wine sauce, my pig was perfect with moist tasty flesh covered with a delicate crackled skin.

Ronda sits on a massive rocky outcrop and straddles a precipitous limestone gorge, El Mercadillo, some 100 metres deep. The Puente Nuevo separating the old and new towns spans this gorge. One of the oldest towns in Spain, Ronda has its origins in prehistory although the most striking aspect of the cultural heritage and its surroundings is Arabic. This influence has impregnated the style of building, the gastronomy and many other traditions of the town and region. The conquest of the town by the Catholic Kings in 1485 was followed by a period of cultural reorganisation but it was in the 18th and 19th centuries that the most emblematic and symbolic monuments of Ronda were built: the Puente Nuevo and the Plaza de Toros (bullring).
The bullring is one of the oldest in Spain and is the spiritual home of bullfighting. The classic Ronda style of fighting is more severe than that of Seville and was developed by Pedro Romero, the father of modern bullfighting.

We are not aficionados of this savage ritual torment, torture and slaughter that we have both witnessed in the past: in fact we abhor it. We have some sympathy with what Paul Theroux says in his book ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ – ‘… the only satisfying part of a bullfight to me was seeing a gored Matador lying in the sand being trampled flat by a Bull’s hooves, the Bull’s horns in the supine torero’s gut. It is what ought to happen to anyone who dares torment an animal… This Bull is cruel – when I stab him he tries to gore me’.

On a brighter note before setting off we looked at the view to the mountain range to the west from the terrace outside the Ronda ‘Parador’ (one of many state run hotels of good and consistent quality) just after sunrise. The colour and contrasting shades were glorious and an ideal start for the next stage of our journey through the mountains of the Sierra Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama to Granada.