Plank Road: Costa de la Luz

Yesterday’s fiasco provided us with fodder to laugh about and a lesson in navigating the tiny one-way streets of hill towns. We find it virtually impossible to drive to a location in the car, we have to park, get out and walk. All would be fine, but the little towns have a myriad of one way streets and impossible corners which just bamboozles the GPS. Also, we had the GPS on pedestrian mode in one town while on foot, which we needed, but forgot to switch to car mode in the next town while we were trying to find our hotel. We were convinced that the GPS had gone totally cuckoo as it was directing us to go the wrong way around the roundabouts, when it was we who were going cuckoo.

After finding the hotel on foot, we then needed to find the parking lot, oh.my. Around and around we went, just when we finally found the proper street and were heading in the direction of the tiny lot up a steep hill, a car comes down and we have to back around a minuscule corner. Spanish bystanders to the rescue. I showed the map to a local man and his young daughter, they know everything, of course, and figure out we are staying in the hotel and are trying to get to the parking lot, we are on the correct street. So the Spanish man directs us with hand signals and we do a 10 point turn while backing up, keeping in mind we have a micro car, around the tiny corner, to let the car by. Then we get up the street and pull into the small parking lot.

I don’t know what the receptionist thought as it took us a hundred years to get back to the hotel. As far as check-in goes, they are very casual about things, having only taken our passports, which is standard, they hand them back and no credit card is needed to secure the room, no paying in advance, nothing. So we drift off to the room which is all marble floors and high ceilings, an old hotel, but the beds and pillows were like slabs of rock.

We spent the evening downing a bottle of wine and eating a few snacks while the Internet chugged along. Luckily some people are up late and we took the apartment of the first person to get back to us.

This morning we headed to the main plaza in Medina Sidonia and took a seat at a table outside in the morning sun and downed two café con leches each, total rocket fuel, needed badly. Then we took a walk around, got a town map from the tourist centre, discovered our hotel was just down the street so went back and checked out. Then we went to the supermercado to stock up on food.

The supermercado has free parking if you buy groceries, but we cannot figure out how to manage the whole process. In the last city, same grocery chain, all you had to do was hand the cashier the parking ticket and they scanned it in and you simply waved the grocery receipt in-front of the terminal to exit the parking lot, yeah, never assume anything.

We put the ticket into the machine at the exit point, it speaks to us in Spanish and the gate won’t open, then a few cars line up behind us, they figure out immediately that we are idiots and back up. We back up and stop, I get out with ticket and grocery receipt and head back to the store. I accost a cashier even though she is serving customers and with my dreadful ‘perdone, problemo’ while pointing at the ticket and grocery receipt. She kindly takes me by the hand, walks me over to the parking pay machine in the store, puts in the tickets, gets one back out that will obviously open the gate. I turn the wrong way and am about to take the wrong exit to the street and she then hails me and waves at me to proceed in the proper direction. I am all ‘muchas gracias’ and race off to the parking lot, we exit successfully and then the locals watch us drive around the roundabout a few times while the GPS finds its brain. Oh yes, travel is a humbling experience.

We are in a small beach resort town, which really isn’t our thing, but we are in the old section and it is pretty quiet, just the locals and maybe some visiting Spanish. This is the beautiful section of Spanish coast, on the Atlantic, the beaches are stunning and go on for miles. Yesterday, while en route from Granada, we drove the coast road, through the development gone mad, Costa del Sol, on the Mediterranean. It does not even look like Spain, it is mini Britain, lots of English signs and as I understand it, there are lots of Northern Europeans there as well. The Spanish visit the Costa de la Luz, where we are.

After getting to our apartment, on foot, the Spanish speaking locals who are assigned to clean and greet us, show us everything while speaking Spanish, we smile and nod and all is well. After some lunch, we went for a two hour walk up the beach, we could have walked forever.

Oh, the Spanish are fine, fine people. They are always ready to help and are calm about it all, lovely people in a lovely country.

Medina Sidonia - an orange tree is growing in the midst of steps