Ronda

Our bus was due at 9:20. It was not there at 9:20, neither was it there at 9:25, neither was it there at 9:30, 9:40, 9:50 or even at 10:00 at which stage we decided that we wouldn’t wait any longer. Which in retrospect was a wise idea given that after visiting the travel agent we found out the bus was not going to be there until the next day. This is because the tour company had booked us in on a day when they didn’t do a tour. The agent was very good and gave us all our money back plus a little more which was nice as it wasn’t his fault and even a little exciting as while Toni was in the office I had to take the car around the block a couple of times. I say exciting but really nerve racking is more the correct term. By the time residents have parked there was barely 10cm of space either side of the car as I drove through. But given the state of the cars on the side of the road, not everyone is so careful as I am! We ended up driving to Ronda up in the mountains which turned out not to be such a bad trip any way. Ronda is a smallish town built across a very steep and narrow gorge which provides for some very M.C. Escher like photos with stairs and bridges everywhere. Aside from lunch at which I tried Gazpacho, as seen in The Simpsons, we also visited a real live bull ring but there where no shows on at the moment as it was the off season and I don’t know that I would have watched one anyway, it all seems a bit cruel to me, went to an ancient underground Arab bathhouse and didn’t climb all the way to the bottom of the gorge to go into a mine because no-one else wanted to climb down the 360 steps which was a bit disappointing as it looked pretty cool and finally just wandered the streets and generally agreed that we all wished we were teaching here as it was such a great place, sunny relaxing and just nice.