Some travel experiences are universal… the good old car rental experience is one of them. I sometimes wonder if car rental companies purposely design their experiences to make us confused and impatient so that we just sign on the line to get out! This one took an hour, 4 people milling about at the back of a transit van, and a new feature… start and finish with a 1/4 tank. Impossible to judge!
The final section of our Spanish trip includes the drive South West from Granada to Algeciras, before continuing on to Tarifa via bus. It’s about a 4 hour drive with a couple of stops along the way. The whole drive is still in Andalusia, although the landscape changes from the olive trees to more open spaces with towns dotted along the way. The train line snakes nearby, a huge investment in infrastructure to have it raised for km after km.
Did you know… this region produces about 1.4 million tonnes of olive oil each year, approximately 50% of the world’s oil. It’s big business!
One of my favourite features of the road trip has been the signs. You pretty quickly work out the different speed signs and rules about overtaking. Other signs are pretty unique, but fit for purpose – their cartoon like images certainly get the message across that not everyone is travelling at the same pace. the use of metres to show distance (rather than km) felt very odd… at times 3000m to go seemed more like a horse race than a road.
While the signs may be brief, the street names often are not. ‘Calle Don Francisco Carillo de Mendoza y Morales’ was quite a mouthful for the navigator and her very poor Spanish accent.
Ronda is a picturesque mountaintop town, famous for it’s location on on top of the El Tajo gorge, the Puento Neuvo bridge, and it’s role in modern bullfighting. It’s a public holiday in Spain today (Labour Day, 1 May) so Ronda was packed with tourists.
You enter the town through a gradual slope, and it’s only later that you realise it’s literally on the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop providing great views over the valley. Photos of the town from above show how amazing the location is!
The Puento Neuvo Bridge was completed in 1793, and is one of three bridges that span the gorge. It stands 98m high, and from the town you’d have no idea how significant it is. It’s quite an engineering feat!
From Ronda we headed down the mountains to the coast at Marbella, a resort town known for it’s amazing beaches and resorts along the mediterranean sea. We are so fortunate to have the white sand of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts on our doorstep! A quick dip in the mediterranean was a great way to freshen up. Love the way that holiday makers in these parts turn their bed to maximise the sun (even though it puts their back to the sea), a bit like a flower following it throughout the day!
The car was deposited in Algeciras with 1/2 a tank of fuel (car hire company win…) for us to get the bus on to Tarifa. This area feels completely different – as a port city close with strong ties to North Africa you can feel that this is much more diverse than other areas of Spain that we’ve seen.
We finally made it to Tarifa, and were given a little rooftop apartment with great views across the town, over the Strait of Gibraltar, and to Northern Africa. Octopus for dinner and a little stroll through the town… beautiful evening for our last night in Spain.
We’re literally looking forward to our trip to Morocco tomorrow!
Love M & A x
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