Episodio 31: Avocado/Abogado?

The other day I read this pretty amazing article about avocados. Not that the article itself was all that amazing, being about the rather depressing news that avocado prices will probably continue to increase. What amazed me was that they quoted not one, but two, “avocado gurus” – which reminded me, for reasons that will become clear, that I owe one episode about the rest of our time in Spain.

When Episodio 30 ended, we were getting ready to move from our country home in the mountains to our villa by the beach. What a change of scenery! We went from a secluded cottage with incredible views on a lonely mountain road near a traditional Spanish village, to a completely closed-in compound in a sea of compounds in a bustling and touristy area that turned out to be some kind of German retirement community.

We had a lovely garden. But this gate was pretty intimidating.

This picture completely fails to capture how terrifying the highway was. You had to go from a full stop to fit in with traffic whizzing by at at least 80km/hour. Which, coming from our windy mountain roads where you could not really even get up to the speed limit of 50km/hour, was a bit of a shock.

At first we swore that we were going to leave the car in the garage for the whole month. Happily, there were busses available to easily take us into the nearest town, Marbella, in about 15 minutes.

Lots of narrow streets and pathways

… Really cool old churches …

Marbella is where Salvador Dali was born, and they have a row of Dali sculptures heading down to the beach

During our time here, one of my uncles came to stay with us and he kindly babysat for us one evening so we could go out on the town. Our plan was to grab a taxi (the busses didn’t run very late) in the hopes of catching a flamenco show.

We got off to a bit of a rough start when we completely failed at ordering a cab (two attempts to call one resulted in us being brusquely hung up on by the dispatcher who was not as patient as the people in Colmenar had been about our crappy Spanish). We decided to walk down to one of the restaurants on the beach with the idea that they would call a cab for us, but when we got there we found that the restaurants were already closed. Undeterred, we figured we would just walk the eight kilometres to town, along the beach. But what is a walk along the beach without wine? So we went to our local depanneur, where unfortunately all the wine bottles had corkscrews in them and we didn’t have a bottle opener with us. What option were we left with but to get a bottle of cavo instead? Finally, properly provisioned, we set off on our journey…

The beach was lovely but an hour and a half later we were pretty happy to find ourselves on city streets instead of sand, and we made our way towards the old part of town. Of course, I had left my phone behind with my uncle so he could use it to reach us if there were any problems at home, but my phone also had the address of the flamenco bar we’d been planning to go to. Having made it this far, of course we were not giving up, but we decided we would just see what we could find rather than having a specific destination. And what we found was a tiny bar that had about four patrons and a classical Spanish guitar player who was being accompanied by the waitress when she had a few minutes.

Eventually we got to chatting with the waitress and, after the usual initial pleasantries she asked me what I did. In Spanish I said “Soy abogado”, and then in English I said, “I always get the words for ‘avocado’ (aguacate) and ‘lawyer’ mixed up. I’m a lawyer, not an avocado!” We both laughed and we talked for a few more minutes about what I did, I told her who I worked for, and she asked if I do a lot of paperwork (I do).

Then she said, “but avocados mostly come from Mexico, no? How do you get by without knowing much Spanish?”

Uh oh. By this point, we had been talking for long enough that to have to go back and explain that, no, I don’t work in the avocado industry, that I am not an avocado guru, and that both our understandings of the conversation that had just happened were apparently wrong, just seemed super awkward. So I went with it and for the rest of the evening I was introduced as an avocado importer and expert. Luckily no other purported produce gurus showed up, and I think I managed to get away with it ! Now I’m wondering if I should consider a change in career….

Anyway, after a few days we were relatively used to being in traffic again, and we managed to get the car out for a couple of road trips. First, a day trip to Gibraltar:

Waiting for the bus at Gibraltar airport

On the gondola on our way to see …

Monkeys!!!!

They let you get super close to them

So many monkeys! They were actually climbing on people and cars, but this was about as close as I wanted to get to them

I did share a touching moment with one, on our way back down the hill

Where we went to a tavern that made some unverified claims regarding its history…

Having managed to have a proper British pint, a few days we made a foray into the Spanish countryside, to visit Ronda, which is known for El Tajo, the giant canyon that carves the city in two.

It was supposed to be about an hour’s drive from where we were staying. But we got stuck behind this truck for most of the way, which was, once again, narrow windy roads.

I was actually considering doing an entire episode about Spanish road signs, which are awesome. This was my favourite – I can only assume it means “Caution – you are being pursued by two ninjas who are aggressively driving their motorcycles”

The statute outside what is apparently Spain’s oldest bullring.

Yup, that’s a pretty big gorge

This is outside of the Casa del Rey Moro, which wikipedia describes as “to some extent a fraud”

We paid our two bits which allowed us to visit the Casa del Rey garden and, more importantly…

… the water mine, about two hundred steps carved into the gorge for slaves to carry water up from the river. The castle and garden were apparently built long after the Moors were gone. But the water mine itself is legit.

We made it to the bottom! I was glad not to be the one carrying J-bear on the way back up

Ronda also featured a “cheese & ham boutique”. Amazing!

And among many other old buildings, a pretty neat church

This was all well and good, but really we had come to this neck of the woods for some sun and sand, and the beach is where we spent a lot of time.

Our villa was not right on the beach, but this was our walk, so that was OK

J-bear was a little bit tentative, but managed to get his feet in the water

The weather didn’t always cooperate, but we still managed to get down to the water most days

All in all, this was a pretty great way to spend a couple of months. However, after being vagabonds for awhile, we were definitely looking forward to getting back to Canada and settled into our new home in Ottawa. Once we finally finish unpacking, maybe I’ll work on “season 2” of meginthenorth!