Meandering in Andalucia

Thank you Ali and Tricia for the comments. We tried waiting later before starting to eat, but still no-one came. I think that many people eat a big lunch (we've certainly seen this). As far as our car is concerned, when it comes to mountain roads we're considering hiring a donkey to add additional horsepower!
Now that it's April 14th, I've got to try to cram our first five days in Andalucia into one post if I can. Otherwise I'll never be able be able to catch up. We arrived at La Joya over a mountain road and drove right through the village before we'd realised what we'd done. At that point I had to confess to Faith that I hadn't printed out the map or address of the place we are staying, and we had to start up the laptop by the side of the road so that we could find our way in. La Joya village is small - a village centre with a fountain, a bakery and a smattering of little shops and bars. The shops are the typical Spanish ones, hidden behind door curtains and not looking like shops at all until you go inside. Down a pretty side-road, Calle de Almeda, behind whitewashed walls and a green gate, we found Cortijo la Joya. If you visit the website Apartamentos Andalucia, you'll get a good idea of what the place is like. It's a cortijo - a farmstead - over 300 years old, converted into apartments of different sizes, but all opening onto the courtyard in various ways, by doors or stairs or passageways. It still has the intimate "feel" of a building designed for an extended family. As in any place, the people are interesting to talk with, and our first evening included a lovely long session talking together with the some of the other residents and travellers heres. First among these, I guess, has to be Heino, the owner. He's German, though living in Eire, and running the ICT suite in Wexford College; he spends his time between there and La Joya. Heino's made us very welcome very quickly - he's avuncular, engaging and a good really good conversationalist. Other people who are permanent, or semi-permanent fixtures are: Dave, the quiet and helpful 'oiler of wheels'; Linn, the manageress, who lives in a nearby village, but works here part-time doing the business side of things very efficiently; and a bevy of local women who come in to clean and generally bustle about. And then there's us, the visitors: Faith and me, of course, in our little apartment, El Chaparral, with its cosy sitting room








and romantic balcony overlooking the mountains in the distance.










The bedroom opens onto the balcony, so we can leave the door open and hear the nightingales singing in the copse just across the road.







Across the courtyard is an English couple, oder than us, with a couple of friends sharing their apartment with them; and another couple with a grown-up daughter (who is in the apartment below ours). Finally, in the apartments upstairs, on the east side of the courtyard is a Romanian family (or families?) who may be semi-permanent rather than visiting. They're here for the seasonal work in the fields, picking beans and. later, peas. They're friendly and gregarious, and go out together as it's just getting light. That's our little community, and we mix and mingle among one another in a quite interesting way. Faith, for example, has just discovered that the woman across the way went to Durham and did botany, so they're now sitting together with a pile of books, identifying plants and talking about Faith's ex-boyfriend, who they both seem to know! Since arriving, we've shared our time between Antequera and the mountains. You can read about Antequera in guide books, but what's fascinated us has been its Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations. These involve the whole town cramming the streets over 5 days to watch enormous holy statues being paraded through the town from church to church. It sounds quite simple, but there layers of meaning and activity! For example, the day before yesterday, we stood in the square outside the looming church of San Sebastian as a crowd of excited children ran through the road ahead of a squad of very 'Mediterraneo' soldiers, who came past at a fast trot, flourishing rifles and cornets. The squad stood to rigid attention in the square as the graphic statue of the horribly flogged, crawling, Christ was carried from the church on the shoulders of six of their strongest and paraded in font of us to the sound of the soldiers singing a hymn, accompanied by cornets and muffled drums. Add to this the huge image of Mary, standing on a crescent moon and dressed in a glittering robe, that we saw in the parade on Palm Sunday, and you get an idea of the melange of cultures at work during Semana Santa.

The mountains around us are rocky and wild. There are plenty of farm roads to cortijos in the hills, but very few paths other than goat tracks once you wander off them. Any paths shown on maps are an indication of a possible route rather than a strict representation of a right of way. So, on Monday, when we decided to climb Camorro Alto, the local mountain, we spent a lot of our time picking our way amongst limestone pavement and outcrops, with lots of 'oohing' and 'aahing' over the plants as we went. The blue one here is a hedgehog plant, Erinacea anthyllis that we saw on the way down. The summit is up above to the left, and the flat area below is where we saw the scary shepherd .. read on. We hardly saw a soul; a farmer was burning his olive thinnings in one farm, and, further up the mountain a shaggy looking shepherd with a sun browned face and wild hair kept his distance from us as he watched the flocks (we wondered if he was some kind of Old Gregg of the mountain, but didn't get close enough to make an assessment). Yesterday we explored el Chorro where there is a mighty ravine, soaring Griffon Vultures and vertiginous mountain raods, but also evidence that if they don't get substantial rain soon, there are going to be some very dry reservoirs by the end of the Summer. Today we're staying close to home so that we can do things like this, getting the blog up to date and identifying plants.