Quite a lot of references to teeth!

La Joya village isn't far off 700m above sea level, so it gets mountain weather. We experienced this the day before yesterday, when we left a breezy and slightly overcast La Joya to explore Malaga, down on the coast. It was hot down there!
We spent most of the day inside the Alcazaba, the Moorish fort and palaces that are built on a rising slope, above the remains of a 1st century A.D. Roman theatre, overlooking the estuary of the Guadalmedina river. This was the first time that Faith and I have visited Arabic buildings, and it was fascinating. As well as the moorish arches and decorations, all through the fort there are patios, fountains and ornamental water-courses, so even on a hot day like this, you could hear running water and smell orange blossom. Because it's on the Costa del Sol, I'd expected Malaga to be brash and loud, with high rise glass and steel offices and hotels, but it's quite different; a muddle of 18th and 19th century streets, like decaying teeth, gradually being renovated or demolished, newer suburban development and historical buildings. As well as the Alcazabar, there's second fort - the Gibralfaro, a neo-Moorish indoor market (like Cardiff Market a la Wilson, Keppel and Betty!), the bullring and an enormous 16th century cathedral. We'll need to go back to see more, including the Picasso collection.
There's quite a wind blowing outside, I can hear our bedroom window-shutter knocking against the wall, and the weather's turned cold this afternoon. Tom-Tom, the little black cortijo cat has curled herself up on the sofa and she's asleep with her head against Faith's canvas shoulder bag. A few minutes ago, I went up the road to the bottle bank and the bus was picking up the children for afternoon school, and so now the village is quieter than it's been almost since we got here. As long as the sun is shining, or the wind isn't up, people congregate in all sorts of places outside - on corners, in the square, in doorways or on the pavement - to talk together or just to watch things happening. Yesterday, on a walk just outside the village we saw an old man walking along the farm road next to our track; we said, "Buena, Signor," and got a huge, "Ho-o-o-la-a!" back in return. He then began talking to us delightedly, with lots of smiles and eloquent hand gestures. Unfortunately we couldn't understand a word. It wasn't just our Spanish this time, though; he had an enormous dearth of teeth, and the few that he did have were held together with bits of wire that kept them in his mouth, but didn't stop them moving about. Still, nobody seemed to mind. He seemed to be saying that everything was growing well, what with the sunny weather and the Spring showers and everything, and wasn't it marvellous that the swallows were back. On the other hand, he could have been complaining about his dentist. We (Faith and me, not the dental gentleman) carried on down our grassy track, turning over stones to look under them. We found that there are very many ants hereabouts, and some of the biggest woodlice I've ever seen. We found a Smooth Snake, too (harmless).
Perhaps the most surprising discovery was Scolopendra cingulatus, an enormous yellow and brown striped centipede. The book says they grow to 9cm, and I can vouch for it (that's my fingertip at the top of the pic.). The photo's not very good; Faith wasn't quick enough with the camera and I was too squeamish to grab at the beast as it scuttled - a good use of the word - off. Just as well, really, because we discovered later that it "possesses large fangs [and] its bite is painful and potentially dangerous".

The landscape here is very rugged. It's limestone, and so the mountains themselves are very jagged and dramatic, with steep faces or outcrops backed by long, sweeping saddles and big hanging plateaus. The villages are on the saddles and the plateaus, with fields around them as far as possible, growing cereal, peas and beans and olives; what can't be cultivated is grazed by flocks of goats that are driven out to nibble on different hillsides on different days. This may be why the wild flowers are so good, because the vegetation gets a chance to recover between goat-attacks.