Jo's Travels

Anyway onto Ronda, a fabulous white washed village on top of a gorge. We travelled for 2 hours from Malaga on the coast, on the local bus passing rows and rows of olive trees, cork trees and strangely lemon trees, white washed villages just sort of in the middle of nowhere. Its a very dry landscape and also very rocky, lots of hills and people harvesting the olives. We have enjoyed the constant changing of landscapes here in Spain. Finally arrived in Ronda to view an amazing landscape. Decided not to tour the bullring which is the oldest in Spain, as our tour in Madrid gave us plenty of info, also decided not to go to a bull fight. Firstly, its very expensive for the good seats which aren´t in the sun it can cost around 100 euros, but we have seen it on TV and we can appreciate the history and tradition of it, but its just so cruel. However, if the judge decides that the bull is doing very well, he will decide to let it win and therefore it gets put to stud and never has to go into the ring again. So sometimes there´s a happy ending. Anyway, back to Ronda..

After viewing walking over the massive bridge and taking in all the views from every angle, we saw a restaurant on the gorge. So Kev ordered the local specialty, Oxtail Stew, which wasn´t too bad, but we just enjoyed the view from the restaurant.

Ronda - photo 1

Ronda - photo 2

Ronda - photo 3

Got back and went out for a tapas tour, the bars here in Malaga, being on the beach, have displays of all different small cuts of seafood for frying up tapas style. Met 2 guys from Holland and Switzerland at a tapas bar, they were just here for some sun and a 2 week Spanish course. We were mentioning how lucky they were living in Europe, where they could ski, visit any country in no time at all and come to Spain for a tan, and asked if they´d ever visit Australia. The Swiss guy answered, ´why would I travel for 1 day to visit Australia, its only 220 years old´. We excused ourselves and left after that. We mightn´t have over 1000 year old buildings, fantastic art and culture, but we´ve got beauty and wide open spaces, and culture all of our own. They don´t know what they´re missing!