This is what the coffees look like in Spain - it's all espresso there, which we quickly learned to order as "cafe solo."
The guy working at the restaurant rattled off a menu to us in Spanish - nothing in writing - so we agreed on a jamon y queso tostada not really knowing exactly what a Spanish tostada was. It is a toasted sandwich! They were huge.
And that breakfast, 2 coffees and two giant sandwiches, was 6 euros. What!
We left Ronda headed toward the Cueva de la Pileta, about 20 minutes outside of town. This cave is one of the only places left in Europe where the public can see genuine prehistoric cave paintings - the more famous ones in France and Northern Spain are closed. This one, though, is still owned by the family whose patriarch discovered the cave paintings a hundred years ago, and his grandson leads the tours. You turn up at the site and climb up a hill for 10 minutes to reach the entrance, and then wait around until enough people have arrived for them to decide to give a tour.
We arrived about 1 minute after a group entered the cave, so we had to sit around for an hour waiting for the next one.
It was worth the wait. The oldest paintings are 32,000 years old, and in places they are layered over the top of each other spanning thousands and thousands of years. Seeing this place was one of the highlights of my travel life to date.
After leaving the cave, we drove through mountains for a couple of hours on roads that were frankly much more terrifying than we had anticipated. The views were great, though.
Our goal was Arcos de la Frontera, one of the other larger villages in the White Towns region. We stayed just outside of town in the Hacienda el Santiscal, which was the most magical of all the places we stayed in Spain. It was built over 500 years ago and the owner told us the government will not allow them to make any changes to the structure, as it is considered a historical landmark. It was beautiful and so quiet and peaceful.
There was even a pool! Unfortunately we did not have our suits.
We went for a walk when we arrived and ate dinner on the patio at the Hacienda, just concentrating on having a nice, relaxing evening. It was a lovely break from our time being immersed in tourism and I am definitely going to seek out places like this on future trips to break up the urban times.
Arcos was visible on the hill a few kilometers away - we planned to check it out on the way to Seville the next morning.
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