Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

Last night around 11pm the usual Sunday night calm we've become accustomed to was absolutely shattered by the din from dozens of car horns, people yelling and shouting in the streets, and a lone foghorn blasting away.

Not knowing what was going on and suspecting the apocalypse we sneaked a peek outside the front door and not seeing any reason not to go further we gingerly stepped out a bit further.

Silly us, if only the TV was on the right channel we would have known the reason, but no, we were watching the continuing saga that is Spanish Idol, completely oblivious to the football on the other channel.

If we were a little more observant we would have known that Real Madrid had just clinched the Spanish Championship League Cup beating Osasuna 2-1 with a man down due to penalties.

So now we know how the Spanish celebrate a football win. I am certain several of the locals wouldn't have made it to work this morning, at least not if the noise was any indication of the amount of alcohol (cerveza) consumed.

BTW, the locals whether drunk or sober don't pronounce Madrid they way we would in English. They say something that sounds like 'Maahdrih', the final syllable is short with a rolled 'r', and the final 'd' is almost silent. I have no idea if this is just the local Ronda dialect but its fascinating nevertheless.

From time to time you get distracted by other things and wander off on a tangent like I've done for the last week, and since a blog is meant to be a personal journey I haven't been too worried about updating it. Although when I logged in this morning I found a couple of comments and a few emails wondering where I am and what I'm doing. So, for those people, I'm OK.

The countryside in Southern Spain has become quite green recently, the rains back in early February really helped and over the last few days we've had some more, so as you can see it isn't all desert like at the moment. In fact we're really starting to love the look of the countryside here, the rocks are starting to become friends, and the more you see them or walk over them the more you realize how attractive they are.

Many of the peaks around these parts are limestone which is what gives them that really sharp angular look. Being limestone the rock is a light grey, almost silver in the harsh afternoon sun. Places where there have been rock falls are the most interesting though, that exposes a lovely orange colored rock that turns a wonderful shade of shimmering orange at sunset.

These rocky fall areas are also where you get to see some of the most beautiful little mountain gardens. What happens is that a bunch of rocks fall and splinter into many smaller rocks and of course the small amount of top soil somehow manages to find its way to the top within these crevices. Read More

You really need to see this photo large, go ahead, click it, isn't that one of the most spectacular looking lizards you've ever seen?

I've been trying to photograph one of these for about a week or so, I found a small nest of them in the heart of Ronda in the garden overlooking the Puente Nuevo but we've had to go to the garden everyday for the last week just to get one photo, and I must say I was very proud of myself for finally getting this.

My little friend here is about 15cm long and this picture was taken from about 1 meter away, I couldn't get any closer, and I've had to crop about 60% of the photo. Sorry about the lack of focus on the rocks above the lizard, unfortunately he was about to run away from me and I just had to snap real fast. From what I've been able to research it seems this is a Podarcis hispanicus "morphotype 2", otherwise known as a Spanish (Iberian) Wall Lizard.

Acinipo is literally a ruin, there is no town left to give any idea of what the place must have been like in Roman times. These days its a hillside with numerous piles of rocks and just three excavations, one of which is what's left of the Ampitheater.

We drove up there yesterday because the sky was a lovely clear blue which doesn't happen here very often. You see being up on the mountains between the Mediterranean and the Iberian plateau the clouds get stuck here and tend to sit quite low meaning we often get really bad haze even though there is no smog. Yesterday then should have been a rare opportunity to get some great snapshots.

Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the reason the sky was so clear was because the wind had turned, so instead of balmy winds of the south, we were not getting freezing cold winds from the north. And Acinipo sits at the top of an escarpment that is as exposed as you can get in these parts. I pity the poor buggers who had to live there a couple of thousand years ago when they didn't have gore-tex or central heating. Read More