Weekend Road Warrior

Alright, so apparently my weekends will be pretty much amazing for most of my semester here, at least if I go by the last two. Anyway, this past weekend was maybe not as fun as the weekend before but it was so much more beautiful that it all equals out.

Friday we left bright and early for Gibraltar, which was about a 4 hour drive maybe? I can't remember exactly. I think I fell asleep through a good portion of the bus ride. Anyway, we arrived at the border of Spain and the United Kingdom (yes, the UK. Gibraltar is controlled by Great Britain). We passed through passport control with the guy in the booth giving nothing more than a glance at our passports...apparently Gibraltar isn't particularly a target for anyone violent, which is good to here. Our group of just over 20 students and our director Wayne (who, it turns out, is actually a pretty chill guy) took a roundabout route to the cable car station for the Rock. No, not Alcatraz. That's a different Rock. This Rock is one of the Pillars of Hercules and the European side of the Straits of Gibraltar. We took the cable car up to the top, getting a fantastic view of the town of Gibraltar, as well as the bay and the Straits. While our cable car was pulling into the summit station, we had the living daylights frightened out of us by two slightly suicidal monkeys who dashed across the spot and up the stairs. I'd like to say only the girls jumped out of their skins, but I'd be lying.

The Rock of Gibraltar provides one of the most unbelievable views I have ever witnessed...and I've been on top of the Alps. Okay, so that was probably better, but this was very different, and I wasn't bundled up. Anyway, playing around the monkeys (they had a lot of signs that said don't play WITH the monkeys as they would bite or steal your food...saw that happen too), and just jumping around the summit of the Rock was pretty cool. There were some ruins apart from the cable car station that were pretty fun to walk and climb around in, providing some damn good shots of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. I even climbed up on a 9' wall to take a picture of Gibraltar and the coast of Africa...I think it was Morocco, but I can't be sure. Anyway, that is something that must be seen with one's own eyes to believe...or just look at my pictures once I get back. My little group decided to hike down the Rock for the hell of it and it turned out to be a good choice. Coming around a bend we came upon some old British artillery pieces, though I couldn't tell ya from what era. They looked like big naval guns dug into the hillside, and we took some very fun pictures with them. We also may or may not have scribbled on one of the guns with names and the year and whatnot :P Finding our way off the Rock, we joined up with some classmates in a restaurant called Piccadilly's and I finally had a meal I could truly enjoy: a ham panini and garlic bread. Scrumptious! You can't imagine how much I miss real sandwiches. Sheesh.

We only spent the afternoon in Gibraltar, seeing as how it is only a small town and our hotel was actually several hours away, so we jumped back on the bus (my group was slightly tardy to the meeting place...oops) and headed Northeast to some small pueblo en Malaga. The hotel was pretty baller, and it was just up the street from the beach. So we threw down our stuff in the hotel (and were promptly shocked by our room...it was huge! I didn't think European hotels made them like that, minus suites for presidents and movie stars and whatnot) and prepared to go out for the night. Anyway, that plan turned out to be a bust, so about half of us went down the beach and walked along the edge of the water 'til we came to the jetty marking the end of the beach. I figured it'd be fun to walk to the end of the jetty (mind you, barefoot and in the dark down to the end of an all rock jetty) and I guess my adventurous spirit convinced the people with me to come to. They all made it out without injury and all agreed it was worth it once we all sat down. I felt as nimble as a mountain goat hopping from rock to rock without worry while everyone else was very careful and timid. We called it a night shortly thereafter.

Saturday morning we went to the caves of Nerja which were very beautiful. Made me understand the beauty of Nature versus that of Man, and I may have decided that there was no architecture created by Man that could rival that of Mother Nature. Las cuevas de Nerja (the caves) also contain the largest naturally-formed central column in the world. No kidding, they have a plaque saying it's in the Guinness Book. It was astounding. My pictures couldn't do anything near justice to the immenseness of that column, or to any of the rock formations in the caves really. But alas, c'est la vie. You shoot what you can, and hope it comes out alright (which probably would have happened if I had realized that I could take better pictures by changing the aspect ratio on my camera...but NOOOOoooo I didn't find that out 'til Ronda on Sunday). After the caves, the bus took us into the pueblo of Nerja to the Balcon de Europa. This is an absolutely gorgeous place set on some cliffs overlooking some magnificent beaches and looking over the Mediterranean. I took a lot of pictures there too. Couldn't help myself, so most of the pictures might look a lot alike :) After, we returned to our hotel and most of us hit the ocean again. There was a big grouping of rocks about 200m out from shore so most of us decided to swim out to it. Initially, it was only 4 of us, and we had some difficulty with our first assessment of how to scale the rocks (I bashed my knee and one of the girls had a finger snapped by something...). The second group had much more success, so I got a good deal of exercise swimming back out and climbing up. The rock was very nice actually, and we all got a pretty fun picture from it. Check it out on Facebook. We concluded the evening with some pool time to wash off the sand, then drinking, dinner at a local cafeteria (I had a delectable pizza margharita) and then a few hours of Asshole with a side of more drinking (Be warned: That game can get slightly vicious if played while drinking. I kept becoming the Asshole on dumb rules too...) Some people decided to go out but I was feeling slightly unhappy about the card game so I decided to pass out in my room.

Woke up very well rested Sunday morning, and our group caught the bus to our next destination: Ronda. Now, Ronda is another small pueblo, but one with some very BIG attractions. That's both literal and figurative. In fact, the big attraction is a man-made bridge that spans over a GIGANTIC gorge at least 1000 feet deep. And it's man-made all the way from the bottom, brick by brick all the way up. I have no idea how anyone can figure out how to do that kind of construction when I used to have so much trouble with my Legos. But the fact is it was a marvelous sight to behold. Plus, the absolutely magnificent landscapes shots I was able to take helped a lot. I spent my time in Ronda with my friends Dino and Kathryn, and before descending into the gorge (Dino took a lot of convincing from Kathryn and me) we sat down at a lovely little Churreria (a churro joint). Now, this was my first authentic Spanish churro, and it was delectable! Imagine a funnel cake without the sugar, and now imagine every piece being ripped off dipped in thick amazing hot chocolate. That's what I got to eat. Probably lost a year off my life for every bite I took, but I consider those years well-wasted. After our heavenly churro experience, we had to do a bit of searching to find the gap in the wall (Stardust allusion anyone?) to descend. Fortunately, it didn't take us too long, and we were on our way into the gorge. The winding path was pretty and afforded us some breathtaking views of the landscape, but it wasn't until we were about halfway down that we got some truly wonderful shots of the bridge. Plus, I got to talk to a kind German woman to take a picture for us, so I considered it a successful descent. One of us (probably Dino) checked a watch and realized we had to head back to the bus, so we regretfully turned our backs to the views and climbed back up, though I think there was at least one more picture taken along the way. We picked up some postcards back in town, met up with our group, and headed back to the bus. Of course, our director Wayne didn't know Ronda, so we ended up getting lost and taking a few wrong turns, but we made it to the bus more or less on time, and returned to Sevilla content with a successful and beautiful weekend.