Lost in Spain: episode 3

EPISODE 3: Todo completo

Finally a petrol station emerged at a remote highway junction. I pulled in and jumped out. The glass door, obscured of transparency by a crooked gallery of smudged and faded signs (abierto, tirar, Castrol) slid stiffly open. Far from the sanitised, bright white service station in Córdoba, it smelled like a real, proper garage: black, like rubber and grease.

I bypassed the windshield wipers and aisles of motor oil and headed to the back wall of the shop, where a pegboard hidden in the gloom held a small cache of pamphlets. Poking out of a little shelf like a cheeky tongue was an orange booklet I immediately recognised.

Michelin's excellent fold-out map of Andalucía. I was found.

The drive from Córdoba to Ronda takes two-and-a-half hours, but I was rapt to pull it off in five—and grateful for air conditioning. It must have been 40 degrees Celsius. Bloody hell, I thought. I don't want to lug my pack far in this. Without a navigator to read the map I entered Ronda blind and hunted for a parking lot I hoped was close to the festivities.

Parking a car in the old town's choked and narrow streets is an absurd idea. The Feria de Pedro Romero is Ronda's biggest festival of the year, and it attracts an influx of tourists that would turn Christ himself misanthropic. But a miracle upon me, I chose a parking lot little more than a hundred metres from the centre of the old town. Sheer providence. I could not have found somewhere closer if I knew what I was doing.

The man in the wooden booth of the dusty dirt lot charged me the fiesta price of €24-for-24-hours, and I hauled my pack to a nearby hotel to enquire about a room.

“Señor, it's the feria,” said the lady at reception. “Todo completo. All the hotels are full!”

Lost in Spain: episode 2

EPISODE 2: Where the hell is Ronda?

Dramatic, cliff-top Ronda is on the edge of the Córdoba-Sevilla-Málaga triangle, a broad and rolling plain of vast skies, sweeping grainfields and long olive groves ringed by minor mountain ranges and linked by secondary roads that slink out of antique provincial hill towns. Without GPS you need a decent road map.

Michelin makes an excellent, 1:400,000 scale detailed concertina-fold map of Andalucía. I have it. In Sydney. I'd planned to catch the train to Ronda; why the hell would I pack the map? Instead, the rental agency gave me an A3-size branded place mat demarcating the entire 87,000 square-kilometre region. I squinted at it, and could make out that I was north and Ronda was south. Perfect, I thought. If I don't make it by nightfall I can just navigate by the stars.

Five minutes into my road trip I was hopelessly tangled in city interchanges. I aborted my endless figure eights and death spirals and pulled into a service station in search of a proper map. Quite sensibly they had nothing of the sort, which might tie up shelf space for chocolate bars and ¡Hola! celebrity gossip rags, so I spent the next half hour poring over tiny charts in guidebooks and brochures and muttering through clenched teeth in the front seat of the car before the obvious hit me: I have Google Maps on my mobile phone! I'd been avoiding using it so I wouldn't be slugged with roaming charges, but with financial concerns already out the window I fired it up and Googled directions. Fifteen minutes later I shot out of the city.

“Adiós Córdoba!” I bid. “Ronda, I am on my way!”

The regional roads of the southern province snake between whitewashed Andalusian towns—Écija, with its elaborate church towers jutting above the settlement like upturned table legs, Osuna surrounded by fields of sunflowers in ochre soil, and hilltop Olvera with its imposing church and Moorish castle. The great azure vault above, blindingly bright in the height of the day, spans a patchwork of land. Fields of brown dirt and straw grass alternate with hopscotch plots of low olive trees studded in precise green rows that shift in parallax as you pass them.

The sun was warm through the windshield. I drifted into a sinuous leisure as the shimmering grey ribbon of road flowed through the rural terrain, past the occasional walled farmhouse and hacienda ruin. Multi-storeyed stacks of golden hay bales in great edifices mimicked office blocks on the rural landscape.

A sudden fork in the road roused me from my languor. I pulled over and consulted Google. But there was no map. On my journey from navigational despair to digital salvation I failed to account that a hundred kilometres into the Spanish plains there is a rather complete absence of reception. My mobile phone was only useful now for beating against my head in rebuke: being lost in urban Córdoba was preferable to being lost in expanses of nowhere.

It was fifty-fifty and I wasn't getting any closer to Ronda sitting there. I picked a branch and drove on.

Lost in Spain: episode 1

EPISODE 1: Todo completo

I hauled my pack up to the window of the Córdoba train station and asked for a ticket to Ronda. At last, my goal was in sight: the Feria de Pedro Romero.

“Todo completo,” said the rail clerk. “All the trains are full.”

My heart sank. “When is the next available train?”

“Mañana.”

Tomorrow?! How had I forgotten to book ahead? The festival peaks tomorrow! I already learned this lesson before, though never with consequences worse than an extra night in Paris. Now, after months of meticulous planning, weeks of scheduling each step of my journey, and daily discipline to hit every milestone so I could get to the festival on time, it was all at risk. I kicked myself. You stupid, stupid fool.

The Feria de Pedro Romero, founded in 1954 by the famous matador Antonio Ordóñez, is held in Ronda in the first week of September. Named in honour of Ronda's great eighteenth-century toreador and father of modern bullfighting, the fair climaxes on the anniversary of Romero's 200th birthday with the Corrida de la Goyesca: a bullfight performed in the traditional 18th-century costume of Goya's paintings, held in Spain's oldest and most revered bullring. Since staring up, as a five-year-old, at the graceful sweeps of a painted matador stroking the bull with red caresses on a 1940s Falangist-era bullfight bill on the wall of my dad's garage, I have wanted to see a bullfight. If you were to see only one, it would be the Goyesca.

Like flamenco, bullfighting is embedded in the fiery culture of Andalucía. It is a bloody, controversial tradition. Many Spaniards regard it as little more than a cruel remnant of machismo with little place in a civilised modern society, and public support has haemorrhaged in recent years. In 2010 it was put to a parliamentary vote in Catalonia and outlawed when its cultural apologists lost.

Yet it remains popular here in its conservative homeland. By the time of the feria's 50th anniversary in 2004—a celebration at which some celebrities arrived by helicopter—the Goyesca was so fashionable that tickets had become all but impossible to get. Each year they are sold only at the plaza de toros on a few set days prior to the fight before remaining tickets are apportioned to local resellers, who are free to then charge whatever they want. In those pre-financial crisis years, tickets commanded prices up to €2,000.

I had to arrive today for even a chance at a ticket. I lugged my backpack into the estación de autocares across the road and scanned the sales windows of the numerous bus companies: Alsina Graells went to Granada, Bacoma ran to Baeza, Empresa Carrera headed to Cabra and Secorbus served Madrid. There was no route to Ronda.

Rubbing the tightened cords of my brow in disbelief, I wracked my brain for options. Ronda is just a small town. There is no airport. Hitch-hike? Unreliable. It could take days. It dawned on me that the only way out of my predicament was through the nose: when planning this leg of the trip I'd abandoned the idea of a rental car as beyond my budget. Now it was my only option.

Finding Ronda

I hauled my pack up to the window and asked for a ticket to Ronda. At last, I was almost at my first milestone, the Feria de Pedro Romero.

“Todo completo. All the trains are full."

My heart sunk. “When is the next available train?” I asked, angry at myself for not booking ahead.

“Mañana.”

Tomorrow?!  I learned this lesson before. Mai Li and I missed Amsterdam two years ago when we had to stay an extra night in Paris because all the trains were booked up. How had I forgotten? Now, after gearing my schedule for the past two weeks towards getting to Ronda on time for the festival, it was all at risk.

I tried the bus station across the road.  They said there is no route from Cordoba to Ronda. I was in disbelief at my predicament.

I realised there was a way, but it was going to be expensive: a rental car. When originally planning this leg of the trip, I abandoned the idea as unnecessary. Now it was my only option.

Driving from Cordoba to Ronda is not straightforward. Ronda is a provincial town, not a major city, connected by secondary roads in the centre of the Cordoba-Sevilla-Malaga triangle. You need a decent map. I happen to have an excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.  At home. From the rental agency, I got an A3 piece of paper demarcating the entire 90,000 square kilometre region, from which I could discern that I had to head south. Fortunately, I know the sun sets in the west.

Two kilometres after starting off I stopped at a petrol station looking for a map.  They did not have one.  After spending half an hour in the front seat of the car poring over tiny maps in guidebooks it hit me that I have Google Maps on my mobile phone. Not only that, but it provides explicit directions and distances. My salvation! I was out of Cordoba within the next fifteen minutes and on my way.

Of course, taking technology for granted, I didn’t count on the fact that 100km into the Spanish plains there is a rather complete absence of reception, without which Google Maps on my mobile phone is useful only for smashing against my head in frustration. Being lost in Cordoba is preferable to being lost in the middle of nowhere.

But where there are roads there are petrol stations, and notwithstanding my immediate experience in Cordoba, petrol stations usually do have maps. And what did I find when I stopped?  My excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.

The drive from Cordoba to Ronda takes 2¾ hours. I pulled it off in less than double that.

Wow, it's hot

From Madrid I caught the fast train, the AVE, to Cordoba, and arrived to 40°C heat.

For my birthday in July, Mai Li bought me a North Face winter jacket for my trip.

The prime tourist attraction in Cordoba is the Mezquita, the grand Moorish mosque which set the architectural style for the region, but having seen this two years ago I focussed my attentions on those things I missed on my last visit here. I stayed in the Judería, the atmospheric old Jewish quarter of narrow lanes to the north of the Mezquita, and visited the ruins of the 10th-century Moorish palace city, the Medina Azahara. The best restored and most spectacular part of the site, the throne room of Abd ar-Rahman III, was closed for further restoration, probably in anticipation of Cordoba hosting the European Capital of Culture in 2016. Having missed this already in 2007, I was bitterly disappointed.

Back in Cordoba, I was accosted by a gypsy on the street when she abruptly put a sprig of thyme in my hand and commenced a palm reading. “No, no,” I said.

“Un momento, por favor,” she replied, and then told me I was “muy fuerte” – very strong – that I would live a long life, and I would have lots of babies. She then rubbed her fingers together and said, “coin.” I said no, and she gave me a look that made me avoid running into her again.

At the Meson de la Luna I had the menú del día for lunch. The first course was gazpacho, a cold tomato soup which was so refreshing in the hot weather that I proceeded to dump the contents of the bowl into my lap. This did not go down well with my white pants, which suddenly became stained and wet. Gypsy curses are very swift.

Spain: Seville, Granada, Jaén, Cordoba...

Getting access to the internet is a little less easy than I had hoped, not so much for the availability but just the time; we are really moving across the continent quickly. I'll try to keep this updated at least once a week.

We caught the fast train from Madrid to Seville on 07 April, involving a brief scramble at the train station ten minutes before departure as Mai Li ran from counter to counter to get our railpasses validated before we could board.

Seville was beautiful, and is one of our favourite places thus far. The old city is a maze of narrow cobblestone streets and lanes between four-storey buildings. It being Semana Santa, Holy Week, the town was crammed with tourists, all of whom (including ourselves) wandered around with maps looking lost. We had one overcast day and one warm and sunny Spring day there (in fact, much of our time in Spain the weather was overcast and rainy.) There was a bullfight on Easter Sunday, the first of the season and a big one, for which a scalper offered us tickets for €150 each—A$250! We said it was too expensive and he didn't bother to haggle, so obviously he can get that price.

All along we have been helped by the fact that people speak a little English, particularly in the hotels, but nevertheless I have been able to muster enough Spanish for us to get by. Indispensible are my French studies and my Lonely Planet phrase book.

Having recovered from my food poisoning, Mai Li was then struck with a strange, terrible cough, fever, chills and an aching back. I suspect strep throat. On our last night in Seville we went out to see some authentic local flamenco but could only stay for half an hour because Mai Li was too sick to stay.


We drove on to Granada the following day and visited the Alhambra, which on wise advice I pre-booked before we left Sydney, enabling us to saunter past the hours-long queues. The Moorish architecture and interiors are intricate and beautiful, and there are fountains and gardens throughout. The weather held out for our tour and was at times sunny and hot. Granada is a nice city with a bohemian community, but apart from the Alhambra, a fantastic seafood paella at the Méson Gallega, and a €30 extortion for laundry it wasn't the most memorable.


On our way to Cordoba we drove through Jaén and stayed a night in a 12th-century fortress converted into a 4-star hotel. Pleasant, but expensive.

Cordoba has a lot of character, and is considerably older than Granada. Apart from the obligatory visit to the Mezquita, we caught a great flamenco show with this one dancer in particular who tapped his feet so fast it sounded like a typewriter.


We are now in France, but we need to get moving, so that update will have to wait till next time....