My latest endeavor is to learn to write with my left hand. So far, my a’s, b’s, c’s, l’s, and t’s are acceptable.

But on another note….

A two hour busride through rolling green hills, rockey crags, and sheer cliffs along a winding mountain road brought me to Ronda this afternoon, the most easterly of the Andalucian Pueblos Blancos. It was an incredibly bright day, only an occasional cloud hugging the top of a distant peak. I’m so glad I opted for the excursion, even if shortened from its original incarnation due to the lack of debit card. It’s given me a glimpse of rural Andalucia, the orange groves, the fields of olive trees, the occasional crumbling white-washed villa…it’s as pretty as a postcard, but unlike a postcard, this is real and in person, at least for me.

After settling into my third pension in as many days, I set off to explore the narrow and winding streets of the old city. Ronda is situated along both sides of a deep ravine, the old city on one side, the new on the other. There is a bridge connecting the two portions of town, affording incredible long vistas to both the East and West. From the bridge I saw that there was a narrow footpath lined with blooming almond trees winding down the western side of the ravine. I wandered through the old city, and at its edge I found the beginning of the path. I traversed a few hundred meters down the path, smelling the sweet scent of the almond trees. I can’t think of another time I’ve smelled almond trees in bloom! They are incredibly sweet, sweeter than the sweetest perfume! At the fourth switchback I came upon a little white, slightly crumbling cottage with dozens of potted plants dotting its patio. A hand-painted sign read “mirador”, lookout, with an arrow pointing to the patio. I wandered onto the patio and was greet by a tiny, toothless old man with an incredibly wide grin on his face. “Mirador?” I asked, and he smiled even wider and after charging me a euro, took me down a little path leading from the edge of his patio. The path was not even 2 meters wide, a sheer rock face on my right, a long, long drop on my left. We got maybe 50 or so meters down the path when he stopped at a spot with an incredible view. The bridge I had stood on not an hour before was so far above me! I saw the path continued, but was heavily covered with vegetation. I asked if I could keep going down, and he smiled and nodded. For about 20 more minutes, we descended, conversing in broken Spanish, his tightly gripping my arm—his way of making sure neither of us fell off the side of the cliff. We finally came to the bottom where a clear blue creek ran through a scattering of large boulders and whirling pools. I looked up and saw just how far we’d come down. He again smiled his toothless smile, and proclaimed us ¡amigos!, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I echo the thought expressed by a fellow Watson wanderer in a recent correspondence—if only we could stick a wrench in the machine of time and let this year go on forever.

Something else interesting about the tiny hill town of Ronda is that it is the home of Spanish bullfighting. Bullfights take place only from May to October, the warm summer months, so I will not experience a real Spanish bullfight, lest I return to Spain later on. Though popular all over Spain, this is where it originated—I took a trip to the local bullring, supposedly the most grand in all of Spain. It made me think of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, his famous novel centered around the ritualistic Spanish Bullfight. Being inside the stadium gave me a strange feeling though. I guess I hadn’t really thought about the bullfight before—you know they kill 5-6 bulls every fighting day! I don’t know what I thought actually happened—that they waved the red cape, made the bull incredibly angry, and then what? Gave it a spanking, told it that it was a bad boy and tied it up?? Something I did learn though is that the instinct to fight comes from the mother, not the father. If by and unlucky twist of fate, a matador is killed (it hasn’t happened in over 20 years), after killing the offending bull, it is customary to kill the mother of the bull, so that it can never produce such fiery offspring ever again.

Oh Ronda…

Tomorrow hold a short train ride down to Algericas, a southern port city, and then an even shorter bus ride to La Linea de la Concepcion, where I’ll cross the border into the English colony of Gibralter. I’ve always wanted to go to Gibralter… well, not really, but it would seem a shame to be so close and not make a trip to the anomaly that is Gibralter—a UK colony perched between Morocco and the heart of Andalucian Spain, complete with pounds sterling, English street signs, and oh, the monkeys. Should be an interesting trip, if only just to say I’ve been there.