Fuengirola, Spain & la Costa del Sol

Today, I wake up, eat breakfast, then take the train to Fuengirola. I had seen brochures for the Fuengirola Zoo, saying that they did not believe in bars or cages, and tried their best to recreate animals’ natural environment. This sounded great to me, so I decided to check it out. I’m glad I did! Although small, it was labyrinthic and very pretty, and I even got to see a few animals I’d never heard of, and a few more way closer than I’ve ever previously been. After the zoo, I took the train back to the hotel just in time for the group’s Costa del Sol tour of the southern coast of Spain.

We drove through small pueblos, touristy beaches, posh LA-style shopping strips (Armani stores, Versace stores, etc) and super-rich beach mansion areas. We took walking tours in the downtowns of some of these places, and it was amazing to see the old churches, the ancient castles, the opulent mosques, the fountains, the statues – and these aren’t ordinary fountains and statues! In one park, everything was created by Salvador Dalí. In another, the fountain was a mosaic, and in most, the benches are made with painted tiles.

After the tour, I returned to the hotel to study a couple of hours for class the next day. Because this first class is only two weeks, every night we have to read 2-3 chapters. At midnight, Sebastián showed me a little bar on the beach. I only stayed out for two hours because I had class the next day, but I could have stayed and talked with him for hours. I was finally having a meaningful conversation in Spanish, and for the first time since my arrival, I became acutely aware of the inadequacies in my vocabulary. We talked about the Bush presidency, the lack of compulsory foreign language/culture education in the United States, and the correlated general geographical ignorance of our nation (myself included – a blank map pop quiz makes me break out in a cold sweat), the cost of living versus typical wages in different regions of Spain, the cultural norms and typical dress of people in Morocco (where Sebastián had spent 3 months traveling), the many countries that invaded Spain over the last couple millennia, the surfing waves in Peru as compared to Ecuador (this one I was doing mostly listening) and how Miami is definitely inferior to Tampa. I was hoping to make friends in Spain – and finally I found the first one!

A few things I don’t know if I mentioned but don’t want to forget to say: The bathroom in the hotel has a bidet. I don’t think I’d ever seen one before (and I have not so much as touched it as of yet) but I should at least turn it on, just to see what happens.

Also, prices. How much do things cost? Well, it depends. Some things are very expensive. The cheapest one day car rental, for example, is 45 euros, which is like 53 USD. I had wanted to go to Cadiz, but it’s 3 hours away, and at 45E plus gas… not this trip.

Similarly, the Internet is pay-per-use, ranging from 1E per 10 minutes at my hotel to 1E per hour at the local, rarely-open, Internet cafe.

On the other hand, if you want something to drink, it’s probably just a euro in any vending machine. Bottled water? Diet Coke with lemon? Cadbury candy bar? Cigarettes? Beer? It’s all in the vending machines.

In the grocery stores, drinks are even cheaper. I got the equivalent of three gallons of water for 2E, and a box of sangria for 59 cents. (I don’t know what’s more ghetto – that I bought sangria for 59 cents or that it came in a box.) I took it to dinner at the hotel and shared it with my classmates. (We’d been taking turns and I was up. No expense was spared.)

Speaking of boxes of drink, I bought some Apple Juice boxes at El Corte Ingles – but if I had wanted to, I could have gotten wine instead. That’s right, you can get wine or sangria in Hi-C sized mini boxes, some with plastic bendy-straw. (See? That 59 cent box of sangria is starting to sound pretty high-class, isn’t it.)

And there’s no drinking age in Spain. Children often share a glass of wine with dinner. (I guess you could pack a wine box in their lunch pail too, if you really wanted to.) Some places enforce an alcohol *buying* age of 18, but even that isn’t standard. However, there’s really no issues with alocoholism. Because of the lack of drinking age and the idea of responsible one-glass-only drinking taught from childhood, there’s no rebellious underage drinking, no raucous frat parties or hazing, and no drunken karaoke bars. (Except in tourist areas. Americans can’t help themselves.)

So, kids have to find some other way to rebel, and near as I can figure, it’s all in the hair. Teenagers and twenty-somethings have all the hair colors in the rainbow, and many look as though they trim their hair with a lawn mower. (I’ve even seen a few lost souls with Rainbow-Brite colored mullets – and these were *women*!) The little kids, thankfully, are normal-looking and very cute.

Tags: animals, castles & palaces, cathedrals, fashion, food, travel tips, wine

Rock of Gibraltar, UK

I woke up bright and early, about 6am, and went downstairs for a quick breakfast before waiting outside for the bus. Today I was going to the rock of Gibraltar! I packed my camera, my batteries, some water, some crackers, my passport… what I *should* have packed was a coat. The bus driver had the A/C cranked higher than a Florida movie theater.

When we crossed the bridge into Gibraltar, both the Spanish and the British customs agents checked my passport (if you can call briefly glancing to see if I was indeed holding something vaguely passport-shaped actually “checking”) and I had the disappointment of once again not getting my passport stamped. It hasn’t been stamped since Costa Rica, and here I’ve been in and out of France, in and out of Spain, in and out of Gibraltar, and back into Spain, and – nothing.

OK, enough venting. So, we get to Gibraltar and I board a smaller tour bus because I booked a guided tour. The rock of Gibraltar is not just a rock – it’s huge, like a mountain. There’s the British naval base and a runway for a small airport, and military tunnels within the rock as well as natural caves, which I got to explore. There are also monkeys.

Lots and lots of monkeys – hundreds of them. As we were leaving the bus, I was in the back, so I was one of the last to leave, and a monkey must have snuck in by the feet of the departing passengers, because he suddenly leapt from the floor to the seat of a woman who had left her bag on the seat. He rummaged inside, filched a banana and a sandwich, then dashed out of the bus and up the side of the rock to eat his prize. Hilarious!

As we were leaving the caves, another woman bought an ice cream bar. She was walking away from the stand when a monkey reached down from a tree, snatched the bar from her hand, quickly unwrapped the plastic, and started eating the ice cream bar. I started creacking up when she yelled at the monkey, “Hey! It cost me a pound fifty, that!” (Which is about $3 US. Crafty monkey.)

I also saw some sort of US satellites, old mosques, lots of shops and cafes, and a baby monkey. I caught sight of him crouched on the side of the road. He was so cute! I knelt down and inched closer in order to take his photograph. I was just thinking how funny it was that he would let me get so close when he suddenly sprang up and latched himself around my head, his legs wrapped around my neck and his little hands gripped the rim of my visor. Oh. My. God. This has to be the single most funniest thing that has ever happened to me! (In case you are wondering, monkeys are feather-light, very soft, very smart, and very playful. Oh – and very tricksy.)

So, I get back from Gibraltar and decide to charge up my batteries. Naturally my converter doesn’t fit in the wall – I need an extender plug. I try two supermakets and the Kodak store – nothing. Discouraged, I walk back to the hotel. Something possesses me to ask at a roadside souvenir stand – whaddya know, they have tons of them for 1 euro each. I rush back to the room with my prize, plug in my expensive 15-minute charger, and promptly zap it, the stink of fried electronics thick in the air. Oops. Luckily I brought my crappy 12-hour charger along as backup, but why couldn’t I have zapped that one instead? I flip the switch on the converter to low power and plug in the 12-hour charger. Oh well, better than nothing.

I later found out that today, the professor’s wife and her mother were hit by a car. They are bruised and sore, but otherwise fine. They were crossing the street and a car was pulling out from behind another car and didn’t see them. (It’s an epidemic of car accidents!) The good thing is that Spain as social medicine, so they were treated quickly, and for free.

Tags: animals, cathedrals, healthcare, road trip

Málaga, Spain

This morning, we had class from 9-1:30 instead of 8:30-1, having talked the professor into giving us an extra half hour of sleep, since the hotel’s patio entertainment lasts from 8 or 9 until midnight every night, and the noise reverberates around each room, making it completely impossible to a) study or b) sleep. (Also, for the first time in my life, I heard Spanish yodeling. It is indescribable, and the hotel dj/singer does that number at least once every evening.)

After class, Ula left before me to catch the train, while I packed a backpack with the essentials (bottle of water, Purell, camera, fistful of batteries) and headed out. Yesterday, while I was messing around with the doctor and my swollen hands, the rest of the group went to check out the Picasso museum and had a great time, so I couldn’t wait to go see it.

When I got to the train station, Ula wasn’t there, so I assumed she’d made the previous train. (Local trains come every half hour.)

In Málaga, I stopped at an information booth and picked up a map and made my way towards the Picasso museum. It took me nearly two hours to get there because I passed so many interesting side streets, buildings, churches, statues, fountains and parks along the way, and of course I had to explore (and take photographs!) of everything.

I ended up hungry and on Calle Larios, which is amazing and massive and completely puts Rodeo Drive to shame. In between all the shops were various cafes, bars and bakeries, all with outdoor seating at little round tables with umprellas for the sun. I saw a menu on an empty table at one cafe and wandered up to have a look. I was just reaching out for the menu when the person at the next table suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm. I about jumped out of my skin until I realized – it was Ula! We laughed about the coincidence of running into each other in as big a city as Málaga, and I decided to go ahead and eat there, since she was sitting there anyway.

I ordered a cafe con leche and a veggie sandwich. The coffee was great, but imagine my surprise when the veggie sandwich showed up with a big slab of ham on it! The waiter was surprised that I was surprised (don’t all veggie sandwiches come with ham?) but amiably agreed to make me a new one. After lunch, Ula left to walk around, and I finally made it to the Picasso museum.

The ticket was 50% off with a student ID (4 euros) and cameras had to be checked. The buidling itself was very cool looking, square in shape with a center courtyard featuring a pretty garden. There were tons of his works, ranging from when Picasso was a teenager to near his time of death. There were drawings and paintings and sketches and mixed media and lithographs… I have seen lots of pictures in books of his cubist works and it was surprising to see what a photorealistic portrait he was capable of making. It was also very interesting to see his studies (sketches) that he used to practice and experiment with before making his more famous works, like Guernica (which was not there, but is in Madrid, so I intend to see it then.)

I bought a little something at the gift shop and then left to wander around Málaga some more. Unlike Costa Rica, all the streets in Málaga are named. As a matter of fact, even 3 foot wide alleys have names, and all of these “streets” appear on the maps just like highways, making me more thankful than ever that I’m on foot and not trying to drive. (I’ll just turn left here at the… hallway?)

I saw a vendor selling post cards and decided to have a look, when I caught sight of someone standing on the other side of the post card rack looking at souvenirs. It was Ula! “You again!” I exclaimed and she jumped, then we both laughed, but in a way, we were kind of weirded out, since we were now nowhere near the cafe or the Picasso museum and managed to run into each other yet again.

I bought a few postcards and then headed off again. I found the tourist bureau and picked up a few brochures. I walked by the Alcazaba, an amazing, sprawling spread of an ancient fortress and castle, complete with towers and high, narrow windows. it looked like it came straight out of Arabian Nights. I couldn’t wait to explore it, but it was nearing dinner time, so I figured I better take the train back to La Colina since dinner is only served from 7:30-9:30 and here it was 8 already and I had a 30 minute train ride ahead of me, followed by a 20 minute hike back to the hotel. I headed to the Renfe and through the turnstile, and who should I run into amidst the crush of people waiting for the train? You guessed it – Ula! What are the freaking chances??

That night after dinner, I hopped onto the hotel’s worthless Internet kiosk. It charges one euro per 10 minutes, which may or may not sound like much, but it gets real expensive real fast (especially considering the exchange rate.) Not only this, but there is no place to plug in a USB device, it has no CD burner, and it erases all new files every time you log off anyway.

I did find another Internet cafe nearby that charges 7 euros for 5 hours to use their PCs, which do have USB ports and on which I can save files and install programs. The problem is, to use my laptop would cost an additional 10 euros and they are closed for siesta from 1 til 4:30, and are open in the evenings only from 4:30-8:30, weekdays only. But, this at least gives me an option.

Tags: castles & palaces, cathedrals, food, museums, music & concerts, shopping, technology