Frigiliana

We woke to a lovely morning, though there were a few clouds in the valley. The aquifers were working and water was flowing down to the farms deeper in the valley. I could see a couple of campesinos tending their crops.

We decided to head off early, to firstly avoid the worst of the traffic on the drive down the mountain, and secondly to make sure we secured a decent park in our next stop, which we found out is hosting a festival starting tomorrow, so should be fairly busy.

The road down was scarier than the road up, you keep looking at how far you have to drop. I kept pulling over to let locals pass by my walking pace. After what seemed an eternity we hit the coastal motorway.....awesome infrastructure...120kph split between bridges over the valleys and tunnels through the ridges.

We soon made Frigiliana, up the hill from the beach town of Nerja. It was way too early to check in, but as we had found a park pretty close to our street, we decided to check it out. Up the stairs we went.....huffing and puffing. Frigiliana, if anything, is even hillier than Capileira, and many of the cross contour streets are a series of steep steps. By the time we were at our accommodation, we were obviously showing signs of distress in the warm, but much more humid, environment. In fact the bloke next door to our digs, suggested it was OK because we had only another 50 metres to the main street, which was festooned for the festival.

Yes, that last one is the main street...fun when a delivery truck comes along!

So having oriented ourselves, we did our normal aimless wander around this lovely village, buying some local fruit to get our systems adequately hydrated and sugared. This part of Spain is sub-tropical and the local produce shows those signs: mangos, avocados, and all sorts of lovely looking fruit. We got a map from the local tourist office and did a couple more laps of side streets. This place is more oriented towards foreign tourists....and foreign holiday home buyers....particularly English speaking. Capileira was predominantly Spaniards holidaying, here it is closer to 50-50.

We found a likely place for lunch and had a couple of raciones. They were absolutely delicious, obviously made on the spot rather than warmed up from a previous cooking. Lovely. And now it was time to check into our little apartment, not a hotel this time. It is a tiny place, on one of the stairways leading from the main old street down to the circumnavigation outer road. It is called las Huertas, meaning the 'market gardens'. There are a few still working in the valley. A glorious view, down to the newer part of town and the glimpse of the blue Mediterranean.

We did a bit of washing, and hung it out on our balconies and rested a while, through the afternoon heat. It was a lovely quiet break enjoying the sight out to the sea.

After a decent interval, and when the afternoon sun had lost some potency, we wandered out again....did some fruit/breakfast shopping........morcilla tomorrow......went up and down every street in the old town we had not already seen and went back to our lunch place for dinner. They did not disappoint, and we learned our lesson from yesterday and only ordered one entree and one main to share. The waitress had been lovely and brought us out a banana flavoured liqueur with our bill....ahhhhhhhh life is good.

We wandered a little more checking out the little market being set up for tomorrow. Thursday is market day anyway, but tomorrow is the start of the Festival of the Three Cultures (seen that phrase before) and it will be four days of eating, and music and eating, and drinking. There is a parade through town, which we will probably have a look at, and we are thinking of doing a tapas tour.....basically you go into one of the nominated bars......dozens around, and get a drink and tapa for 2 euros. If you do 10 or so you get a free Tshirt. Anything for a free T-shirt. If we can manage it, we may also hit a concert....and probably only from our balcony the 1AM fireworks.