After breakfast we took a taxi to the train station and picked up our rental car there. For the next few days we will be driving through southern Spain on our way to Granada through the pueblos blancos that means the white houses. They are very pretty little hill towns mostly on the top of hills where all the houses are white with the same red tile roofs and steep winding streets. Some on the streets only go up the hill and some only go down, and our tires actually ended up spinning quite a bit trying to get to the top of one hill.
The view along the drive today was absolutely beautiful. Rolling hills along all of it turning into small mountains with the majority being fallow farmland lots of olive trees in long rows in a patchwork pattern all along the hills. I’m pretty sure that my dad took about 500 pictures out the windows today just holding down the rapid-fire button at anything and everything that looked even a little bit pretty.
The town we finally stopped in for lunch was called Zahara and had a small castle at the top. It was just declared a national monument. A previous small river that had been dammed into a reservoir sat below it and from the top of the hill it had a fantastic view. It was a very cute town that we wandered around a bit then sat down at a restaurant that had quite a few locals and food that looked good. About the same time two people from Canada sat down at the table next to ours so Dad invited them to eat with us which made the lunch a lot more fun. From there we ventured in the heat of the day when everyone else is resting up the steep incline to the castle at the very top. Passing by roman ruins on the way up the sign in Spanish told us how it used to belong to the Moors who had it as one of their last strongholds and then it fell into Christian hands who then used it for themselves. It was tough to get there but the view from the three story stone castle with little stairways and many rooms was definitely worth it.
Mom and I in front of Zahara
After returning once the Zahara thinking that we left a camera charger on a wall in the parking lot we had to make one more stop at a little restaurant and order drinks in order to get final directions to our hotel after the rented gps and directions from the hotel just didn’t quite get us there.
This hotel has a pool though which is really nice in this heat. It is a pretty new hotel but is built into what we guess to be an old ranch since it was first used about 150 years ago. It definitely kept the feel of the old ranch in how it was built and the buildings here. The decorations throughout keep the same theme and it is just a fun place to explore.
In the pool Dad started talking to a family from Sevilla who is also here for two nights. The mom is from Spain and the dad from Italy, and we ended up having quite an extensive conversation with the dad who had okay English so quite a bit of the conversation involved me translating between him and my parents in Spanish with my dad trying really hard to speak in Spanish but still needing a lot of help.
Late dinner at the hotel followed by resting, writing and then off to bed to prepare for an exciting adventure the next day!
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