Gorges and Cavemen

Still half asleep, we left Granada EARLY this morning. We headed to the airport to pickup our car, and what do we get, of course, a minivan. So we load up the mini and head out on the the road to Ronda.

The scenery was GORGEOUS as soon as we left Granda. The climate makes it perfect for growing olives, so groves are planted up and down the hillsides. As we got further into the mountains, you could see the snow capped tops leading down to these green olive groves. The sun was shining just perfectly, so we were just in heaven peacefully driving through something so beautiful.

Our tour guide in Madrid said that Spain was about 20 years behind the rest of Europe and the world, and that evidently applies to the music. Here we are driving through this beautiful place singing Material Girl, Wake me up before you go-go, and Blake´s favorite theme song from Rad, Send Me An Angel. Apparently this is a BMX movie he watched as a kid and they all go to the high school dance and do a bike dance, you know kind of like Sister Act, but for boys. I still don´t understand... Also, we've determined that the Spanish have an unhealthy obsession with Jon Secada... Everywhere we go... "It´s just another day with-o-out you!¨

As we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, through twisty tiny roads and olive groves we finally made it to Ronda. Ronda is one of what they call ¨The White Towns¨. These are tiny villages perched high in the mountains. The locals whitewash all of the buildings. They´re really quaint and cute.

The coolest things about Ronda is that it´s built across an enormous gorge. The bridge here is amazing!

And underneath it, the cavern is full of lush greenery, waterfalls, and caves. We did some CLIMBING here, all the way down to the bottom and then back up to the top... whew!

To rest a little, we took a tour of Ronda´s bullring. Ronda is where bullfighting was born, and this is the oldest bullring in Spain. We actually got to go down on the floor to see what it really feels like to be a Toro... OLE!

Well, being Toros and climbing up gigantic gorges wore us out, so we hopped back in the car to head to our next destination, the Pileta Cave. This cave is WAY WAY up in the mountains, and in the middle of nowhere. It was found by a farmer's daughter in the late 1800´s and the farmer's family has led spelunking tours through it ever since (when we get back to town I am going to rat on Kristen´s spelunking adventures to Dr. Mata... I am sure she will be pleased...). The most amazing part is that the cave houses paintings over 35,000 years old. No, that´s not a typo, that´s BEFORE the pyramids and before pretty much anything else. Our guide led our group of 20 people up and down slippery slopes, past bats, lakes, and stalagmites... all with a GAS LANTERN! Spooky! It was so amazing to stand in areas that cavemen had once slept and prepared their food. There are even remains of cavemen in one chamber of the cave, which is now impassible and unavailable for tourists. OH WELL... Kristen really wanted to see skeletons...

Our tour of the caves lasted approximately an hour which took us 500 meters in and 500 meters out. According to our guide, this is approximately 25% of the area in this one series of caves alone. The weird thing is, in the last room, which was enormous, the guide pointed out that the floor below our feet was hollow. He banged his foot against the floor which resonated a thunderous boom throughout the cave. The room below our feet was an astounding 72 meters from floor to ceiling. 72 METERS!!! That's a fourteen story building!

We left the Sierra Nevada mountains in route for Sevilla. The trek was made more interesting by the farms that dotted the valleys between Ronda and Sevilla. Come to find out, the Andalusia region of Spain is known for a couple of crops, olives and sunflowers. There were dozens of sunflower farms with what looked to be millions of sunflowers. I´m not sure if they produce sunflower seed oil or sunflower seeds or just sunflowers, but hillsides of these flowers is quite a sight.

After dealing with some traffic, we made it into Sevilla, dropped off the rent car at the airport and were able to rest for a few moments before heading off to dinner. Just one more day and night in Spain before we return to the states. I am sure it will be as good if not better than the first five.