Lost Village of Acebuchal

Last night at the theatre, a Tom Clancy movie was playing but I was told it was only in Spanish with no sub-titles.  I could not convince Wendy to go.  I figured it would be fun, maybe tonight as it is playing 2 nights.  I will work on Wendy again. On Wednesday night the movie is American Hustle, so we will go see that, it is in English. 

After posting our blog last night, Wendy and I played crib.  We were in the rubber game in the best of 3.  I get 3 fives and a jack of heart in my hand.  I knew I could not get 29 since I already had 5 of heart in my hand.  Wendy was nice enough to cut me the missing 5 to give me 28 points. She clued in when I only had 2 cards left and I led a 5 after already playing a 5 and the jack earlier.   Poor girl, with that and my crib, she eventually got skunked.

As we were playing crib, we remembered a story that we wanted to write about.  2 weeks ago when I went out with then photo club here, we had met a Swiss lady.  She had had enough of this region after spending 2/3 years here and had decided to move back to Switzerland.  Her plan was to buy a van and drive thru Portugal, northern Spain, South of France, northern Italy and then home.  He son did not like the idea of here diving home alone, so she said “OK, I will take Jose with me”.  I can’t remember the name, Jose will do for this.  The son asked who Jose was and she said it is a stray dog.  Anyway the mother does not have the money to buy this van, so she expects the son to loan her the money to pay for it since he will be getting everything when she dies including insurance.  So she figure that is only fair.  Sounds logical to me and Wendy.  Brian can you lend Mon and I about 10K, we would like to stay here for a few more months?

The door usually wins in this type of encounters.   Kinda looks like the map of Spain

This morning we went towards town for our daily jog/walk.  We extended this route and ended up being out for about 45 minutes.  I think that was the longest we have been out for.  It is also warmer here today even if the wind is up a bit.  I guess this is because the wind is coming from inland.  One thing that the town does is keep the street very clean.  They are either sweeping or pressure washing them all the time.

Coast guard patrolling at full speed

Good thing they locked the door last night

Pretty quiet this time of the day

Seashells layers

Killer hill

Cleaning the streets

Around 10:30, I headed out to the market.  Wendy had suggested getting t-shirts for the grandkids.  I checked all the stalls and no such luck, will need to check the stores in town.  I did find a pair of capris pant for me for 8€. Since I only had 1 pair of short, I did need something else.  Also for Morocco, as the custom is to have something that covers your knees.  People still wear shorts there but I think I rather not. I picked up some yummy local strawberries, 3 mangoes and some thumb size potatoes.  The joy of buying something at the market is you have to haul it back to the apartment.  I think it is about 3 km, good thing it is all downhill. The ladies I bought the mangoes had 7 and they were 3 got 1€. She really tried me to take them all for another € but no thanks as my bag was already heavy enough as it was.  The market is pretty the same thing over a few times.  Knock off sunglasses & watches, belts & purses, shoes, clothes, vegetable & fruit stands, and a few other misc. things. 

Purses, Watches, Belts, Fake Sunglasses

On the way home, near the market, there is an institute that has a small restaurant.  The helpers are physically challenged.  Last time I went to the market, I had stopped to use their washroom, so I figured I would stop and have something to help them out.  I ordered a glass of sangria and a plate of calamari.  Both were delicious and the portion of calamari was rather big.  The bill was 6€ and I left a good tip.

They were as good as they look

I helped Wendy finish yesterdays leftovers which we put on top of a baked potatoes.  We both love leftovers and I think this might have been the first time in 2 1/2 weeks that I did not have a salad for lunch when we have been home.

We headed to the beach on the left side of the apartment to get some sun.  We walked to the far side of the beach to try to get some protection from the wind.  It was nice hearing the breakers on the beach.  I would guess that it was a little bit above 20 today.  We stayed there for about 30 minutes as the wind picked up even more and the sand was beginning to fly around.  Also a cute little blonde with a blue bikini arrived, perhaps that was the reason she  wanted us to leave.

A mermaid washed onto the shore

After Wendy was done, we headed out to find a small village in the mountain, Acebuchal.  During the Spanish civil war, Franco the dictator had ordered the whole village to leave, about 200 people.  From 1948 until 1999 it was an abandon village until one man bought most of it and started fixing the house.  That man also owns the bar/restaurant.  I had found a couple of blog about this place that someone had written.  First you go to Frigiliana where Wendy had gone already.  Past this place for a couple of km where there a sign for the restaurant/bar.  Found that, now we climb for a couple of km on a very narrow twisty road. Now at a junction, one is a dirt/gravel/rock, we are not going that way with our car.  The other one is another very narrow paved road but no indication that this is the way to go either and it is going straight down, once you get going no turning back.  We decide to skip that option as well and do an u-turn to where we got off the main road.  Sorry no picture of this as I was busy looking around corners for oncoming car, which thankfully we saw few.  I will go to the information center tomorrow and find out more details on how to get to this location.

View of coastline and mountains

Frigiliana

We then decided to go visit Torrox which the owners had recommended visiting and since we were nearby, why not.  Spectacular views as this road takes us over a mountain ridge and down to the valley on the other side.

So Torrox was an adventure in driving.  When you take the back road you have no choice but to drive through town, or else we missed the bypass and ended up right through town.  Very tiny streets, pulled the mirrors in, and twice I got out of the car to help direct Wendy around the corners.  The car in front of us was having a lot of problems navigating the streets, the passenger in that car got out a few times as well.  Wendy did a better job than that driver, but I don’t think she enjoyed it very much, should have taken a picture, I know I will not be able to convince her to do that again.

Drove back home to Nerja along the beach road, this is the first time we have seen Nerja from the beach in this direction.  Nice drive, but too windy to get out and walk the beach at all, maybe another day.

Tower along the coastline

It is now 7 PM after our little 90+ minute drive to nowhere and we decide to go out to supper.  We were planning to go out for Mexican but they did not have any menu of the day, so we skipped on that.  The Thai place was not open yet because they only open at 7:30.  We looked at a few places and decided to go into an Italian place that I had seen before that had low prices.  Wendy ordered lasagna and seafood linguini for me.  A glass of red wine each.  Both of our meals were excellent.  My seafood linguini had lots of seafood.  The bill came and it was 10.80€ or something like $17 Canadian.  The best part was wine was .80€ per glass.  Wendy says that is it, we will alternate between here and next door every night.  Next door also has cheap prices, I guess they have to in order to compete with these guys.

We will be back

Home for crib, I won’t mention who won, Wendy does not like that when I do that and then off to bed.