Living it up with Sarah and Andrea in Ronda

Dinner at the Pedro Romero restaurante across from the bullring - in the town where bullfighting was invented, I believe. Classical music is playing in the sitting room, Sarah is sitting looking at a picture book, drinking a glass of Cava from the well stocked fridge in our room, which has three red beds, red couch, dark wood lattice windows. This house is old. It is not budget. There is a signed picture of the King and Queen in the lobby, and a wine tasting room in the basement. Beside the computer desk is a beautifully framed fountain-pen written note in Spanish and English kindly asking guests if they would contribute to a poetry corner the hotel is trying to make.

Ronda may be the most incredible place I have ever been. Well, I´d have to compare it with grandiose sights of natural wonders, which are hard to compare with a town. The thing is that part of its beauty and charm is man-made and ranging from ancient to very old, and the other part is nature. Sorry, but pictures just are wrong when a place is this amazing. If you want to see, you should see it in person.

The drive from Tarifa was awesome. The mountains south of Olvera are higher.

I stayed in Sevilla for a day after they left. Then took the train yesterday morning to meet them in Cadiz. We spent the day going along the Costa de la Luz and, on the beach, Zahara de los Atunes, where I had to pee in a vacant lot (where we watched Juan Carlos´s concert in the summer) cause there wasn´t a single place open, or public washroom. Then on to Tarifa, where I met a weather-beaten Spanish dude playing Earl Scruggs on the banjo under an archway into the old town. Not much more was open there, but we ate at a vegetarian restaurant playing Elvis. This morning walked to the point with incredible water and sand colours, and windsurfers, that divides Atlantic and Mediterranean, then drove past Gibraltar.

It had been planned for several weeks that I´d meet them in Granada tomorrow, for the weekend. But things were not going well for me in Sevilla, and I don´t know when I´ll get the chance to do this again. This is not in my budget, but I guess that´s life... hopefully something will gel in my brain about how to carry on in life, in some way that works, when the time comes to do so.