Ronda3 – Saturday – Down Day

We planned a hike down the side of the hill with all the kids, circling around to the backside of the old city and coming up a much more gradual slope.  Of course, as with most of our plans, things didn’t go exactly as planned.  We woke an hour later than we’d hoped, and given that we needed to return to our hotel before 11 am, we decided to shorten our route, which meant returning back UP the hillside.  The first stretch of path was fairly maintained, with flat stones mortared into a large downward sloping sidewalk.  Zeke immediately noticed a hot air balloon in the sky (centered directly in the below picture)

Not too far after leaving the maintained path we bumped into a couple from Seattle.  Kate offered to help take their photo in exchange for them taking ours.

  Our hotel is just to the right of the bridge, directly above Theo.  The path itself quickly became more rugged than Kate was looking for, and she and Maeve decided to wait at one point.  I had explored the path the morning before when I went for my run and had a specific destination further down the side path I wanted the kids to see.  It was an old electric building.  Possibly for generating electricity.  Too old and dilapidated to tell.  But the water had been diverted unnaturally and ran through the basement of the building and there was a sign on the building that implied electric company.  So that’s the story we’re going with.  Evidently we were so far off the beaten path that at one point we found graffiti from 10 Julio, 1909.  That was a strange sight.  At the edge of the building the water sprayed out like a mini waterfall.  We had to go through the waterfall  in order to get through the front door of the building and in the process get a little wet.  Theo, of course, wanted to get wet.  So that wasn’t a problem. He got wetter than I’d hoped.  Janie did great taking her time and finding good footing so as not to fall.  While Zeke and Theo claimed they were ‘Man Goats’ and danced down the loose rock strewn path.  After passing into the building, we found some stairs that went down to the cellar.  Near the bottom of the stairs was another back door that led further on, but only a few more paces.   As the cliff then fell off rather sharply.  So we took turns looking out through the leaves of the dense undergrowth into the deep canyon below and turned around and headed back up to find Kate and Maeve waiting.   Maeve had decided that she didn’t actually want to wait with mom, and was upset that she wasn’t part of the fun.  So while the others headed back up the path, she and I went back down.  I took the opportunity to travel further down the stream created by the diverted waterfall and found the water flowing out the bottom of the building and into a series of obviously man-made canals or troughs.  Interesting.  Maeve and I decided we’d had our fun and headed back to catch up with the others.  Along the way one of the boys noticed Snails clinging to the rocks.  In fact, nearly embedded in the rocks.  Odd, since at that point there wasn’t a lot of moisture left from the stream.  More exposed in the heat of the day. But evidently they must’ve gathered enough moisture in the evening night and morning to survive the hot days.  We veered right at a branch in the path on the run back up to check out another view.  The kids and I walked up a more modern arch and sat at the rear edge of the arch facing the valley. 

We could see for miles and could hear dogs barking to our right.  Three farmers, who minutes before had been working in the shade of Rhonda were now continuing their labors in the direct sunlight.  We played a quick game of what can you hear.  Zeke set his watch at 2 minutes and the 5 of us each listened for every sound we could pick up.  Then starting from the youngest we excitedly shared our finds.  Maeve had heard the dogs, and a farmer striking something, and others.  Theo had heard a bird flapping his wings as it took off behind us, a man riding a motorcycle, and others.  Janie had heard a bale fall off of a wagon and the driver jumping out to reload it and a “horse'” to our right clearing its throat (actually it was mom), and actual horses to our left clopping in the soil.  The younger kids had pretty much gotten it all that Zeke and I could only add a generator running.  All this playing out below us in the matter of a couple minutes!  I also pointed out the answer to the riddle I’d posed to them the previous day after my morning run…  “What field is yellow in the morning but green in the early evening?”.  Answer a sunflower field, which there seemed to be plenty of in Spain.

After returning to the hotel, we enjoyed our terrific buffet breakfast meal, encouraging the kids to eat as much as possible.  The location of our hotel couldn’t have been better as we were 50 feet from the new bridge and 100 feet from the mines and only a few blocks from the steep hiking path.  The kids were indicating they’d seen enough hotels and had done enough walking for a few days, so we let them have some downtime watching Disney channel, all in Spanish of course, while Kate and I got through some tasks.  Namely, planning for Janie’s birthday party the following day, which included exchanging for some Euros, a routine activity for a Saturday, or so we thought!

Turns out most everything is open on Saturdays, EXCEPT banks.  And evidently all manned cambios, e.g. Western Union, leaving only ATMs open (abierto), for which we didn’t have a card.  Actually one of the 2 Western Unions was open, but the lady there just shook her head when I said cambio and showed her my Traveller’s Checques and US$.  Defeated by the Western Union,  I walked onto the pool that we’d learned of earlier when we naively asked where the pool was located in our hotel, expecting an answer something like go down to the 1st floor and hang a left upon leaving the elevator, instead the lady pulled out a map drew a long line and placed an X on the map.  My journey was to find the hours of operation, the cost, whether they were a kids pool or more of a lap swim pool and whether they were open the next day, ‘monllana’, for Janie’s birthday.  In this task I fared much better.  After I returned to the hotel without Euro, Kate decided to give it a go while the kids and I took a quick Siesta.  She fared no better than I, but did find a supermarcado that took Visa and stocked up on some supplies for Janie’s birthday picnic at the pool.  Upon her return, we finished our birthday plans with Jane and headed out.  Immediately across the new bridge was a gateway to the left that we wandered into to see more of the impressive bridge and deep gorge.  On the way across the bridge I shuffled ahead as I wanted to get Maeve’s “spontaneous” reaction on film.  The first day we’d crossed the bridge to the hotel in the heat of the day, the kids had been playing and walking on an almost continuous bench across the bridge.  It was broken only by wrought iron viewing areas that allowed you to look directly vertically down the bridge.  Maeve had been sing-songing her way across the piazza and onto the long bench on the bridge with me holding her hand, when suddenly she came to the wrought iron and she said ‘ahhhhh Death’ in her cute 4 year old voice, stopped for a few seconds breath, then started her sing-song again and continued dancing merrily along.  I was so amazed at the word she pulled out to describe the experience, because it was so absolutely accurate.  Your initial reaction, whether scared or not, is definitely one of self preservation.  She’s repeated this every  time we’ve crossed the bridge.  But it’s become less spontaneous.  It’s now more of a command performance since we’ve been repeatedly telling the story.

Directly across the bridge we turned left and into an area that allowed for further viewing of the bridge and gorge.  That’s where we met Ramone.  He was selling Mandala’s and 4 band puzzle rings, neither of which I had seen before.  And had such a charm to him that we enjoyed just watching him entertain us and mesmerize us with his toys.

  When the subject of kids came up, and how could’nt it with our 4, he said his 3 brothers that he’d grown up with in San Sebastian, Spain sharing one bicycle were all married and that he had ‘commitment-phobia’, and was even ‘scared’ of calling a girl a girlfriend.  Very likeable fellow.  He also told us that a couple years prior just 150 feet further back from the direction we’d come a man and wife were standing admiring the gorge, when the man leaned too far over when taking a photo, slipped and fell.  The wife returned home a widow.  Zeke cautioned me to be more careful as he wanted to return with both his parents.  About 30 or 40 minutes later, we were starting to feel actual hunger pangs, so attempted to finalize our purchase.  We explained we had only enough Euro left for our daughter’s birthday wish of going to the pool the next day and Ramone allowed us to pay in US$, which is surprisingly difficult to do in Spain! Maeve had become attached to the Orange Mandala, so we knew that was one of the ones we would purchase.  However, when it came time to purchase it, we could not find it.  We all stood there stumped for a moment until I asked Maeve if she knew were it was.  She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I put it in your pocket”.  I immediately laughed outloud and told Ramone.  He also laughed as I pulled it out of my front left pocket that was velcroed shut.  If money got any tighter, I thought, we could put Maeve to work picking pockets.  All the kids were happy with their purchases and we marched on each child playing with a Mandala.  And each of us enjoying the entertainment Ramone provided us with.

As the kids played with their mandalas, we walked on toward the bullring to see how the music stage was progressing, and bumped into our Seattle friends, with a third friend along with them.  We compared some notes and they said a highlight of their trip so far was a Flamenco show in Seville, recommending the Los Guyas (sp?) show but warning not to sit in the front row lest sawdust from the floor should fall into our food!  They sat in the 2nd row and even then some beads from the costumes made it to their table.  We promenaded on with Kate getting more and more desperate for food.  Finally, as we’d swung down a side-street, she said just pick one, I can’t even think straight anymore I’m so hungry.  Our food was good enough.  Zeke’s dogfish was very good and Kate’s Gazpacho was the best we’d found.  As we were finishing our meal the Seattle triple bumped into us once again.  I invited them to sit and we enjoyed conversation with them learning Mark and Jo were married three years now and that Jo’s sister Laura had come along with them.  It was fun to compare notes on children, travel, Microsoft and Seattle, and from Mark we learned that the famous Spanish lisp came about because an ancient king had a lisp and all the noblemen and then the common people had been forced to imitate it.  May not be true, but makes a good story.  We parted ways and headed onto a concert that we’d seen setting up next to the bull station.  The kids danced to a young band covering Green Day and other American favorites

and tried to collect whatever freebies that were being handed out.  Did pretty well too, scoring several T-Shirts.  We headed home with our booty.