A Rare Encounter

(Une rencontre rarissime)
Le samedi, 5 décembre 2009
This morning, looking out from the window, I see nothing but white. But outside, looking up, you can tell there's a sunny day on the way! with a deep blue Andalucian sky... As I wait for the bus, (and wait and wait… it’s always late, yay Spain!), Alcalá fades in and out of a white floating fog. Now I can see the San Jorge church bell tower, now I can’t.

NB. Since the train railway between Algeciras/Gibraltar and Granada is being repaired, and the only bus leaves for Ronda from Algeciras at 6AM (uh, right, no.), it’s simpler for me to get to Ronda by bus via Jerez. So... 1 hour bus to Jerez, 4 hour wait before I take the 3 hour bus ride to Ronda. Any Alcalaino would laugh at me or wince, as they all have a car and hate the bus. Fine! Take me to Ronda!

So 4 hours in Jerez? Bring it on. It’s a beautiful day, I’ll walk around with my monster backpack and my camera to finally get Jerez in photos (the 2 other visite were camera free). Here are a few:

1. Don't know how many times we passed by that monument, Victor, Julio and I, on the faithful day of my party...
2. Tio Pepe! (a famous brand of Sherry... God knows Jan loves that Fino!)
3. Oh look, a castle/fortress with an octagonal tower...

1. Beautiful train station
2. Orange bubbles.
3. Minotaur (Jerez has these strange statues at every round about)

Marie, Joseph et l'ptit Jésus dans crèche. Le bar La Crisis... trop crampant!

I go back to every place I’d visited last time in Jerez, taking a break at every plaza to read bit of the Alchimist, or eat a piece of salsichon and bread, or nap on a bench. I finish my photo tour of Jerez near the station and an old, old man, quite rotund around the belly, sits next to me. (I think he was eyeing my sandwich...) He asks my age. I tease, saying he looked 50. He takes out his ID with shaking hands: 1928. Well done! We talk. I bid him a good day. He said “Stay in Jerez tonight! Stay here with me!”, patting the bench next to him. Hm, no. To this day, I wonder if leaving him was not the biggest mistake of my life… maybe our paths will cross again! (hehe, no, this is not the rare encounter. Keep reading!)

The long, long, long and winding road to Ronda stops by 4 villages or so. I am discreetly eavesdropping a bunch teenage girls, fascinated by their never-ending conversation of which I barely understand a word. Countryside dialect… During the last hour before reaching Ronda, my nose is stuck to the window as I woooh… and waaaahh… at the landscapes. The between the Sierra de Algodonales and the Sierra Blanquilla, it's a fantastic blend of valleys, mountains, long thin lakes and white villages built in the rocks, turned red by the sunset… simply gorgeous views at every tuuuuuuurn *grabbing the seat to not fall off*.

Walking towards my CouchSurfing host’s house, my first impression of Ronda is the following: so perfectly clean and quiet, it seems like a movie set. Wide streets and sidewalks, with noone on them except for a few old men… trees cut in giant balls, Christmas lights, lovely fountain and gazebo in the middle of an empty plaza… My host’s apartment is great: big, new, clean, inviting… and Gastón, is super friendly and makes me feel at home right away. It’s a pity he has to work (from home) all weekend as we definitely get along well, AND I understand ALL of his Spanish! At least there are two travelers from Slovenia crashing here to this weekend, they should arrive any minute now! “Oh, it’s them on the phone! The two girls are in… Gibraltar? And they say there’s no train, only an early bus the next day.” Hwell. I could have told them that.

So I’m off to visit Ronda by night, really excited about that famous bridge, the Puente Neuvo the links the “Old town” and “New town”, which are separated by cliff, together… La Bola, the vert commercial street is lit with Christmas lights and there’s this feeling in the air of… well of Christmas and holidays of course… but mostly of consumerism. I go straight to the bridge and waaahhhhhhhh… how grand and beautiful and scary! You can’t see the bottom on any side, it’s like a bottomless abyss. I walk around the old town, but by night, it’s pretty boring. Everything's closed, and everything WILL be for the nearly the whole weekend as it’s a Holiday all over Spain.

The Puente Nuevo, Plaza de Toros, La Bola

So I head back towards La Bola, and spot a hippy jewelry stand with a hippy little man selling it. I offer 1 euro for a lonely earing that looks like a mini mobile with colored beads, and he gives me a “…really?” look as in “…you really want that thing? I made it more as a joke, or… an experiment…”, he asks from which part of France I am and we start to chitchat about traveling and languages and I soon find out that this man has a degree in... yes, you’ve guessed it, science. Physics more precisely. And I’ve recently been joking about selling jewelry on the beach for a living!

Daniel et ses bijoux...

When Daniel (the jewelry guy) closes the “store”, I give him a hand to go put it away in a shack behind a restaurant and we go off to a Teteria to talk about traveling for 2 more hours, we invent our futures circuits: Bolivia, Peru, Argentina… or New Zealand? I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who listens that well. The guy is so awake it’s refreshing, and it makes you more aware of everything, like noticing simple things all around like the crackling in the fireplace of the teteria… or a ripped poster on the wall, or someone who trips on the sidewalk and wheels around to see if anyone saw… or a kid trying hard to knot his shoelaces!

I tell him I’ll definitely try to pass by his earings stand again the next day and he promises to bring his pot of colored beads to finish the pair of... “mobile earings” I bought. It’s a long cold walk back to Gastón’s house but there’s a welcoming sofa, hot tea and a shitty movie to laugh at, at the end of this walk.

Song of the Day: Friday I'm in Love - The Cure (suuuuuuuuuuper quétaine!!)