April 20th: Seville to Cartajima

After a hiatus, resuming the series of our travels through Iceland and Andalusia. Hope to finish this off soon and get started on day to day events, quite a bit has been happening recently. :)

After a couple of days of relishing the splendors of Seville, today was our first day on the road. A compact Citroen Picasso was our wheels for the next few days, quite a contrast from the Nissan Pathfinder we had literally inhabited in Iceland. The drive didn't really begin on a very auspicious note, thanks to our navigation system misbehaving and getting us lost in the nondescript, suburban sprawl around Seville. There really should be a global standard in car navigation systems -- the last thing you want to do when dodging aggressive over-takers and trying to read obscure Spanish road signs is a GPS that suddenly thinks you are in the middle of Scotland! 

Soon, anyway, we found our way out and our patience was rewarded by rolling green fields, bright blue skies and a plethora of wildflowers -- Gireesh and I have always rued our luck when it came to catching seasonal splashes like fall colors, sakura blossoms or blooming flowers, but this time, without even planning to, we were in the middle of peak wildflower season in Andalusia! Yellow, red, pink, lilac, azure.. they were by our side through the entire road trip. 

Interspersed between all this resplendence were ruins of forts, castles and churches, harking back to a bloody yet eventful past, trying bravely to make their stand against the strong winds of time. We stopped off at one such fort, walked it ramparts, climbed its tower, admired it sweeping views.. i think if we had stayed there long enough, we might even have had a tryst with its resident ghost and heard its tale of romance and betrayal!

The fort with the ghost?

Soon we entered Sierra de Grazalema -- the hills got taller, fields made way to trees and we could just about start making out outlines of a few white villages clinging on to hill sides almost symbiotically. The route offered plenty of beautiful detours to get totally lost in. We did get lost, literally, quite a few times, thanks again to the aforementioned GPS, but I don't think we rued it.. every wrong road taken was well worth it. One of our favorite pit stops was on a slope overlooking a big lake.. I still see it sometimes in my dreams, mountain fresh wind in our hair, swaying, multi-hued wildflowers, bright green waters glinting up at us and a lovely little white village gleaming at a distance against blue, cloudless skies.. how I wish we could have a little casa of our own there. I felt sad as we drove off from the place, wishing and hoping we could make our way back there sometime in the future. (As it turns out, we did visit the area again a couple of days later, this time from the other side of the lake.. but more on that later!).

Sierra de Grazalema

There was one irritant that kept getting on our nerves even as we were getting mesmerized by the landscape, and that was litter. There were cigarette butts, discarded bottles and plastic bags almost everywhere we stopped along the road. And though the situation wasn't as bad as it can get in say, India, I still can't help but wonder why we can't respect the beauty nature has blessed our lands with, why do we want to malign it with our thoughtless acts of negligence. 

Anyway, moving back to our drive.. we were heading closer to the white villages, and soon we had our first glimpse of what we thought was Ronda (turned out to be another village altogether, as we found out on our return trip!). Glittering in the sun with it's whitewashed houses and vistas on to even more pueblos, it whetted our appetite and increased our anticipation of what was to come. 

We kept driving on through sun and shadows and unfortunately, straight into cloud cover. Our destination was a tiny little hamlet called Cartajima, one of seven villages in the Alto Genal area near Ronda. We would be spending two nights here, using it as the base to explore the surrounding mountains and pueblos. But the gathering, ominous clouds, which got even denser, darker and lower as we took the windy narrow lane towards Cartajima, seemed to have other plans for us. A loud clap of thunder greeted us shortly after we had our first glimpse of the village -- lovely and isolated, it stood shrouded in mist and holding on to a steep green slope, like a lonely bride looking out for her beloved who was out in the storm. 

Soon, we were in the heart of the village, trying to locate Los Costanos, the B&B which would be our home for the next two days. After a couple of hairy U-turns on narrow, steep streets, we finally found it -- a warm, friendly place run with a lot of heart by our hosts, Di and John. Our rooms were large and comfortable and beautifully decorated with lots of little artifacts and curios from various parts of Andalusia and Morocco. The rooms came equipped with large armchairs to snuggle into, with a collection of books, sketch pads and crayons for company. There was also a cute little rooftop patio for soaking up the sun.. oh for some sunlight!

Pretty little Cartajima

The silver lining to the dark clouds surrounding us was that we got a chance to spend a lot of time in the village itself. Instead of hiking up and down the trails around it, we walked up and down cobblestoned streets, running into friendly kids and their moms, spying on mountain goats, making our way through the mist to the highest point.. this tiny little pueblo was definitely worth the pause in our travels. 

More Cartajima

We had tapas in the local bar where we had to tear the bartender away from his game of cards to serve us. Over cups of steaming coffee, we chatted with a garrulous old man from France in broken sign language with smatterings of French and Spanish thrown in. He was an expat too, like us, having left his hometown in France to settle down in Spain. (I can totally imagine why one would leave behind their land and retire here, hope we can find our own little village someday too!) Everyone else in the bar seemed quite friendly and curious, but didn't approach us, maybe because of the language divide. On our part, we too felt quite disappointed that we hadn't spent time picking up Spanish.. we had so many questions and would have loved to have a good chat with everyone! Anyway, perhaps in an attempt to make us feel more comfortable, the bartender soon switched channels on the little wall mounted TV and guess who was featured in the movie he turned on? Kabir Bedi, playing an Indian prince in some fantasy European C-grade adventure movie! What an unexpected reminder that we Indians are everywhere. :) 

Dinner too was a very communal affair in the village's only restaurant, with a bunch of people noshing and enjoying a game of soccer between Real Madrid and Barcelona. I am not a big fan of the game, and don't even claim to understand it much, but there is something infectious and visceral about sport that transcends nationalities and languages. I couldn't help but cheer and jeer along with the crowd, and as fireworks lit up the skies after the Real victory, it reminded me a bit of the little colony in India where I grew up.. a different sport, a different country, a different language, but still felt a lot like home.