So we are off on our travels again and this time the destination is southern Spain, somewhere we haven’t been before. This meant an early start was required to get to Gatwick for our flight. We have a reputation for arriving places early, something that both our boys find irritating I think. This time, however, we really excelled ourselves and arrived at a time that even I thought was too early. To be fair to us, as good project managers, we had built in a lot of contingency for issues that might arise along the way and of course none of these materialised.
The flight was reasonably uneventful and we landed into Malaga where the temperature was 24 degrees. The weather had suggested that at the hottest it would be 20 degrees. We had planned accordingly and then regretted not bring more shorts!
Our destination wasn’t Malaga itself but a small village some distance away so we had to pick up a hire car. Collecting a car is never a stress-free task as the agents are trained to up-sell as much as they could. Do you want a bigger car? How about sat-nav? Additional breakdown cover? And, of course, collision damage waver. We felt pretty smug having taken out excess insurance in the UK on hearing the couple next to us part with (and then regret) 400 Euros for the hire companies own equivalent – we paid about 40 Euros. This out the way we were able to hit the road.
The first few miles were pretty stressful as we went the wrong way (twice) while we got to grips with the sat nav on my phone. We were both tired and hungry by this point so pulled off at the first opportunity and found our only dining option was a McDonalds but needs must and all that. Visiting an international fast food chain does have its advantages as the words “Big Mac and fries” are pretty universal – although there was still some difficulties when we were asked the inevitable question about meal deals.
The rest of the drive along the A7 was pretty uneventful and finally we reached our destination. The instructions we had been given were, let’s say, woolly and so we drove round the village three times before discovering that that was both an upper and a lower village and we needed the lower. And finally we were here.
After unpacking and getting our bearings we decided to go for a walk and to try out the local bar. Armed with only a small phrase book, Google Translate and wild gesticulations we managed to order a wine and a Fanta, which thankfully was what we went in for! The drinks were accompanied by the odd assortment of goodies you can see on the plate below.
Tomorrow the holiday begins proper.