Jimena de La Frontera - Week 3 + Weekend Away

11^th, 12^th, & 13^th

Back at work – starting to really hate white washing now, my hands are wrecked and it’s just no fun now, but had to get the place spick and span before the wedding this weekend.

George is hating it ha, just wants to go back to jump, his last day is going to be Thursday then heading back to Brento, never met anyone with an addiction such as his before J

14.06.2012

Last day, we told Fi that we would start early at 7am cause we were finishing at 12pm but George didn’t get up till 9.30am, I was a good girl and got stuck into the gardening, think I have found something I really enjoy, something very therapeutic about chopping an overgrown garden to bits and making it look awesome again.

Later on that day, Daisy had a falling out with George, she was hitting him with a broom and he warned her that if she kept doing it that he would throw a glass of water over her, he didn’t stop so she got drenched and the tears were flowing! She was upset at him for about 5 mins though J

We caught the train to Ronda with the mission in mind to locate the police station and ask if he could jump the cliffs again, we found the station and the police were super unhelpful. We spoke to one officer and asked if he could speak English, he couldn’t so we asked if anyone in the building spoke English, he just flatly said no.

He then wrote a phone number on a piece of paper and told us to ring that and they would help us in English, so then we had to find a payphone and spend a few euros trying to get the number to connect but it didn’t work. We headed back to the station and said it didn’t work and they told us to wait, then a few minutes later they handed George a piece of paper for him to write a statement for what he was reporting.

Frustrated, we just left and decided to find the information centre and see if they could call the police for us.

If that was NZ and someone who couldn’t speak Enlgish walked into a police station, we would do everything we could to understand what they were trying to say, not just fob us off. They had no idea what we were there for, could have been reporting a crime and they just didn’t care.

We ended up just getting some lunch then catching the bus to Arcos de la Frontera.

The cliffs in Arcos were big but not big enough unfortunately, the only possible place to jump from was all locked up, George tried to climb the walls but it was an old building that was falling apart so not such a good idea. So poor George had to settle for trying to jump in Ronda the next day on his way to Malaga.

15.06.2012

Said goodbye to George and I got on the bus for Cadiz. The Cadiz main drag looks a lot like Gold Coast with the pinky buildings and an awesome beach just in front of them stretching for miles. Found my hostel super easily, was about 2mins from the bus station, put my bags down and headed straight back out the door with a walking tour of Cadiz.

After the tour we went for lunch and I finally got some epic paella, checked in back at the hostel then went to the beach, tried to find the girls that were on the walking tour with me, the beach was packed so just lay down in the sun and chilled out. After a while figured I’d go for a walk so got up and right behind me were the girls the whole time, think they had gone for a swim when I first got there.

Walked through a crappy castle then some gardens, got an ice-cream, supermarket then back to the hostel to get ready to go to a flamenco show.

The show was fantastic, the hall was packed full of people, all the tables were reserved for locals so us tourists got sent down the back.

The show was to start at 10pm, and in true Spanish style didn’t get going till closer to 11pm.

It was a competition of some description, couldn’t understand the compare so didn’t really know the details. There were 4 groups in all, about 3-4 people would make up the band - a guitarist, some clappers and a singer, then each band had 1 dancer who danced flamenco to their music.

There were 2 male and 2 female dancers, the first guy to come on the stage I wasn’t quite sure if it was a joke or not, he was dressed in a very shiny suit with lots of scarfs on and just seemed to walk on to the stage as if he was taking the piss but soon realised that he was serious and he was quite good.

The next dancer was a girl that was English but grew up in Spain, super skinny, like slightly on the anorexic side of skinny so her movements weren’t all that great to watch and she was very weak in what she did but she has a massive dress that made up for it.

The 3^rd dancer was a woman as well, she was fantastic (apart from falling over), she recovered well and went on to get a standing ovation, this group had a fantastic male singer too.

There had to be a break after the third group cause the 4^th group were running late, but it was well worth the wait cause the guy who danced for this group was fantastic.

They then all did a second performance and then all got certificates but we couldn’t work out who won.

Was so great to have gone to a flamenco show here in Spain, just need to try and find a bullfight to go watch now.

16.06.2012

Woke this morning with no idea as to where I was going that day, so just started to pack up all my stuff and get ready to leave.

However I managed to smash a full bottle of wine on the floor of the hostel, only just save my bag and another girls bag from the wine, the whole room stunk of red wine, thank god none of the girls in the room were hung over!

Managed to clean that up and then packed my bags, but my keys were missing, I looked everywhere, unpacked my pack 3 times, looked through the whole hostel, asked the girls in my room and in the people in the common room if they had seen them and nothing, there goes my 10 euro key deposit!

I had one last look and asked the girl who slept above me again if she had seen them, she said no but then decided to have a look anyway, and she pulled one set out of her bag and another off the top of her locker, my set.

Found a guy at the hostel that was heading to Tarifa that day at 11am and he had found a hostel there so I just booked with the same one and off I went.

Tarifa is famous for kite surfing and wind surfing, it is the most Southern point of Europe, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic and it is 14km away from Morocco.

The beaches stretch for miles, white soft sand but the water was freezing! I walked around the city for a while then just chilled out on the beach and watched the sun go down, the sunset was so nice and pretty much everyone cleared off the beach.

17.06.2012

Crap day in general, got some bad news from back home which completely floored me and consumed me for most of the day, the shit thing about traveling on your own is in times like this not having anyone to talk to and you still have to try and get on with what you need to do to get to where you are going, suppose in a way it’s a good distraction, if only for short periods of time.

I caught the bus to Algeciras, then had 4 hours to kill before my train to Jimena so walked into town.

Everywhere I looked, women, teenagers, kids, they were all dressed in flamenco, all crazy colours and huge dresses and flowers in their hair, felt really weird for me to be walking through them with my backpack on, apparently it was some kind of fair that they have every now and then, was tricky to try and sneak photos of them.

Caught the train back to Jimena where Fiona picked me up, her two older girls are over from England as well as her Mum & Dad, Sister and her husband so she has a completely full house at the mo.

It was Fi’s mums birthday so they were all planning on going out for dinner, man it just seems such hard work to organise so many people in the same family to get to dinner. Fi’s older girls at one point completely ripped shreds off of her, they had her in the bathroom and were just screaming at her in Spanish and making her cry, it was horrible. They are 22 and 20 but they are like horrific teenagers, who when they don’t get their own way just are mean and nasty.

I couldn’t be bothered walking down to the farm, kind of wish that I had though, cause the mosquitos at the house are so bad, it was hot and I had to wrap myself completely in a duvet and then when that wasn’t enough I found a scarf and had to wrap that around my face and head and then knowing I was covered just try to ignore the constant noise from them around my ears, ignoring didn’t work and therefore no sleep was had.