Ronda, El Vinculo and Juan, Sevilla, flamenco dance

7:55am clock alarm roused us from slumber. Ian tapped it off then lifted and replaced the telephone receiver to conclude the simultaneous, auxiliary wakeup call, restoring silence to the small, dark room. It was cozy, “isolated,” still, with the drapes drawn and the window sealed. Ian tilted the doorknob and inched open the balcony double doors, curious to discover what view awaited him beyond the opaque glass and in the expected early morning sunlight. Drllnnnn drllnn. Skwauk skwauk. Gray clouds hurled torrents of water into the gorge overlooked by Parador de Ronda; in the downpour, birds circled and squawked high above the river surging at canyon’s bottom. Ian closed the glass door, returning our room to silence and stillness. It was time to wake up.

Day 4
8:00am Breakfast.
8:30am Luggage pickup inside room; bring carry-on bags to the bus before walking on the tour.
9:00am Walking tour through the charming town of Ronda.

The clouds released their last sprinklings over the streets of New and Old Ronda, the two being separated by Rio Guadalevín and by 2500 years, with the New City boasting merely five hundred years and the Old three thousand. The river had carved an amazing canyon by the name of El Tajo. Connecting Rondas old and new was Puente Nuevo, a bridge that spanned El Tajo at one hundred twenty meters’ height.

Key West, Havana, Ronda—all three share a prideful common thread: Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote here. Parador de Ronda, in addition to frequently hosting Hemingway, is situated above the former location of the prison that made an appearance in For Whom the Bell Tolls and beside the gorge into which the book’s Franco soldiers tossed loyalists during Spain’s Civil War.

In Old Ronda, la calle tipica contains architecture Baroque, Gothic, Moorish, Catholic, classic, and modern… often all on the same street, sometimes many on one building, displaying gates, doors, towers, birdcages, and façades each of different styles from different times. One thing all buildings had in common was a shine telltale of yearly, compulsory whitewashings, making towns in this region gleam like sun-soaked snow in the autumn-green mountains of Andalucía.

Pépe—Rondan tour guide, acquaintance of famous visitors, and bullfight aficionado—led us through the streets and squares of Ronda and to the Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda, a five thousand-capacity (compared to Mexico’s twenty thousand) plaza de torros. A note of bullfighting interest: Bullrings are titled so in languages of many countries but not in Spain, the source of bullfighting; there they are called “bullsquares” because that’s what they used to be. Note number two: Bullfighters used to do a lot of running around the bull until Pedro Romero introduced the Spanish-flag-colored cape and dance-like style of enticing the bull to run around the torero; that is why bullfighting in Spanish is called corrida de toros, “running around bulls.” Note number three: Orson Welles used to be a slim, trim bullfighting up-and-comer; he was known as El Americanito.

11:00am Free time until lunch.

On the main street in Ronda, Ian picked up a tall lady-justice clock and a stout children clock for Judi and him.

12:30pm Lunch at Don Miguel, overlooking Ronda’s gorge.

Lightning and thunder lent their efforts to the rain as the intensity picked up. Luckily, the tour group sat high and dry in Don Miguel. Below us, the gorge river turned muddy brown due to runoff. New Bridge’s gutters spouted constant flows of water onto the grassy slopes and stone gorge walls, forming swift-flowing channels to the river eighty meters below.

After lunch, our tour bus wove a path through the slopes of Andalucía to a mountaintop village for a visit with hamming Juan (“the little, old, olive-oil maker,” as Karen the tour guide called him) at his El Vinculo, in his family for generations passed and hopefully generations to come. He spoke in a tossed salad Spanish, English, and animated audio-motion, which Annie translated to us. After he explained his olive oil making process, Juan fed us bread and olive oil, the latter of which Karen purchased a small bottle for each of us tourists. I walked out with four additional botellas pequeñas as non-trinket gifts for a lucky few back home, and Ian picked up a box of eight for the hard-working employees at Exhedra.

Next bus stop: Sevilla, gussied up from the 1992 summer Olympics, with a large main road and many hotels and “fast food” restaurants (fast food in style and quality of food but not in speed of service, Karen warned the bus passengers) to support its tourists and 1.3 million inhabitants. Luis the bus driver narrowly brought us collision-free through a sliver of a road and to the front of Meliá Colón (http://www.solmelia.com/), where Ian and I checked in to room 626, showered and prepped, separated our twin beds (as we had also needed do the night before), and went downstairs to join our group for a private flamenco dance showcasing a castanet-wielding couple and four zesty singers, two of whom strummed and banged their guitars while the other two clapped and shouted in rhythm.

8:00pm Private flamenco show at hotel followed by dinner downstairs at El Burladero Restaurant, famous in the world of bullfighters.

Below deck from the flamenco dance, Ian and I shared a dinner table with Steve and Joe, Carol and Ron, and June and Harriet then went for an 11pm walk in the skinny, curved streets surrounding the hotel. I shower-laundered my dirties then sat awake until 2:45am catching up on my journaling duties and then turned in while my clothes drip-dried in the bathroom.