Friday, October 30, 2009
We ended up not going to the Michael Jackson movie on Thursday because I had to pack and the movie didn’t start until 11:40pm (and Will didn’t want to be up that late…wuss).
Merete, Will, Chryssi and I left for Nerja in the morning. The bus Will and I were on was full, so Chryssi and Merete had to go on an earlier bus. The bus ride took about an hour and 45 minutes and when we got to Nerja, I was prepared to walk a bit to our Hostal. However, once we parked, I looked out the left side of the bus and SAW our Hostal! How nice! All we had to do was walk across the street! The guy and his wife who own the place are Russian (we heard them yelling a bit, haha), but spoke to us in Spanish. I have a feeling they also speak English because they were talking to some other US travelers at one point… Anyway, while we were checking in, Merete and Chryssi were heading out to the beach! We set our stuff down and headed out a little after them, but decided to explore the town a bit. We made our way to the Balcon de Europa which is basically a big lookout point. Back in the day it was used for military purposes, but when we were there it was just filled with tourists! Most of the tourists were British, which I thought was interesting! We wandered along the beach (past some restriction signs…) from one little cove to the next. We finally settled in to one and spent hours skipping rocks and sitting in the sand. It was so much fun! We took a ton of pictures as the sun started to set, and then went back to the Balcon de Europa to get a good picture of the sunset! It was really beautiful.
We ended up finding this cute little Indian place to get take out from for dinner. We talked to some of the workers because they weren’t busy at all, and one guy was so excited to talk about his trip to the United States. Pennsylvania. Who woulda thunk. We took the food back to the hostal to eat and it was AMAZING! We got Chana Masala (not nearly as good as Anupma’s!), Chicken Tika Masala and some nan. It was a really good price, so we figured we may have to go back again! However, we realized on the way back to the hostal that we didn’t have any silverware. We stopped at this little Asian Euro store (like the dollar store, except it’s more like the $1.59 store with the stupid exchange rate). We found a pack of 4 forks. Perfect!
Yummy, yummy, yummy. After dinner we went back to the Balcon to sit and watch the people. Will got some gelato, but I was freezing! No one told me it was going to be that cold in the evening! Regardless, it was a ton of fun!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Today we got up pretty early and headed out to the beach. That was a funny thing to do…go to the beach on Halloween. I can’t say I’ve ever done that before! On the way down to the small beach we found on the map, we saw numerous “Halloween Fiesta” signs for clubs and bars and such, and I just had a hard time convincing myself that it was actually October 31. It felt more like…the middle of July. Regardless, it was AWESOME.
We made it to the small beach just to the right of the Balcon de Europa. About 5 minutes after we had sat down, these 2 guys in this tiny boat come speeding up to the shore. There were houses behind us so I just figured they live there. Some other people came out of the houses to meet them, and they were all huddled around the boat. I was a bit confused until…this one guy started walking back to the houses with a rather large bucket. Squirming around in it were 2 live octopuses. Live. Grabbing at his arm. He grabbed the one by the head (or face, or whatever you call it) and lifted it out of the bucket so it wouldn’t grab at his arm any more. He proceeded toward the house closest to us, but stopped short at this wooden panel. He then butchered both of them RIGHT there. Chop, chop, chop. It was rather gruesome…but quite Halloween-y!
I got my enough of my appetite back about 20 minutes later to eat my Napolitana pastry (square shaped chocolate-filled croissant). It was just around that time when I was looking out at the Sea and noticed some weird clouds out in the distant. I was convinced I could see the curvature of the Earth because there were NO clouds in the sky, only clouds RIGHT along the horizon (therefore they were the clouds from far, far away, I thought). I layed there for a bit, and then all of a sudden Will goes “the clouds are attacking us!” I sat up and, sure enough they were moving closer and closer. Except they weren’t really clouds, they were fog clouds! It only took about half an hour before they completely engulfed us. It was ridiculous, you couldn’t see ANYTHING. There were some people swimming about 30 feet out from the shore, and you couldn’t even see them! A few boats went past, but you could only hear them. It was still pretty nice out, so we decided to stay there anyway. This also seemed quite Halloween-y…I half expected Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl to emerge out of the fog. That would have been awesome.
After the beach, Merete, Chryssi, Will and I took the short bus ride to Las Cuevas de Nerja (the Nerja Caves). As soon as we made it through the tiny cave door, I was completely shocked. I thought it was going to be very similar to the caves we had seen in Gibraltar, but these ones were way more impressive. Sadly, the section with the ancient cave paintings was not open to public because of cleaning. That didn’t really matter, because I loved the rest of it! There were so many cool looking stalactites and stalagmites! There was one HUGE one that was actually a column, made up of a stalactite and stalagmite that had connected. It is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest one! My camera didn’t really work very well indoors (without flash, go figure), but Will managed to get some REALLY good ones! I’ll have to steal those! Being in the creepy cave was yet another Halloween-y adventure for the day. We got back outside and sure enough, the fog was beginning to engulf the caves. Crazy Nerja.
We caught the next bus back to Nerja and wandered around before getting more Indian food for dinner. Yum! We watched the sun set from the Balcon de Europa and then hung out on the beach for a while. While we were wandering around, we saw a bunch of smaller kids dressed up, going trick-or-treating at the shops. Since all of the apartments are above the shops, the shop owners just hand out candy instead! That's kinda cool! They were all dressed up as vampires and zombies. The girls were all witches. Literally ALL of them were witches. I guess they don't have much choice over here! It was really funny to see this US tradition find it's way all the way to a small beach town. Oh, and I'd like to say I did not detect any anti-Christian vibes from those kids like the article I did my project on.
As fun as it was to watch all of them run around yelling "Happy Halloweeeeeeeen" (I considered teaching some of them "trick-or-treat", but I couldn't figure out how to explain WHY), I wanted to go to bed pretty early because I had quite the day planned for Sunday!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
So, Nerja says they have 320 days of sunshine a year. We managed to be there for two of the ones that isn’t. This didn’t really matter because it would have been super hot out if it wasn’t cloudy.
That morning, Will and I headed over to the Donkey Sanctuary that I had found online (thanks, Mom!). Merete and Chryssi decided to try their luck on the beach again. However, the hovering fog didn’t seem like it was going to let up anytime soon. I was SOOOOOO excited to see the donkeys, dogs, and other animals they had there. I really had no idea what to expect. We walked to the sanctuary from the hostal…it was only about a 10 minute walk! We got there and there was just one tiny little sign! The old lady opened the gate for us and her husband came over to greet us. I assume he was from England because he spoke perfect English! He handed us a (laminated) sheet that had the names and background information about all of the animals they had at the sanctuary. He showed us around the little office area, where there was a ton more information about maltreatment of donkeys, ways to help, information about adopting one, ect. Then the guy asked us if we wanted to feed them. OF COURSE! We gave him a donation and he handed me a LARGE bucket of chopped up carrots, potatoes, bread, plums, bananas, etc. Then he let us into the area where all the animals were. Most were kept in pens with one or a few other animals, but some were roaming free. Apparently after they close, they let all of them roam free, but while visitors are there, there are a few they want to keep separated. My favorite was this tiny black pig that came running over to me right away (Piggy!). He just stood there staring at me, so I handed him a carrot. He just kept looking at me, like I had done something stupid. So, I tried giving him a banana instead. He accepted that one. Apparently he doesn’t like his vegetables. Tisk, tisk. Calling someone a “pig” doesn’t have quite the same meaning. I guess pigs can be picky eaters too! This pig (Iggy, our sheet told us) kept following me around the whole time, even though he didn’t really seem to want much to eat. The donkeys LOVED anything and everything, and most of the horses really liked the bread. Iggy’s mom was HILARIOUS. She was ginormous…her belly literally hit the ground. She liked to stand right under this one horse’s hay that he was munching on, so she had hay piled up on her back. It was pretty funny to watch. One of my other favorite animals was this giant sheep that was roaming around. He didn’t want food at all. I tried to feed him numerous times, and he even had his head in the bucket a couple times, but he just liked smelling the food and following us around. Will had an amazing picture that depicts EXACTLY how the sheep looked at us when we tried to feed it. I can’t wait for those to get online! Another fun animal was this white donkey that tried to eat everything I tried to give to the other donkeys. He just wandered behind me and then would shove his head against me to try and get at either my bucket or the piece of food in my hand. He wasn’t mean about it, but it was really funny. I think he is in EVERY picture we have from there, because he just need THAT much attention! Haha. The donkeys were adorable. It was sad to read about where they had come from (some were abandoned, some were saved from abusive owners, etc.), but it was fun to see that they were being treated so well there! The guy at the front said “they may seem like they’re desperate for food, but they just love the attention more than anything.” So I made sure to pet each of them! There was one horse that was very misshapen. I guess it was forced to carry a lot of weight at a young age, and now it literally looked like someone had taken a giant bite out of its back. Some of the donkeys looked like they had similar problems, just not as severe. On my way out, I saw a humorous article they had about this called “get the fat asses off of the asses”. Not the nicest thing, but it got the point across. They also had a little pony that we couldn’t feed because it was on a special diet. It was SO cute! After we finished one bucket of food, we went and got another one! The lady seemed shocked that we wanted more, but happily gave us another heaping bucket. This time, it was Will’s turn to feed them. I got some good pictures of him with the little pig! Overall it was a ton of fun, and I decided that if it wasn’t nice out on Monday that I’d go back!
We went back to the Balcon de Europa and enjoyed the view for a bit. Then we just wandered around the small streets looking at all the fun restaurants and stores. We ended up eating at this little cafeteria where Will got Spaghetti Carbonera (with ham, oh no!). We spent a good part of the evening along the beach, looking for rocks (which were all beautiful and perfectly smooth from being washed around on shore so much). I still couldn’t believe that it was the 1st of November! Then Chryssi and Merete suggested this Flamenco show they had seen for pretty cheap the night before. It was just in this little bar and it was 6 Euros for a drink and admission to the show, so we decided to go. It was the same show that night as it was the night before, so Chryssi and Merete didn’t stay. The show was REALLY good. There were so many fun costume changes. It was 4 girls and 1 guy, and they were all really good! One of the girls really reminded me of Anna Danila for some reason. I think it was her facials while she danced, haha. Random.
Anyway, it was a really fun day and I really didn’t want to have to leave the next day!
Monday, November 2, 2009
NO MORE FOG! YAY! …Even though I secretly wanted it to be cloudy so we could go back to the Donkey Sanctuary! We packed up and checked out of the hostal and then made our way down to the beach. It wasn’t cloudy, but it sure was windy! This made for some rather large waves (in my opinion). Will convinced me to go body surfing/wave jumping with him, which was SO FUN (and very cold)! On my way back to shore, a huge wave hit me from behind and I got thrown into the sand. I got SO much sand in my swimsuit, it wasn’t even funny. I mean, I was a walking, talking, human sand-bag. Luckily there were some little porta-potties close by that helped me out a bit, but WOW. I didn’t know that was possible! We dried off and headed to the bus-stop around 4:00.
We made it home by 6:30 and then did some homework. We also ended up going to see the Michael Jackson’s This Is It movie because we figured we could still enjoy the weekend. The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles, which we realized was probably a good decision on their part because finding a Spanish double for Michael Jackson may prove to be quite difficult. The movie followed the rehearsals leading up to the final tour Michael was planning on doing. It had a ton of dancing (of course) and all of his most famous songs. It was really cool! I might even go see it again!
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