Weather forecasts for today look awful. Drenching rains, thunderstorms, winds. Looks like a wash out. So much so, that the owner of the company doing our bike tour, Kay, has emailed us telling us she’ll cancel the tour if the forecast comes to be. Bummer.
But, the day dawns beautifully. Sunny, warm, smooth seas. You can see the cold front in the distance, but no rain at all. We hop off the ship and head to the tour meeting point, stopping for a cappuccino first (this one is THE cheapest yet) to waste time before our tour.
Kay arrives early to escort us to her bike shop and introduces us to Damon who will be our guide. We are doing the off the beaten track tour (I’m sure you are all surprised) and heading out of the city into the surrounding areas, down the beach and to a wildlife sanctuary. Damon is a great guide, from the Nederlands, has travelled all over, and landed here most recently. We have fun talking with him and learning a little bit about Malaga and its history.
First we head off into SoHo, the alternative area (just like NYC). There are closed sex shops and trendy bars, as well as great graffiti commissioned by the town to create a “contemporary cultural legacy” in a once fairly derelict outdoor space. The paintings are amazing – and located at virtually every turn. Such detail – on such a large scale is pretty impressive!
We cycle through SoHo for a bit, then head off to the seaside promenade where there are hundreds and hundreds of locals all staring out at the churning sea. Most have cameras and are taking pictures of the surf. Damon is shocked at how big the waves are – he says he’s never seen it like this, it is normally very smooth, like a lake! We’ve brought the storm in with us apparently.
It is windy and blowing, that is for sure, and our ride down the promenade gets a bit tough when the big gusts come up. We stop here and there, next to the old chimneys that the town has preserved to remind everyone of the industrial history of Malaga. Damon gives us the historical overview of the Franco times, how the city survived and then thrived later on tourism. We also mess around with a cool Sundial that doesn’t really work all too well – but it’s fun (those are our shadows – yes).
After the sundial, we continue to head up the coast then turn inland a bit to head for the wildlife preserve. This is a stretch of land that was virtually stripped of all plant life when they started expanding the city. Builders excavated the area and used the dirt for fill during construction. Eventually the government stepped in and replanted and protected the area to provide a bit of urban oasis. Damon calls it the silent river because it’s located right next to a large highway, but once you are in the preserve you can’t hear it.
It’s true too. Once we are in the preserve, you can’t hear a thing – and the road is right there. The pedaling becomes a little challenging as we head toward the ocean. But we force ourselves on, and are rewarded with a snack of local market nuts and dried fruits, as well as olive oil cookies (that remind us of gingerbread cookies) while overlooking the raging seas.
Circling back, we head for the Flamingo preserve, where there are lots of birds, but no flamingos. They look like Herons from the distance – and there are tons of them, but hard to see even with the binoculars Damon provides (they think of everything on this tour – it’s great).
It’s about time to head back, so we turn around and pedal toward the town. As we near the bridge near the entrance of the preserve we are blocked by horses – of all things! There are 2 horses on the path, and they keep cocking their backs legs. Uh, ok, we’re not walking behind them, that’s for sure.
We try to get them to move, but they aren’t budging, even when Damon feeds them some grass. I decided to make friends with them…
..and we finally walk in the grass in front of them to get by. Close one!
We manage the promenade, which is even busier with people now, and wheel our way back to the bike shop where we are rewarded with Malaga wine – a very sweet almost grape juice tasting brew. An excellent and informative 4 1/2 hour, 25Km tour. Perfect for our day in Malaga.
We still have a couple of hours before we need to get back to the ship and we are noshy, so we head over to a restaurant that Damon recommended called La Taberna Del Pintxo. Pintxos are small snacks, different from tapas in that everything is on toothpicks. And the cost is determined by the type of toothpick or skewer. Hearts cost one price, swords another, and long flat skewers yet another. None more than 1.95 euros each. At the end of the meal, they count up the skewers and total your bill. Cold pintxos are self serve, hot ones are brought around to your table. We have a mix of cold and hot, all really good, along with our beer and wine. It’s really fun – so much so that I forget to take pictures of the food, and only have a photo of the skewers at the end!
After our lunch, we decide to sort of tour around to some of the highlights in Malaga town, but it’s still crazy windy And as we are heading out to the cathedral, we hear a ship’s horn that goes on and on and on – really much longer than we’ve ever heard. Even though we know Captain Marek can’t really leave us before all aboard time, we decide to go back to the ship anyway. No sense taking chances, we’d already watched as one cruise ship tried to come into the marina, but had to turn around and go back out (we find out later that the ship finally came in but was 4 hours late because of the winds and seas). So, we walked back to the shuttle, hopped aboard and headed to the dock.
As it turned out, we didn’t leave early (we actually left later because of the winds), but it was crazy all day in the harbor. The winds picked up so much that they snapped 6 lines and had to have 2 tugs hold the ship to the dock.
Even aboard, with the tugs and the lines, the ship was moving constantly, we’ve never been on a ship moving that much while at dock. The ship was moving so much that they couldn’t use the large gangway on deck 4, but had to go to deck 1 and use a smaller gangway that could move back and forth on the dock. Crazy!
Safely aboard, we just hung out in our cabin and watched the ship move, the food get stowed (we picked up all our provisions here and not in Barcelona for some reason) and the people streaming back in.
Seas will be rough tonight, according to the captain, which is no surprise with the wind. But he will do his best to make it more comfortable for us. And actually, he did. It wasn’t all that bad…thank you Captain Marek!
No comments:
Post a Comment