General activities

I forgot to mention that in usual Smith fashion we did a familiarisation trip to Granada Airport on Thursday afternoon. When Ian and Diane arrive we now know exactly where to go to park and picthem up. Ditto Andrea.

 

On Sunday we went on one of the back roads to Antequera. We were going to stop in Loja but as it is pretty close to Alhama, decided to go straight through to Laguna de Fuente de Piedra. It is Andalucia's biggest natural lake and one of Europe's two main breeding grounds for the greater flamingo (the other is in the Camargue region of south west France). (Lonely Planet p270). When we got there we found that the flamingos were a long way off, but Brian zoomed in on them with the camera and got some good photos. I wanted him to get some of them when they were flying in, but they were too quick, so I bought some postcards instead.

We then went on to have lunch at Caserio de San Benito, a restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet as being 'nearby'. This had Brian cursing all the way about how the Lonely Planet is always so far out in its calculations. Nearby turned out to be about 25 kms and while Sofia did a good job of getting us there, what was adding to Brian's stress, was that a message came up in the car that there was something wrong with its air pollution system.

The instruction book for the car is in French, so it presented a few problems trying to work out exactly what was wrong, but he decided that it is something to do with the catalytic converter. He rang Paris to find out the nearest Citroen repair place and was told it was Granada, and that as long as the warning light was showing orange it was okay, but if it turned to red, we would have to be towed.

As there was nothing we could do, we settled in for a lunch of rabbit with rice - conejo con arroz - which was okay. The atmosphere was good, but I reckon we could do a better job with a rabbit. It was well cooked but the rice had been cooked with the rabbit probably paella style in a sauce which was a bit like a french onion soup.

We got back to Alhama okay and Brian sent an email to the place in Granada.  We thought that we would give them some time to reply so Monday we walked to the thermal baths at the other end of the Gorge.  This is the more upmarket resort than the one we went to last week and on the way Brian took a number of photos.  In real life the first one looks like something that would be  good as a stained glass panel.  The others are of the gorge and the Roman bridge.







                                                                                                  

As we had not heard from the car place at lunchtime today - Tuesday 1st June, Brian rang them and the good news is that we are going to take it to a place here in Alhama tomorrow morning.