View Larger Map
April 13 – Gibraltar to Marbella, 1868 km
Today we had the best excuse for getting up late, given that it was light two hours after we went to bed. We are up at 10:30 anyway, feeling less wasted that I expected I would. I wait for Mike to mail a carpet home that he had purchased in Morocco. In spite of my bungled attempt to sneak Mike in last night, the pension owner is chatty and warm to me as I wait for Mike to return.
On our way out of town we stop at a supermercado to buy food supplies for the road. My map from the tourist office proves invaluable in La Linea’s narrow, winding, featureless streets. We follow a regional road along the beach until it climbs inland to join the freeway. The freeway climbs slowly to a height of 150 m. Behind us, there are stunning views of “The Rock” shrinking away to nothing in the distance. 
We have a tailwind as the coast road leads north, slowly bending to the north-east. At Estapona, half way to Marbella, the wind switches into a headwind, channeled down from the north through a valley that we are at the end of. Until this point, the hilly terrain north of Gibraltar had either been farmland or in its natural state of forest, scrub and rocky outcroppings, but at Estapona we are suddenly surrounded by condominiums. 
Beyond Estapona the road becomes a freeway again, and it remains so all the way to Marbella, tonight’s destination. We stop at the edge of the city to have a snack. It is late afternoon. A German cycle tourist stops to greet us while we are resting. He is headed north to Malaga, a day’s ride away, where he will end two weeks of touring around Andalucía. He’s already sounding nostalgic, especially hearing that we still have another 46 weeks to go. He tells us that Marbella’s youth hostel, mentioned in our guide, is not yet built. 
Marbella is the oldest resort town on Spain’s Costa del Sol (Sun Coast), so it has still retained some of its traditional Spanish charms. It is more open, less densely developed. The palm trees along the streets are not dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. We find a pension off a beautiful street in the older quarter, Pension Princesa, which we cannot resist. 
Its name gets us laughing and re-energizes us. We take a stroll through the streets and visit a restaurant nearby for dinner. This is one of the best evenings I have spent with Mike on this trip. This town is healing the tensions and bad feelings that had come between us. I regret that we’ll be leaving it tomorrow morning.
I am avoiding calcium and alcohol since I started taking Charles Trico’s penicillin last night. It seems to be working, but my lower left sinus is still discharging and it still aches quite a lot.
PHOTO 1: leaving Gibraltar
PHOTO 2: coast north-east of Gibraltar
PHOTO 3: approaching Estapona
PHOTO 4: after Estapona
PHOTO 5: church in Marbella
No comments:
Post a Comment