my travels: Torrox Costa and Cordoba day 1

Wednesday 19.10.11 – Torrox

Sitting on a comfortable lounger in the sun, listening to the waves breaking on the Mediterranean shore, warm sun still happening, despite being well into autumn. Jo is floating in the sea, about to be joined by Di and Hilary, I’m being lazy, and catching up on travel log.

Yesterday was a quiet one at the campground here. Much better prices, 20 euro or just over per night for all of us, all facilities you need, including free WiFi if you are in the right place, a bit slow though.

Jo and I walked down to the beach 800m through suburban Torrox, and down the hill past avocadoes, mangoes, figs and tropical fruit trees of not sure what species. We walked along the coast to the town and sat in the sun drinking firstly lemonade and then beer, chatting and relaxing before quick stop at supermarket and then back to the campground. Hilary and di had been having a quiet time, reading and sorting through papers for the book. Hilary has a bit of a virus so has been lying low and having a better amount of sleep. Needed ibuprofen one night to help sore throat, and general malaise, seems a bit better today but still quite snuffly. We have been very lucky with our health so far, I guess the warmth helps, but still different bugs and climates and routine could have taken their toll.

In the evening we had a quiet time chatting, and reading before a relatively early night.

Mang type tree with large fruit. They do grow mangoes but these seem the wrong colour.

Loungers like the ones we were on

Jo in the Med.

We had driven from Jaen to Cordoba and decided after a poor attempt at sleep the preceeding night in Jaen that we would find a campsite early rather than trying when we were tired to find somewhere suitable. We stopped on the outskirts of Cordoba at a Carrefour to buy a few things and while the others went in shopping I fired up the laptop with dongle and located a campsite very close by. In fact it was a good spot, about 4 kms from where we were and using google maps found a relatively simple route to it from the Carrefour. Unfortunately it was disgustingly over priced- It was 42 euro per night, which was astronomical, double the price of most places and had few of the services open because it was no longer peak season. It did have a good location which was its saving grace but really it deserves to go out of business with that attitude of greed.
Once we had settled in to the campsite and organised some lunch we walked the 400 metres to the bus-stop where for 1.15 each we caught the bus into Cordoba town (or the part where the touristy things were, like the Jewish quarter and the Museums etc. We used a combination of our DK book and maps we had from the campground and later tourist information to follow a trail through the Jewish quarter looking at old Arab walls, interesting narrow streets, shops, and architecture.

We stopped and had a look at the synagogue which I had expected to be a large open, round building currently in use, but what we saw was a rather small building with arches and bits of mural/tiling on white washed walls, that part anyway was no longer a place of worship, I’m not sure if part of the building was currently in use for that purpose but if so, it didn’t appear to be open to prying tourist eyes. A bit further on when we stopped to poke into an open building which was actually part of a hotel but had interesting gardens/patio areas behind iron gates, we saw an advertisement for a show of Andalusian horses at the Royal Stables and bought tickets for the following evening, at the info centre, then we wandered over the Roman bridge and looked at the towers and over into the river where there were waterwheels and mills for everything from irrigation to grinding grain (historically). Under one of the gates was a Spanish woman playing the harp with a South American bloke accompanying her (periodically) on pipes. We watched them for a while before buying a couple of their CDs and then heading off to the archeological museum, one of the few things which were open in the late afternoon/evening in Cordoba. For a pretty small town the museum was actually pretty interesting. I wasn’t particularly keen to go, having been to a few, and old pots and rocks not being quite so fascinating for me, but Hilary had expressed a great desire to go and so it was the least we could do considering she had been dragged to a number of sights which weren’t on her “want to do list”. Anyway as I said, it actually was quite interesting with all sorts of exhibits through the ages from the area, coins, pottery, stone work and the like, plus under-ground the ruins/foundations of the Cordoba theatre with movies and graphics trying to explain how it would have looked in the past, and which bit we were in. I think we all had quite a pleasant time here, we didn’t stay for ages, probably an hour or so, but it was worth the visit (and only 1.50 each for the adults). From here we wandered back to the bus stop and headed back to the campsite.