The Road Goes Ever On

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Toro!

Ronda's bull ring was the first purpose-built bull ring (1785), the place where the rules of The Game, so to speak, were finally codified (featuring a killer, on foot, with a sword), and home of Pedro Romero, the greatest ever, with over 5000 confirmed kills. After touring the bull ring, the complex, the museum (s), I am now far better informed about bull-"fighting" (theatrically killing an animal already dying) than ever before. One of the most interesting facts about the Ronda ring is that, in its long history, only one matador has ever been killed. How many bulls, I ask, have survived the contest? This is a sport?

Sculpture outside the ring

The matadors' chapel

At the main entrance, a minor tribute to the victim

In the museum, Picasso's take on it all

Inside the ring, alas, my camera can not capture this whole

thing, it only seats about 5,000, but is still pretty large

Seating comes in four categories: sun, part

shade, shade, part-sun

On the ring; evidently, I would guess, the veterinarians are

for the horses

Help Me Ronda, Yeah!

Remnant of old castle, Moorish, Ronda did not fall until

1485, one of the last...

The gorge, from the huge 18th century

bridge

The aforementioned bridge

From the other side of the bridge, in the Civil

War, both sides cast their enemies into the

gorge...

Ronda street scene

Church

In addition to the bull ring (see next post), I also

patronized the modern art museum and the

Museum of Banditry (big in Ronda in the early

19th century)

Next we drove to Ronda, which sits on a high gorge overlooking a valley and the Sierras. I spent a day exploring on foot and then we stayed at one of the more interesting (but very nice) campgrounds we have been in lately.

Pueblos Blancos II: Grazalema

Next up was Grazalema, another hill-top white town, under a beautiful crag. We explored the town in the evening and stimulated the local pastry business, then spent the night there at an air/parking lot.

Beautiful crag on the way to Grazalema

Grazalema

Our campsite, high up in the town, with a great view of

both the mountain and the valley

The whole town is done up in these

wonderful tile histories

Street-scene porch and plants

We don't drive the Grey Wanderer up these

little alleys...especially after an unfortunate

backing-up experience in Ecija

View from the top of the road...well, actually it continued

up to a 4,500 foot pass; we demurred; we have had

enough mountain driving on these twisty, exposed roads

At the foot of the mountain

Pueblos Blancos: Zahara

Andalusian hill country

First view of Zahara

The tower on the crag, from the town

The road up the hill is lined with tiles of wisdom such as

this (with which I heartily concur)

More countryside, from the top

In the distance, another pueblo blanco

Ruins atop the crag

View from the top

The medieval tower

More ruins and countryside

Cacti on the crag

And another white town

From Ecija we dropped down south into the mountains, the realm of the old frontera (as in frontier between Moors and Christians) and the many pueblos blancos, the "white towns." First was Zahara.

Ecija

Heading back west and south from Cordoba, we stopped at Ecija, "the frying pan of Spain," (it's hot in the summer) in the rolling sandy high hills, an old city of honey-combed alleys and a dozen old towers, on churches, palaces, residences, and so on. I wandered for a couple hours in the old city. [Major backing-up exercise, with crowd assistance, as we foolishly tried to drive into the old town...].

Look, kids, another bull!

Beautiful sunset a few miles east of Ecija, at an area de

servicios where we camped

Ecijo has a dozen or more towers, most

which are in a poor state, but still

enchanting

Of course, the birds are all over them

A particularly intricate one, not sans birds

Wandering aimlessly, I came across this

beautiful old building

Another tower, this one with birds' nest and

cacti growing out the top

They're starting to renovate some of the

towers

Map of the honey-comb

A fascinating round-about sculpture in modern Ecija; on

the Ruta Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote

about Andalucia in 1829 (it's now a heritage trail,

recognized by the Council of Europe)

But my top find in Ecija, at a wine store with

barrels, etc., was this plastic-bottled 2 liter/2

euro wonder from Extremadura, hints of port.

..not bad....

Mezquita, Part Four, the Moorish Bits

As the guidebooks say, no amount of reading or looking
at pix can prepare you for the enormity and effect of the
Mosque, this is looking part-way down one side, the
building could accommodate 20,000 worshipers