Mediterranean!

We finally saw the Mediterranean on Saturday! We took a 2 hour bus ride (always harrowing) to Nerja (sounds like NerHa), on the south coast. We had heard that the Costa del Sol (term for much of the southern coast) was awful and that most areas should be bypassed (ugly highrise towers and hideously touristy). However, Nerja is one of the least built up and so we stopped there. It was so good to see (and smell) the water! It was sunny and beautiful and we got that excited feeling again of seeing something completely new. Africa is apparently only 150 miles across the way and so we sat on the beach and imagined it. We´re hoping to get over there while we´re here but when some of our friends arrive (safety in numbers!). And finally, we saw happy animals! These beach cats have the best life, lounging on the sand, sleeping in the colourful fishing boats, and being fed and pet by all the tourists. I don´t know why we´re not staying on the coast....we had heard that it was far more expensive but it´s not. The mountain towns are beautiful too but the coast is much more exciting

The weather has unfortunately taken a turn for the worse (I always imagined that southern Spain would always be warm....naive!). It´s been quite cool these past few days with rain. We´re using the electric heater in our place now and still cold! Time to go to Africa....

We´re taking some Spanish lessons this week with a British woman who has lived here for many years and works as a translator. We met her this morning at a great little cafe and decided that we didn´t need to learn flowery grammatically correct Spanish. We need to learn the difficult Andalucian Spanish (the kind that rarely uses or emphasizes constanants and always emphasizes the vowels...very un-North American). She said we need to learn the shortcuts and how to pronounce letters correctly. Finally! We were so excited to meet her.

And that´s about it! Aside from our `adopted` animals, we´re looking forward to moving on out of Orgiva and travelling.

Hope all is well back home and thanks for reading....

(Erin...send me your email again!)

Shiloh