The premise and theme of this whole trip was to get to the precise latitude and longitude of our house in Orewa but on the other side of the world. We would make a sandwich of sorts with the world in between. We realised with no air conditioning in the caravan that we weren’t going to drive there so Ryanair was the next best solution. We flew to Malaga and had a lovely Air BnB 5 minutes walk from the beach in Marbella.

When my family went back to Sweden when I was little we had a package holiday down to Marbella. Marbella was a very common and desirable destination for Swedes in the 1970’s and 80’s. They all flew down and loved it and bought holiday homes there. That’s why you can get Swedish meatballs, pickled herring and Lingonberry jam (among other Swedish foods) in the supermarket. 

It’s also why there is a Swedish restaurant on the waterfront and every bar you can hear Swedes speaking Swedish.

We spent a couple of days eating tapas and drinking sangria and then went and collected Stefan from the airport. 

Our first night we went and had a lovely barbecue dinner on the beach with the waves lapping at our feet.

Then we were off in search of a dropped pin on google maps which was literally in the middle of nowhere. 

The roads got narrower and narrower until we were on a one lane road. We pulled up outside a farmhouse and there we were. A completely random and pointless trip that no one apart from us would find interesting. As we drove Stefan was tracking an antipodean app that shows your exact location. “We’re just coming into Warkworth, right we’re just on the edge of Waiwera, ok we’re in the sea now” and then “Right we’re at the neighbours house”.

We pulled up took a whole lot of photos of an empty paddock and left.  I did have a translation into Spanish on hand if we needed to explain ourselves but it must have been Siesta as we saw no-one. 

We loved it. 

We were then very close to a gorgeous village called Ronda so went there for tapas and sangria and listened to all the swedes talk about how beautiful it is in Ronda. Nigel sang ‘Help me Rhonda’ a couple of times and we had a lovely day. 

The next day was our adventure to Gibraltar. As you all know we collect countries (it’s a hobby). We have an official ISO postal code list which includes countries and territories. It covers for the fact that you can’t say you’ve been to France if you’ve only been to Tahiti. Same with French Guiana. Anyway Gibraltar is a British territory at the very bottom of Spain. A little piece of England with some incredibly proud Gibralten’s. We happened to arrive on National Gibraltar day and so the whole village was covered in Gibraltar flags and the locals all wear red and white. We queued for ages to go up the cable car to see the incredible views.
As soon as we arrived the maquque monkeys were literally leaping down in front of us.  They were everywhere playing and sleeping and were a lot friendlier than the ones in Bali (who provided us with the infamous monkey incident). I think a £4000 fine for feeding them means they don’t see the tourists as being the food providers. We did see a guy get attacked for his backpack though. 

Back to Marbella and we joined a group of South African women and a couple from Florida on a guided walking Tapas tour of Marbella. Stefan quickly chatted up the South Africans who weren’t really drinkers and so we ended up with all their wines to match the Tapas (well done Stefan). 

We learned about the beautiful old town and how it was heavily occupied by Islamic and Jewish people for many years. The Roman Catholics came and took over and appointed a leader who was very dictatorial. He forced everyone in the village to convert to Catholicism. Everyone decided to just say yeah ok and then practice whatever religion they wanted behind closed doors. So the leader decided to go door to door with pork sausages. If you didn’t eat them you got turfed out! 

We wandered around the small streets and ate amazing food and drank beautiful wines and had a really lovely evening. 

Then as soon as it had started we left the 27 degree days and landed back at Luton to 12 degrees and squally showers. Ugh!