Ventimiglia

The next chapter of my journey was spent with daughter Ilse in Apricale, the central town of the Nervia Valley. She flew to Nice, and I rented a car in Sanremo, picked her up at the airport, and together we drove back to Liguria, to this hidden valley with its little medieval gems.

Ilse only landed at 4.00, so I had plenty of time to sightsee in Ventimiglia before I tackled the road to Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport. I had slept in, bags all packed, had a lovely breakfast with Lola, said my goodbyes and walked down to the Avis office in Via XX Settembre. I got a Fiat Panda for the week, just perfect!

I chose to take the coastal road to Nice, as I had plenty of time. When I reached Ventimiglia, I drove through the quaint city, and on the other side the river Roya cuts the ancient Borgo off from the rest of town. Over the bridge I found an excellent free parking lot. It is Saturday, market day, so off to market I head.

This town has Roman origins, some still visible as ruins. In Roman times it was called Albintimilium, and lay on the Via Iulia Augusta.

On the bridge I take in a few facts: this is the culmination of quite a lot of mountain streams. The smaller streams are called Rio, the medium sized ones Torrente, and the large ones Fiume. So this one is Fiume Roja, whereas the Nervia is a torrente.

 

This bridge is Ponte Andrea Doria, which points to a time when the mighty Doria family reigned in Ventimiglia. He was one of the good rulers. Believe me, there were some bad ones!

I spy a lone sunbather at the river mouth…

Now the market. Obviously the fishmarket will be closing soon. I find samphire there, called sea asparagus in Italian, at a stiff price! In folklore it is gathered near the beach. It is widespread all around the world, nowhere cultivated, but eaten everywhere.

The tag tells you exactly where each product was caught.

The flower market is a happy sight, as are all the usual suspects among the food stalls.

There is one amazing stall that procures the most wonderful array of dried and pickled foodstuffs.

Pasta of every description, Sardenaira….

When the going gets tough, we all sit down…

I saunter back to the river, because I want to climb the hill that houses the ancient hilltop town.

The Romans feared nobody, therefore they lived on the coastal plain. However, when the Saracens or Moors became a threat, people made scramble for the nearest hill, built a high wall and all piled inside. It might have a castle or a big church at the top, but these villages all have the same characteristics: narrow steep winding alleys, darkness, stairs, and wonderful views.

On the piazza at the top stands the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, built in the 13th C.

I climb down again via another route, but nothing is sure here. I have to retrace my steps a few times to find an exit!

I head back to my little Panda and put on the GPS on my iPhone to guide me through the border, Monaco (where today the Formula One race is taking place), and especially Nice, to reach the airport on the far side of Nice. So far so good…

Let me just make a very clear statement here: NEVER try and save money by avoiding the heavily tolled highways around Nice!! The byways are a knot of poorly signposted ups and downs, ins and outs, and if your French is iffy, this is a nightmare! My GPS guided me to a point where I could drive for 15 km before it would speak again. After an eternity I checked the iPhone again, and it had gone flat. And I had no car charger :#$&*@%! I was reduced to my own devices. I did not know how much battery life a GPS uses. So I had even taken photos with my cellphone! My time was running out, and I was not finding the way to the airport. At one point I asked a man in the street how to reach the airport, and he told me “Look for the A Huit; that will take you straight to the airport.” The toll road, obviously! I get to the A8, but nowhere does it state east or west!! I drive a while, and suddenly realize I’m going straight back to Italy, so off the highway and look for a turning point. In the end I managed to find the airport. Now where to park? So I park the car in a parkade that said terminal 1. And I run towards a pipe dream. The whole airport is under construction, so pedestrians are diverted over miles to Terminal 1. What a disaster! When I got to the arrival hall, there sat Ilse patiently waiting for Godot….

Well, as they say in the classics, all’s well that ends well. I dried my tears, Ilse took over and took us ably and competently to our destination Apricale with HER iPhone GPS, plugged into the socket, on the highway!

Soon we turned into Ventimiglia to reach the regional road, turned north toward Dolceacqua, and the winding mountain road took us to Isolabona and Apricale.

Just a fleeting glimpse of Dolceacqua at dusk

Schlepping our baggage up the steep hill…

We absolutely did not know how arduous the climb from the parking lot to our Piccolo Appartamento di Charme right next to the main piazza would be, and it’s just as well, because we were SOOOO happy with our selfcatering apartment! On the left is Annalisa Cassini, who looks after the apartment for the owners. After such a gruelling day there was no contest: dinner at La Ciassa, one of the restaurants on the square. Ciassa is pronounced Ciazza, which is Ligurian dialect for Piazza.

They served me the best Italian wine of my whole sojourn that night: a Rossese di Dolceacqua, but I never asked which one. It is a local wine made from Rossese grapes, and all the others we tried were inferior :((

I went to sleep that night a thoroughly happy chappy!

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Salobreña

Magriet had business to see to in the morning, while I packed my suitcase and got ready, and then we took the road to Málaga. We turn left. Two blocks down we look at each other and laugh. Do we want to drive through the White Sea of plastic yet again????? NOOOO! U-turn is critically urgent. We have to turn to Almeria to reach the freeway easily.

Once on the A7/E15 to Motril Magriet drops off to sleep, because she has been very brave and over enthusiastic to make this trip to Salobreña. She is in fact too sick with flu to travel, but we are underway now. It is a busy freeway, but easy driving for the first half. Then the road takes to the coast with curves and bends that necessitate quite slow driving. And for the last small bit there is a piece of the A15 finished – a modern marvel of a road! The Spanish highways are mindblowing, maybe because I had no idea how advanced they are in road engineering! NO PROBLEM to make a tunnel through a mountain for one-way traffic! Viaducts one a penny.

Spanish roads and railways are among the best in the world

At last we come round a bend and see beautiful Salobreña: a high steep hill with a fort on top and houses all the way down.

Salobreña with moorish fort

Today there is an urban sprawl all the way to the sea. Magriet knows we are looking for Pensión Mari-Carmen, but has no other info. She relies on her instinct to find the place, but this place is pure one-way streets winding to hell and gone, and we are helpless. I get out and go and ask directions in another Hostal. I get a super map in the process, but the directions take it for granted I am on foot! Now we go forwards and backwards to find a place that is literally round the corner! At last a parking place at the village marketplace, and we schlepp our luggage up this steep hill to Pension Mari-Carmen. You see, it is a one-way coming down, and we have NO IDEA, not even with the map, how to approach it by car… Magriet has good reason to be proud of herself when we reach the pension and Mari-Carmen stands in the doorway!

Mari-Carmen

Magriet’s friend Retha in Cape Town who spends a lot of time here, has organised with Mari-Carmen that we will come for a night in May but M-C is not aware of the date yet. So her other guest house at the bottom of the hill is full tonight, but not to worry, she has two lovely rooms in this pension for us, and we are here now.

We each get a double room with shower. Magriet JUST makes it to the bed, flops down and falls asleep. After a while I check on her, and she says she is not going to leave her bed today, I should go and do the tourist thing in Salobreña. Poor Magriet!

I go down and I’m accosted by Mari-Carmen’s father who tries diligently to bring to my attention that I must remove my car from its current location, because tomorrow is market day, and the stalls need that space. If I leave my car there, the police will come and get me. In the end he offers to go with me and direct me. So we descend the hill, and he tells me to reverse 50 m in a narrow one-way lane with cars parked along the one side. OH BOY, I think! But I do as I’m told, and after 2 trial runs I succeed to park in front of a motor bike repair centre at the bottom of our road. Phew!!!

Now I go walkies, look around in the ‘flats’ neighbourhood (because it is built on flat ground, and it consists of apartment blocks). It looks like municipal housing in that they all look exactly the same, but the streets dividing them in a grid of parallel streets are all pedestrian zones (for children to play in) and lined on both sides by tall palms.

Flats quarter

After buying a few things in a large supermarket for supper, because I won’t be going to a restaurant alone tonight, I return home and spend some time with email and blog….

Here are some impressions of Salobreña. They might be typical of  Salobreña, of Andalucía or of España…

Beautiful house exterior

Very decorative street signs

Steep streets

Super excellent cured meats

Giant ripe sweet loquats

Awesome vistas

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Las Alpujarras

Today Magriet has a tea appointment and lots of other admin, so I go on a solo outing into the mountains. I would have wanted to see Granada and the Alhambra, but parking is very difficult in Granada, and I don’t particularly savour masses of people all wanting to see the same thing. That is why I opted for seeing rural mountain life on a coolish very windy day. The placid Mediterranean is churning in the gale. On the beach I see for the second time this morning a giant tractor levelling the beach. What on earth are they thinking? What about the microcosmos under the sand?

Beach leveller

I left Roquetas aiming in the direction of Málaga – big mistake!! The road winds forever through the sea of white tunnels before it reaches the highway, that is IF you can find it, because signposting is nonexistent. I got SO lost between the vegetable tunnels that it took me an hour and a quarter to get out of the White Labyrinth!

White labyrinth

Magriet tells me there are lots of Africans living in this region, because they come in anything that will float from Africa, which is only 16 km away, seek asylum, and the Spanish government doesn’t dare send them back. Here they work for the market garden barons, because it is unbearably hot in the tunnels and nobody else will do that work. So this picture tells a whole story….

Going to bath tonight!

I parked my car somewhere on the outskirts of El Ejido and went into a café to ask the way to Berja, and it turned out the road was just a stone’s throw away. Thank goodness! So I drive up the mountain through Dalías and reach Berja. The first thing I see is the municipal cemetery. Cemeteries fascinate me, so I pay this one a visit. At first it seems as if all these dead have been cremated and memorials put up in neat aisles, about five rows on top of each other. All the memorials are tended with flowers or wreaths, the place is spotless, and in each aisle there is a rolling staircase for ease of tending a top tier memorial.

Graves five layers deep

I climb up this staircase out of curiosity and discover that these are in fact graves! A beehive of graves is built and filled up over time.

Uninhabited graves

The coffin is inserted in an empty grave slot and sealed off with cement, and the memorial stone is placed on the dry cement.

Buried yesterday

A full ‘beehive’ looks like this from above:

The evidence: space for the whole coffin behind the façade

Most interesting!

Now I move on to Ugíjar via Murtas. It is a barren land with dry river beds and razed mountain slopes. Agriculture is not intensive here. Olives, almonds and oranges are cultivated to some extent. The mountain roads are dotted with the most stunning brooms in bloom.

View towards Ugíjar in the Alpujarras

We are in the region of the Sierra Nevada, and the snow-capped peaks show themselves every now and then.

Ugíjar spells lunchtime to me. I have packed a small lunchbox and sit down on the town square to watch life happen. There is the obvious church, a fountain, the given number of old men keeping each other company, women waiting at the bus stop, chatting twenty to the dozen, a memorial to valiant men from the Alpujarras who fought somewhere. The usual.

Ugíjar village square

Ugíjar road

Now I decide to see two more mountain villages before I return to the coast. They are Picena and Laroles. One would expect hovel-like housing here, so high up in the mountains, but look at Picena. Really large, smart houses with gardens to match. I could see there are fruit trees of every kind in this garden.

Mountain village Picenas

In Laroles I take a walk, first to the town square with a panoramic view. Serene in this siesta hour. Not a soul around. The place is dead. The square sports a public table tennis table and a chess board!

Serene village square during siesta time

I walk down a village lane and find a peasant at the well watering his lovely pack donkey. When the donkey has drunk his fill, they leave up a side alley cloppity clop.

Pack donkey quenching his thirst

Clippety clop!

Now the homeward run begins. I realise I have no choice but to retrace my steps, for there aren’t many roads here to choose from. This time I don’t blunder in amongst the white tunnels again, I take the Autovia Mediterráneo A7/E15 to the Roquetas turnoff and try and find Magriet’s home – it was more difficult than I had hoped, but all’s well that ends well. I found it and relaxed at home for the rest of the day.

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