I have really sucked at keeping this thing up. I’m either busy, exhausted or sick. I just got over a badass bug, but I’m feeling better now. I’m still going to take it easy this weekend. Last weekend, I was “volunteered” as the driver, so I drove for a good 8-10 hours of the weekend just trying to find where the hell we were going.
In Spain, they don’t have normal highways, they have roads and rotaries. I hate rotaries (or as some of you assholes call them, roundabouts). If you’ve ever seen National Lampoon’s European Vacation when Chevy Chase drives by Big Ben a hundred times, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I think the Spanish installed roundabouts every 1000 feet to fuck with foreigners’ heads. The best part… they put the directional signs about 50 feet away from the roundabout, so you have to rubberneck to see which turn you should take. Even then, you have to get in the correct lane (I’m still confused if it’s the right lane or the left lane). I used some “Boston Driving” passed down from my father and created my own roundabout rules. Sure, I was honked at a few times and some Spanish had the look of death, but I just smiled and kept driving.
So enough about roundabouts… I have seen some beautiful sites while I’ve been here. Last weekend we visited Ronda, which is a city built around a canyon. The sites were pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, after 3 hours of driving, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have and neither did my travel mates. After about an hour and a half of walking around the city, we took off for the beach (another 2 and a half hour adventure including shitloads of roundabouts and winding mountain roads)
We got to Tarifa, the southernmost city in continental Europe. Right when we got there, we noticed we were above the clouds, which seemed kind of weird. We pulled over and realized we were looking at a mountain in Africa. It was so close, it was amazing. I can’t really explain the feeling, but to be standing in Europe and look across the Straits of Gibraltar to see Africa is a pretty intense feeling. We snapped some sweet shots and moved on.
We ended up sleeping on the beach in a lifeguard stand. It sounds like it would be fun, but little did I know that Tarifa has 35 mph winds all the time. Needless to say, it was as cold as a witch’s titty, and then some. I was freezing my ass off! I managed about 30 minutes of sleep, but it was a good 30. We ended up just hanging out on the beach for the rest of the day, catching up on sleep and enjoying the view.
Pretty cool weekend overall. I’m pretty sure those shitty winds got me sick, but what can you do? At least I got to see Africa…
El Mundo del Cappytan 