Spain Day 1

Welcome to these back blips from our recent holiday in Spain.

The alarm went off at around 2-30am, at last it was time for our week in the Sun...!!
We'd decide to book into the Marriot Courtyard Hotel at Gatwick on the Friday night, great idea, very very comfortable room and reasonably priced as it's actually at the airport.
A quick shower to wake ourselves up, check out and drop the car off at the BCP carpark. They've started to offer various option at the car park now, would you like your car fully valeted before your return, £45, would you like it dropping at the terminal on your arrival, £25, would you like any groceries buying for when you get back.....!!, packages start at just £15, she said with a straight face........
Cases and Bags onto the bus, next stop North Terminal.
This Villa package came with flights provided by EasyJet. I'd heard the stories about it being a stampede when you board the plane, but i have to say, check in was quick and efficient, boarding was easy peasy and we got to sit next to each other on the plane. The flight was only 2hrs 17mins, before we knew it we were descending into Malaga Airport.
Once customs and the baggage carousel had been negotiated it was off to find our car hire rep.........
Now, Bev and i have been travelling abroad for our summer hols for about 20 years now, and we've always hired a Suzuki jeep of one sort or another, years ago it used to be the Vitara, more recently they've been Suzuki Jimny's.
The idea behind hiring the open top car being you "become one with the surrounding countryside" taking in the sounds and smells.
Normally i book the hire car over the internet, usually having no problem hiring a Suzuki. It took me about four weeks to track down a company that could supply a Vitara to Malaga airport, their e-mail stated that the car had no roof supplied.
They also mentioned that they hadn't had any rain since April, so i shouldn't worry about getting caught in a shower.........
The car was old, very old. But our tradition had to be carried on. You might be asking why we didn't hire a swish BMW cabriolet, well, the hire companies don't like it when you leave a cars sump on a rock half way up a mountain, and we always go "Off Road"..........!!
So we paid the balance of the hire to the rep and off we went in our Rusty Red Vitara........
James Villas who we rented the villa through are very thorough, they sent us a set of direction on how to get to the villa. These directions rely upon you being able to reset the trip on the cars milometer, our trip wouldn't reset........this wasn't really a problem until we got to the village of Torrox where the villa was located. Not being able to reset the trip meant we couldn't gauge where to turn and when to look for signs...........
It took us 40 minutes to drive from the airport to Torrox then a further 60 minutes to find the 5 inch long sign pointing up a dirt track to "La Higuera".....
The track wound backwards and forwards forever upwards, potholes you could hide a shopping trolley in, and hairpin turns you couldn't count on four pairs of hands, and drops over the edge that would cost you your life. "Great Fun".....

And finally we arrived, the villa is called "La Higuera" which translates to "The Fig", named after the Fig tree which stands next to the house.

The sky is very very blue, and it's lovely and warm........slightly differnt to the rain we'd left at Gatwick 5 hours earlier.

More to come........!!

j.