Mãlaga

I guess I should be writing my will instead of this- We have booked a car hire for tomorrow and are going to fight the local spaniards on the roads for 2 hours to go see a hole in the ground. Damn I should have just gone back to Kalgoorlie and had a few drinks at the Exchange. Would have seen twice as many holes in the ground and been able to fight with people that speak the same language.

We are off to the Nerja Caves near Granada and as keen as I was to go scooters, Wilko and Lyn didnt find a deathmatch with buses as enticing as I did. As simple as driving on the right seems, consider a double lane roundabout. That and the streets in spain were laid 600 years ago, and coincidentally thats the last time they marked lines on the road too. If I dont hit another car tomorrow, I'll see if I can take out someone on the invisible zebra crossings that are at every set of lights.

Malaga has been pretty sweet so far- we have been here 4 days and its been about 32 degrees every day. Wilko resembles a tomato and me and lyn still look like glow sticks at the beach. The city here is pretty posh- its about $500k for a basic apartment, a steak at a restaurant is $40 and the streets look like closing time out front of a bingo hall. Until midnight that is, then all the young people come out- we finally managed to track down some open clubs last night (after 4 nights of searching) about midnight and got through about 4 of them. Lyn was laughing for the entire night after being called "muchos grande" by some local chicks. She was the tallest person in the club we were at- aside from me. Best part of the night: ran into a bunch of hammered ennglish punters on the way home and had a conversation in english. Damn I miss english music and english speaking people already!

Every day has been an out of bed at 10am effort- Pub lunch of tapas and then into the sight seeing. We have hit the local castles, port, beaches, museums and almost every other attraction here. We figured out why the locals arent at work.. they are at the beach peddling hasish on under the shady palm trees at the beach. I asked a bloke lazing on a park bench why he wasnt at work at noon the other day "I woke up and didnt feel like it" he said. I guess that explains the 10 year record unemployment (up 25% from last year), record bankruptcies and the housing bust across the country. In Madrid I saw a bloke slaving over 6 mini crane-hoisted skips, mixing up mud for a high rise construction. We walked back past about an hour later- the mud still there, a crust on it and no one on the site.

Dinner last night was interesting... I ordered for the team: escalopes,insalada de Huevas, plato del dias, y tres cerveza.. The huevas was meant to be wilko's octopus salad. After confusion and an attempt at dinner, lynda did her best octopus pantomime to the spanish speaking bar tender and he did his best at describing the plate of lungs of some sea creature that we apparently ordered. what the hell. These things looked like a chicken breast bound in blue veins, but had the consistency of dry and crumbly polenta. They tasted like... well like a sea creatures lungs. I was better off with the jelly fish and seaweed the night before at palacio wok.

We have had an overload of picasso so far.. Saw his birth place (in Malaga), checked his museum, his park (Jardino del Picasso) and saw other random works of his around the place. I reckon he started off well, but then there was the melting absinthe cup when he was a teenager and he just went downhill from there. He even laughed about it: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child" more like a lifetime relationship with substances. Ever seen his hombre series of works? yeah say no more. We also caught the local museums, art galleries and a few other exibitions which have been good to check out. A bit of a wierd one in the Malaga Museo- all the works in there were of spain´s history and development, and then theres one of two pigeons drinking... wtf? I then find out they need to keep that on display as it is picasso´s Son´s painting and it keeps them in the good books with his estate so they keep some of his works. Pigeons. Its up there with half the crap at the Tate modern. Oh look- a crack in the floor. If the maintenance staff were on the ball they would use that pile of bricks crap display on the top floor to fill the crack.

Had to take in the local creations too, so we fired up some Gazpacho soup (Cold tomato soup), did the local seafoods, local brews and wines, frustrated the local drivers and kept the local publicans awake during their siesta time (4pm till 8pm we just found out). We couldnt get away without sampling the local produce either, so when we stumbled across a nice fig tree garden in the Castillo Gibalfaro, I had to do the right thing and prune it. I think I ate more figs than tomatos at tomatina. Shame all the orange trees in that place were green...

Next up is a 14 hour trenhotel ride to Barcelona to see the sights and trying to avoid getting mugged.