ANDALUSIA (5/15) - From Ronda via the Costa del Sol to Frigiliana

The farewell from Ronda felt somewhat melancholic as we were already on the well-constructed and heavily trafficked road towards the Costa del Sol, overcoming two more passes. We were painfully winding down countless serpentine roads from the nearly 1000 meters of the mountain pass down to the Mediterranean Sea. We could still recognize the Rock of Gibraltar in the haze on the horizon. And much further away, the vaguely outlined mountains of Africa started to appear.

We were able to glide smoothly on the highway away from Marbella and past Malaga along the coast, which appeared absurdly densely built up, practically covered in high-rise buildings like hotel fortresses. A stop to take a closer look at what was presented here led us behind Malaga to the beach of Torre de Mar, which archetypically represents the entire Costa del Sol: From our perspective, it looked quite questionable— a beach experience wedged somewhere between high-rise buildings and highways, drowned in the hustle and bustle.

Tourism seemed a bit overcrowded that Saturday afternoon in the picturesque village of Frigiliana, located just a few kilometers behind the coast on a hill, which became our destination for the day. Parking proved to be quite challenging, and the accompanying hustle and bustle, which penetrated even into our room, was linked to our ground-level window overlooking a rather busy street.

The subsequent exploration of the village, along with a small hike up a hill, was uplifting in the truest sense of the word. It was uplifting, like the exceptionally good coffee we found here in Frigiliana, which we immediately noted as a rarity. Throughout our journey in Andalusia, we had not encountered genuine coffee culture. Cappuccino, espresso, or macchiato were the names given to the hot drinks offered here. However, they mostly served us a multitude of foamed milk that could only be described as thin and tasteless coffee.

The food was excellent that evening at the selected restaurant, where various tapas, appearing like a series of poems, offered us a complete sensory delight through a potpourri of differently conceived flavors. We ceremoniously downed a glass of sherry at the self-service bar of our accommodation. Then we wrapped ourselves in wonderfully comfortable blankets in the double bed, wished ourselves a good night, and thoroughly stuffed our ears with the well-known earplugs in light of the persistent hustle and bustle outside our ground-level window overlooking a very busy street.