We wish you a Happy New Year!

After the chapter 'Christmas' comes the chapter 'New Year's Eve', but until then we have done a lot with Ines.

The beginning was made by the once most dangerous hiking trail in Europe; today an absolutely safe and comfortable path, but with a spectacular appearance. It was built at the end of the 19th century for the transport of materials, when hydropower was also developed here for energy production. The people in the lonely mountain villages also used this path to get to school, work or shopping. But as it goes... everything needs to be maintained and they neglected it here, so the good path deteriorated and became so dangerous that the government closed it in 2001. It was not until 2015 that it was restored and made accessible again. It's a good thing we waited so long.

Fueled with fresh adrenaline, we continued 'through' the Nerja Cave to San José, just beyond Almeria. Yes, we have to tighten up... less time on site, longer tours. Spain still has 1,000 km to be covered by around January 6th. By the way!!! We have crossed the 10,000 km mark on the speedometer. The Nerja Cave is famous for its cave paintings and we did our best to recognize red goats and deer - in vain. Just before the end, we learned that the paintings are not illuminated because of the green micro-organisms... great!!! That depressed the hobby archaeologists in us and we drove on sulkily without visiting the museum. In San José, we had a nice view of the sea from the door of the vacation rental. Probably you could have had even more nice views, but you needed windows for that and there weren't any. Well, it doesn't matter - we were hiking outside; wonderful along the coast. Almeria didn't blow us away, so we were surprised when we walked through Alicante on New Year's Eve and found some nice corners.

On the town square we then greeted the new year with many joyful Spaniards. Old and young celebrated together, danced, sang and were absolutely peaceful. There were no drunks and no fireworks, but there was a band that brought a great atmosphere to the crowd with well-known musical hits and film excerpts. On New Year's Day, we walked across the castle hill to the beach and greeted the new year in Spanish as well, just as we had bid farewell to the old year - with a sangria in the sunshine, bare feet in the sand. Oh man, life can be beautiful!!!

We brought our Ines to the airport in Alicante on January 2nd and then moved forward on the way to the east. Now the comfort of a vacation rental is over again. A first résumé: If all 4 vacation rentals could be combined, it would be perfect. If the Vito had a warm dining area and a toilet, it would top every vacation rental even in the Spanish winter. :-)