In this article, writer and locum pharmacist Laurie Middleton Jones takes a holiday job guiding an adventure trip in Andalucia
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Midnight on December 23 and I am making a beeline for the stairs in the Las Omeyas hotel in Cordoba, desperately needing sleep. No such luck.
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The author consults the Manual: "What next?" |
But Ricardo is persuasive, even though I don't understand half of what he says. Do I know that tomorrow is Christmas Eve? (Answer: yes, I'm not that far gone yet.) Do I know all the restaurants will be shut at 5pm? Wouldn't I like somewhere prepared to stay open longer specially for my group? The answer has to be yes. I was trained always to have a Plan B. But I didn't even have a Plan A for Christmas Eve food! I needed to recce.
I should have suspected something when I saw all the dents on the side of the maroon Renault 5. I should have paid attention as he fumbled with the lock. It was only as we hurtled over the cobbles and veered rather too close to the ancient walls that I realised that Ricardo was drunk.
The restaurant was beautiful - or perhaps it was just the relief of arriving in one piece. Blue and yellow local ceramics caught the light on the white walls around the central patio when Ricardo finally found the switches. There were flowers everywhere. The kitchen looked clean too - a bonus. We worked out a menu selection for a fixed-price meal and I began to relax - Christmas Eve would be fine and my group would stay happy. I didn't need a Plan B. But then I made the mistake. Wishing to make it "a night to remember", I said, "We'd like a guitarist."
The next thing I know we are charging around the floodlit Mesquita's one-way system the wrong way in the old Renault - even the gargoyles look shocked. Ricardo just turns and giggles as he misses a Roman wall.
I follow him as he strides right across a nightclub dance-floor, hand flapping in his jacket pocket.
"No, he's late. That's why I've got the *!@#* record on," says the DJ.
I follow as he storms through a five-star hotel lobby. The innocent manager shrinks, as if he thinks Ricardo is about to pull a gun.
"No, he's left town."
And now Ricardo's jacket is flapping in front of a fat gypsy in a flash waistcoat holding court in a basement bar. Sultry women smoke cigarettes and someone claps incessantly. The gypsy says, "No, not now. Don't bother me. I'm working. Keep your card."
Ricardo is tiptoeing up the Town Hall stairs in the dark. I follow: I want to go to bed. We creep through doors and sidle past screens. And there is the fat gypsy again, this time on stage with a flamenco troupe. We are at the back of a hall full of tourists watching an expensive extravaganza. But Ricardo is not content to sit and watch.
Pulling a face of intense pain he crouches - then lets forth the most anguished, sandpaper-throated, flamenco wail you can imagine. He is clapping and stamping up and down. The tourists are turning around to watch and the fat gypsy looks really peeved.
So the next night, as I stand with my pax outside the "Patio del Juderia", I really don't know what to expect.
"He's agreed to open his restaurant specially for us," I say as I open the doors that reveal, to my horror, about 50 other diners. Ricardo greets us, looking a little sick. I refrain from throttling him.
I get pax seated - but we can't get the waiter. There is only one - a young lad who is wearing what must be a true Dunkirk smile. He is "aided" by Ricardo, who is going round in circles.
"Please," he says to me, "help that lady over there." He points to a young woman who is waving the menu.
"But - my group . . ." No good - Ricardo has gone. "Just one moment," I say to pax, some of whom are beginning to sense that all is not as well as it could be.
The woman is a lone British tourist and she is pointing at the English translation on her menu that says "Stuffed beef or pork". Unfortunately, the Spanish original reads "stuffed or filleted pork". She wants stuffed beef - which does not exist. This is not the place or time, and Ricardo is not in any condition, or even the right person, to handle so obtuse a linguistic. . . . But even as I am cogitating with open jaw, mid-floor, I see a woman flagging me down angrily from another group across the room. They think I'm one of Ricardo's bloody waiters.
Ricardo and Private Ryan are too busy now even to take our wine order. I must get drinx for pax - I have to walk over and grab bottles and open them myself - Ricardo doesn't bat an eyelid. Next I get the order down and thrust it into Ricardo's hand, for once finding it outside his jacket pocket. After a long wait the starters arrive - but they are pounced on by all and not simply by the intended. I am in the middle of trying to find out where the main orders are when a guitarist arrives. It is not the fat gypsy but a young man who plays classical guitar superbly. Unfortunately the moment is not as magical as I had intended as I am trying to find out why the fish is only half-cooked.
In desperation I head for the kitchen. I push through the swing doors. It is a frozen scene: the chef, standing in front of a blackened range which is covered in pans, is glaring in frustration and anger - at me. Next to him Carmen, standing over the diced vegetables, gripping a knife, is glaring at me too. There is no one else there. No matter - I back slowly out and am relieved to see the swing doors fly shut.
Out of sight of pax I have a blazing row with Ricardo: "Take this money and I hope you buy something with it that improves your memory."
This is Christmas Eve. It's already memorable - indelibly so - but it is my job to make it special. Midnight Mass in the Mesquita. Yes, it is a big mosque - but it is so big that there is a full-sized cathedral in the centre. We take a seasonal Spanish brandy, to which pax Erica (I have changed names to protect the innocent), a woman who decommissions nuclear reactors, has become most partial.
Our breath condenses in the streetlights as we troop down the cobbles behind the locals. We enter the dark stillness of the Mesquita and walk through the silent forest of columns. Suddenly the ceilings leap, making us feel as small as children. We have arrived - but the locals have come out of the woodwork and there are no seats.
Fortified, I lead pax right down the aisle and up into the 10ft-tall, carved mahogany of the high choir. We settle back into knotty Biblical scenes, elbows around neck-level on the armrests, looking down at the organist who is only two rows below us. He is dressed in purple and must be high-ranking as he has a funny-shaped head.
He glances over the heads of the congregation to the distant altar where several robed priests conduct the service with growing unease and return his glance with concerned intensity.
For here, across the void, Deep Purple must manage both the choir and his enormous organ, the pipes of which soar skywards opposite us. The console has a broken button and he has to switch it on well in advance of requirements, in order to get the monster wheezing and whirring up enough air to blast the cherubs. But the art of switching on the choir has completely eluded Deep Purple, who is fast losing the plot.
I am sat next to pax Kowalski, the ex-soldier who only ever says "Yup" and the only American on the trip. He nods - this certainly is different from hometown Detroit. The choir differs too: sheepskin jacket, Barbour, leather coat and apparently unrehearsed. Two nuns are among them - but never sing. Perhaps they are there to prevent bad language. Deep Purple now looks anything but cool - because under the purple robes lies Deep Panic: a sudden, very un-godly, wave of his arm silences the singers.
Moments later he dives over at Kowalski's legs, hurling open a drawer, which almost takes out his shins. He is rummaging around, grappling with a box covered in yellowed newsprint. It contains sheet music. Kowalski, pressed back into the Old Testament, looks well scared - even the Vietcong didn't prepare the American army for a man in purple with a funny-shaped head.
Chief priest is now looking across, frowning greatly - Deep Purple is losing control, karate-chopping the air in an attempt to emphasise the chord changes: it is utter, amateur chaos. The choir is fidgeting too, suddenly all too aware of their massive audience. There follows a bout of ecclesiastical sign language that can only be described as swearing. Then a voice booms out down the nave, avalanching over the cake icing ceilings.
"This night of immensity . . . when religion, which is the only solace. . ."
Deep Purple sinks into his bench in relief. But after 20 sermonic minutes haranguing the Human Race the voice says: ". . . no, this is not a night for noise, this is a night for silence . . ."
Cue for Deep Purple to switch on the bellows. Suddenly Kowalski leaps up - and for a moment I fear he's going to start speaking in tongues, like De Niro in "Cape Fear". But no, he's praying with everyone else.
The lines form for communion. I can see Kowalski wants to enlist but he's scared - this place is alien. Besides, he would have to get past Deep Purple. "Just do it, Kowalski," I say. And he does.
We're on the train to Seville. Part of my job involves pointing out interesting local features to pax.
"These are all orange groves - it's a huge orange-growing area. There are so many you can even smell the oranges!" I enthuse.
"Actually, Laurie, I'm just peeling one!" says pax Charles, the ex-ministry accountant, three rows back. Doh!
Presents were exchanged on the platform in Seville. Pax gave me a magnifying glass "to help your map-reading". Very funny! Then we wandered, faultlessly for a change, through the narrow streets of the Santa Cruz area - all sunshine and pastels. Pax fall in love with the place.
Our hotel in Seville has an absolutely brilliant location near the cathedral. But it is small and totally enclosed. There is no dining room so I have to help toast the rolls and then carry trays up three floors.
I run the tour from the Manual - a file that contains contact information, phone numbers and some basic information.
Manual: Hotel staff: Pepe, Pedro, Paco & Jesus. Dour Jesus has a poor memory - best to give instructions to others esp early morning call. Paco has a nose problem.
Paco looks like a Mafia hit man that took early retirement. He never smiles, only twitches. His "nose problem" is a constant sniffing, followed by a violent "phlegming up". It echoes up the atrium and down the passageways (of the hotel, that is). Pax know he is in the tiny kitchen preparing their breakfast, to they gingerly take their trays, scrutinising coffee, bread and spread. |
Dancing the night away in the basement at Lunar Park |
On Boxing Day we visit the Alcazar, or Moorish palace, and I decide, on the spur of the moment, to translate from one of those audiotapes you can hire. The trouble is that it is full of "atmosphere". Pax stare at me for information and I say: "Um, music . . . water . . . a fountain . . . um, sound of horses, someone walking, shouting . . . Um, ah, ah - yes this is the Courtyard . . ."
In the night I book flamenco, choosing a small venue with a good local reputation. They offer a large, complimentary brandy that gets Halifax (the peevish but funny estate agent) clicking his heels even before the first guitar is on stage. The dancers are breathtaking: serious, desirable, untouchable. Female pax are sat close enough to appreciate what they described as "the remarkable bone structure" of one particular gentleman. I thought he looked like Michael Jackson after being tortured on the rack and slung into a small man's trousers.
The performances left everyone highly energised. Halifax and Charles, arm in arm on the pavement afterwards, invented a kind of Cossack flamenco - uniquely British in combining total lack of style with perfectly flamboyant sense of the ridiculous. A woman in a long coat strode past, hair brushed back, so elegant. She glanced at the cavorting pax and allowed the corner of her lip to rise in a priceless moment. She was one of the flamenco dancers.
It was late when we left the club - but not late enough for some. I was faced with pax Sara, the determined, boyish-blonde teacher, leading the "rebels against bedtime". There was a "man or mouse" challenge in the eyes of this sub-group. Right then. First I took them to Flaherty's, surprisingly enough an Irish theme pub, in Calle Alemanes. It was Spanish party time inside; soon it was 2.30am outside. Now they wanted to dance. I nipped out to chat to a few cabbies.
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It is 5am and we find a circular room with a low, vaulted ceiling - it feels as if we are deep within a Moorish palace. A gypsy singer is performing impromptu a kind of flamenco. He has a crooked chin and nose and twisted black hair. Some ancient spirit in his voice has summoned a harem of women from the upper floors - and they take it in turns to flaunt their navels only feet from paxs' popping eyes. But the most remarkable thing is the accompaniment. A man sits on a box - for that is all it is - against the wall behind the singer. From it he somehow he conjures the thunder of the Moorish tambours. The reverberation shakes the ground. After half an hour he gets up, picks up the box by a hole in the back, and walks out. Then somebody else makes the same noise using a table!
Its 6am and we are eating churros and drinking chocolate with our taxi driver, ears still ringing. But just three hours later I am woken by the non-party pax. They have started the breakfast proceeding on their own. As I ease myself downstairs they jeer - it does their hearts good to see their indefatigable leader look like death warmed up.
For our farewell to Seville we eat in a lovely little restaurant called Las Colombinas in the Triana district, an area famous for ceramics. (I did penance by spending two hours scouring the area for the right place.) Then we walk back through the Christmas lights, the bustle and romance and atmosphere of Seville, before Big Sal, the razor-tongued girlfriend of Halifax, insists we stop for coffee and Haagen-Dazs.
After all the excitement I have to prepare them for the thin, cold air of Grazalema. For it is the second week of the tour and we leave the cities and the culture for the wilderness and the mountains. The bus driver looks ahead at the gathering clouds and shakes his head: the glorious weather we have enjoyed over the past week is breaking. On the recce I had scoured the streets of Grazalema very thoroughly because I had to fill three nights there. I found one old poster advertising a non-existent disco. The empty streets led to bars with cows' sculls on the walls over a handful of ancients playing dominoes in front of log fires. (In one place someone was cooking a fish on the pub fire.) I did have one secret though, a trump card I was keeping up my sleeve: the Grazalema table football machine - for emergency use only.
I have arranged for all our bags to be collected at a little mountain town called El Bosque and for us to walk on Benamahoma, there to catch the last bus to Grazalema. But there is no van waiting when we arrive and unload, causing a little moment.
The van did show - but just after it has left with our luggage, in the middle of the national park information centre, Big Sal says someone needs to talk to me urgently. A female pax will not come out of the small room.
"I don't think I'm well enough to do the walk," she says, adding "It's that restaurant we went to on Christmas Eve."
We must get under way or we will miss the last bus so I race back up to the town to sort alternative transport, bottled water and a packet of hygienic tissues. The Manual also insists I have to offer to take her to a doctor and make sure she states clearly either "yes" or "no" just in case she decides to sue later. She is fine about it and says she would just prefer to sit where she is . . .
It is an easy walk through woodland following the El Bosque river - but it's new to me. I've done the full hiking briefing so it only remains to hand out plastic whistles and appoint a back marker. This is my chance to gauge paxs' abilities before deciding on the proper hikes so I keep a close eye on all those little legs. But the closer we get to Grazalema the more cloud we see. When we arrive it is pouring. If there is no change I may have to cancel the high level walks due to hail and sleet. I am depressed - during the recce the sky was cloudless.
Manual: Grazalema/Puerto del Boyar. Not recommended if cloud low as easy to get lost! . . . +1.00hr: Take R fork, then leave path to R & pick your way over rocks towards ruined buildings at base of cliff. Here locate tortuous & steep rough steps up to top (NOT advisable for unsteady or unfit pax). A narrow goat track threads up the hill and continues up thru rocks on far LHS of pass. T/L 98 adds: impossible to locate steps now - no way up cliff - had to turn back.
That sounded like a challenge, so I did it for the recce. The steps were there and were not difficult - but finding the track over the top of the pass had taken me 30 minutes.
Now we are on our way, hoping for better weather tomorrow to allow an even higher level walk. But Big Sal is lagging - only 500 metres out from base.
"Go on, don't wait for me," she says - but we have to wait for her.
"I'm not as fit as I thought I was," she adds, "I'm a bit of a plodder."
I have arranged to meet the two pax who are weakened by holiday tummy when we descend from the pass - they want a shortened walk. We need to get Big Sal over there so she can be taken back before the taxi drops these off. But Sal looks like turning a three-hour walk into four. The weather turns worse again at top of the pass - mist, wind and cold rain. For a moment I lose the track and am very aware that there is a precipice close by. We encourage Big Sal and somehow she makes it - staggering up to the rendezvous with typical BSE symptoms. We share snax, steaming in a huddle, waiting for the pax switchover.
I didn't tell them about the bulls.
"Laurie, is that a . . ." says Sara
"It's a bloody bull," interrupts pax Sludge (global sewage consultant).
"A bull! Where? Oh my God, I'm terrified of bulls!" says pax Tina (tiny, vegetarian librarian).
The bull is with a herd, has his head up, and is looking in our direction. I go ahead, leading towards higher ground and more cover, praying under my breath. We skirt around, off the path, scratching under thorn trees and climbing over brambles, our waterproofs making too much noise.
Instead of taking a local bus back when we arrive in the afternoon in Benamahoma, I suggest carrying on for another five miles downhill to Ubriqué, on a genuine Roman road. Despite fatigue, pax are game. Pax Architect and pax Engineer debate the smoothness of the Roman surface, inclines, use of carts and so on.
"Ah - I say . . ." says pax Botany Bay, the research botanist, calling us back. He has found an unusual plant and classifies it on the spot. Tour leaders are encouraged to use the resources within the group - but I had feared that Botany Bay's terminal shyness would be impossible to overcome. Drinx 4 Pax has cured all.
To get back from Ubriqué I need to 'phone for taxis from Grazalema. We will have a 45-minute wait for them to arrive. Erica grins - this is just what she wanted to hear. Her penchant for coffee and Spanish brandy has now spread to us all. To see paxs' faces as they take refreshment after their long endeavours brings a glow to the soul. Or was it that second brandy. I am also celebrating a medical triumph. The first aid bag was used successfully on this walk - we had our emergency and I had come through. Kowalski got a blister and I applied a Compeel in the field.
That night I phone ahead to Ronda to try to find a restaurant for New Year's Eve. They are all closing early. Oh no! This is the high point of the tour and I do not need another "restaurant problem".
Time for table football. It is in a little bar in an alley by the side of the main church and the barman tells us his father bought it in the time of General Franco, when he, himself, was seven years old. He has been oiling it every week for 45 years. His own son is now also seven and he adopts us, explaining how to play as if this were the latest thing and we were completely ignorant of such technology. He spins with such ferocity and is so eager to team up with the best player we are all amused. This is table football, Spanish rules. He and Kowalski are formidable and unbeatable, despite Kowalski's blister. Female pax find the little boy so cute: two want to take him home.
I am in a phone booth, early morning, rain pouring. I am trying urgently to get in touch with the local guide we are required to use for the highest of the walks, El Pinsapar, a spectacular hike through prehistoric pines found only here and somewhere in Russia.
The Manual had the wrong telephone number. As we wait in the village square the freezing rain starts to come down torrentially - Santi will not play ball because of ice. I will have to call it off. Halifax didn't want to get wet and Big Sal has stayed to take care of him. Kowalski is in sick bay with his blister. But I have a hardy core of six Brits who are game, come hell or high water: Charles, pax Sidney Survey (a cartographer, lost in the hood of his anorak), Sara and the indefatigable Erica. Even Tina is up for it.
We buy bread, tomatoes and cheese from a little shop that wraps everything in brown paper that quickly goes very soggy indeed.
As we climb into taxis, I tell them that Llanos y Sima del Republicano walk goes to a famous cave. This is not mentioned in the Manual and it appears that no tour leader has ever actually found it. I've only heard about it thanks to a taxi driver.
Manual: 1215: optional sortie up mound for lunch - there is no definite way - so you'll have to find your own way up. There may be a bull on the mound, so perhaps have lunch at the bottom.
Sidney, the cartographer, has twice offered to help me with the map, but each time he holds it upside down, looking totally perplexed. We have a dripping lunch "sheltering" under scraggy mountain oaks with hardly a leaf to share between them. The Manual now says to turn back - as if this hillock is "it". But I know "it" isn't. We press on, finding a way across a raging stream and up through boulders, following the river into the mountain. After a lot of scrambling we find it - a chasm into which the river plunges. Pax now feel a sense of achievement and start looking forward to venison at Cadiz el Chico, an excellent restaurant I checked out during the recce and am looking forward to sampling again.
We have another 30-minute wait for taxis - this time we have located a roaring fire and a very hospitable landlord. He gives us free turrón, a sweet Christmas delicacy, and leaves half a bottle of brandy on the table.
"You might as well have that. Help yourself."
Erica looks as if she wants to marry him.
We drip back into the hotel to find the couch potato pax roaring and rosy. They have also been supping brandy and claim to have had brilliant fun thanks to Kowalski, who has found his tongue. He has been teaching them card games like Sergeant Bilko. Charles' ears prick up - he's been trying to get us to play bridge for over a week.
So we arrive in Ronda on New Year's Eve - almost the end of the trip. The bad news is that the only place prepared to feed us after 5 o'clock tonight is Hermano Macias. And as we walk past on the orientation walk it hits me: I am inside Macias seven years before, when I last worked in Spain. I suddenly remember a last night supper, and I suddenly remember the conversation stop and a voice break the silence: "Laurie, there's a cockroach in my potatoes."
I want to make it a "night to remember" but not in the culinary sense. But the Manual says of Ronda: "not much happening most evenings". My other problem is tomorrow. The itinerary has an included visit to the prehistoric paintings in the Pileta caves. Only they are closed because it is a public holiday. They are open again on the second, the day we leave for Malaga - but the public bus to get there will not be running. I will have to charter a bus for the second and work out an alternative option for New Year's Day.
"What are we going to do tonight, Laurie?" says Erica
"Have a party in the hotel - bring a bottle," I say.
Pax seem very happy with the idea - but I have something up my sleeve. It's a hunch, based upon one fluttering piece of paper I've spotted pinned to a door that included the words "drink - at popular prices". I think I have found the secret of nothing-much-happening Ronda, which also encompasses the tried and tested principle of Drinx 4 Pax.
There are no cockroaches at Hermano Macias this year - but we are finished by 7pm. We spin the time out with drinks, cigars and a stroll. The town at 8pm looks as if it has anthrax - there is not a soul to be seen. It is time to party in the hotel: balloon fights, music, dancing, and celebrating the chimes. At one o'clock I say: "Okay everyone we're going out."
I sense reluctance - especially from Charles and Sidney:
I've burned my bridges now. I get everyone out except Halifax and Big Sal. Fifteen souls go down the deserted streets to the fluttering piece of paper and I open the door.
It is another horrible moment. Inside is just a narrow bar with only two incumbents. I try my best not to look surprised and organise D4P, double quick. While they are ordering, I follow a narrow corridor that snakes around the bar to an indoor patio. Music! Lights! But no people. I must work hard - and fast. I get the pax in and use every trick in the book to get them all dancing. At least we will be making the most of it.
Then it happens. Just a trickle at first, just one or two, then a couple more, then a group of five. . . . By 3am people are flooding in and the atmosphere is incredible. Pax will not stop. Even Sidney and Charles are shaking their stuff, Erica is barefoot and in total dance mode, Kowalski is at some wild hoedown.
I cannot get them out. I've set up a tour for tomorrow, it's 4am, and they're all still dancing.
"Wait for the Detroit New Year, the Detroit New Year," shouts Kowalski.
Only then can I get them home.
"I'm really, really glad you made me come out," says Sidney.
We breakfast at 10.30am in the main square with dishevelled revellers entering for a sandwich or to top up, or still on their way home. Ronda is a riot. At 11.30 five white taxis pull up - I have hired them all for half a day. First stop, out in the country, is Ronda La Vieja, an old Roman encampment that I remember because of an incredible amphitheatre cut into the topmost edge of an escarpment, its seating carved out of the solid rock. The massive wall behind the stage still stands. I ask for a volunteer to speak and sing so that we can all experience the Roman acoustics. Erica is up on stage like a flash and her notes ring out through the centuries.
The day is etching itself on all our minds as we line up with the sun, the cold wind in our faces, staring at a view from the edge that goes on forever.
Next stop is Sentenel - a village set in a winding, limestone river gorge with hundreds of houses built under and into the overhanging cliff. Some of these are tiny, and most are still inhabited. One is derelict and we explore it. Pax want to test Halifax's Estate Agent skills in this challenging location - the upstairs room being only three and a half foot high under the flaking and cob-webbed limestone slab.
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The village of Sentenel with its houses built into the cliff |
This leaves me with a last-day dilemma. Normally the itinerary offers the option of walking back to Ronda after the visit to the Pileta caves. This takes four to five hours and I want to do it because the weather is now wonderful again. Trouble is, we are catching the bus to Malaga and there is no leeway - going by the Manual I shouldn't even contemplate it.
The charter bus waits as we walk up to the caves. The Pileta caves were discovered in 1905 when a local landowner was hunting for guano to fertilise his land. He saw bats fly out and decided to drop himself in it.
Manual: advancing though the vestibule he saw Human Remains . . .
The cave paintings are about 40,000 years old and only a small number of visitors are permitted. There is no electricity so we wait as our "guide" ignites the paraffin Primus lamps.
Manual: must go round with none-too-well-informed guide so best to read up and give spiel before entry.
What the Manual didn't say was that the guide was a lecherous old sod who was far more interested in making lewd comments regarding certain stalagmites and certain female pax than in giving useful information.
His low chuckle echoed unnervingly as the hissing lamps cast lurching shadows over the huge and bizarre shapes.
The actual paintings of fish, antelope, bison are impressive and eloquent in this setting - but they are completely outnumbered by obsessive, black scratchings which plaster many areas, even in the deepest parts of the cave. They may have been early attempts at calendars, but I prefer that idea that stone-age man locked up all their accountants for the good of the community.
Non-hiking pax get back on the bus with instructions to transfer all luggage from hotel to the bus station if we do not return by 4pm (the bus is at 4.30). And off into the brush we go. I do not enjoy this walk because of the deadline, but pax are completely at ease, out for a stroll. Botany Bay is giving a full lecture on every plant he sees and Sidney Survey keeps darting off to examine every interesting shape in the earth. I have to drag them both out from under the huge stalk of a flowering Century plant - where Botany Bay gets all the pax spellbound simply by mentioning the one word "Tequila".
I am practically snatching their sandwiches off them during the "lunch break" at a beautiful mill, Molino del Santo. But we are able to make good time over the mountains, following the old mule trails. We get back with just 10 minutes to spare.
I start to feel the air go out of my balloon on the bus back to Malaga. After all, I have been living on my nerves for two and a half weeks. But we have the official "last night supper" to survive. This is where all the speeches, presents and addresses are exchanged and everyone lets their hair down - as if they haven't done so already. The party animal faction wants to go clubbing again . . .
It is 6.30am when we get back. Pax remnants can crash, but I have to be up in an hour to see someone off on an early flight.
As my dearly beloved queue in Malaga airport I go down the line, shaking hands and hugging them all.
In just two weeks we have lived lifetimes: I have cared for them, fought for them, given them diarrhoea. Yes, I have given them Andalucia. They, in return, have given me their questionnaires, which I now dig out from all my piles of paperwork, of tour reports, hotel reports, accounts and updates, to read, and smile.