Touching Spanish Soil: Ronda, Spain and the Chinchilla Bodega

Ronda is a city I will never forget.

After piling into our tour bus beneath dark, gray clouds hanging down as if they were ready to spit rain, we headed away from Estepona and toward the mountains. We drove up a serpentine road for 27 kilometers. The hills and mountains were layered one upon the other as far as the eye could see. There were olive orchards and grape vineyards in tiers over the valley. There are also isolated dips in the mountains littered with casas blancas (white houses) to sprinkle the landscape. Pine trees decorated the roadside so thick that at times, I couldn't see through them. The gorges ran so deep that we couldn't see over the cliff. When the bus driver slammed on his brakes, our breaths hitched and our heart beats jumped up a notch. There was an orange truck full of rocks stopped in the middle of the road just as we rounded the curve. No tail lights blinking. No cones to alert us. After pulling our hearts back into place, we drove around him and then dodged huge rocks that had slid onto the road. Small cars sped down the mountain toward us full tilt. Some of the cars passed us on blind curves. Solid granite rose into the sky on one side of us and the drop-down gorge fell down steeply on MY side of the tour bus.

And then the sun came out and the sky loosened up to shine as if to welcome us just before we reached Ronda and a huge eagle soared through the gorge with its wide wings spread, dipping and gliding over the bus.

Emmanuel (our guide) said "if the sun hadn't come out, we would have just gone to get it!" He also said (if I made a mistake in the telling, it is my fault as I couldn't type fast enough when he talked to us) that in the 2,000 year history of Ronda there were Romans, Visigoths and Terifas. Andalusia was the first part taken by the Moors in 700 AD and then they lost it back again in 1485. He wanted to give us a brief history and continued to say that Ronda is the bullfight capital of Spain. Matador Pedro Romero pushed bullfighting into Spanish culture (and of course, I imagine he was one of our ancestors since Miguel Romero was my great, great grandfather...)

The road of 218 curves (who on earth counted them?) steeply inclined toward the skyline of the white city. White wash reflects light to make the houses cooler in the summer. Now, since many houses have air conditioning (it gets up to 115 degrees in the shade in Ronda), the city must respect the typical Andalusian style guidelines and continue to white wash them.

Una casa, una vida. A house, a life. I saw this sign in many places. Other words of wisdom I am hearing are "punctual as a Spaniard" and "Spanish minutes are stretchy." "If you wear high heels, walk on cobblestones like a newborn cat."

Did you know we have about 4,000 words that are from Arabic origin? I sure didn't. Once out of the bus, we walked into the old town toward the gorge that I'd seen in photos many times since I began my journey over the internet. No picture does it justice, I admitted today. On the way, we were curious about the long narrow alleys that led to a door. Our guide told us the Muslims made the alleyways without a door, their houses had very tiny windows high under the rafters and one front door...to "protect" their women. Of course, we all know their women must have been kept away from the public eye and they probably never ventured out into the world. It was only after the Christians took over and demolished the mosques that the doorways were placed at the end of the alleys for access after 1495. The Muslim's houses first had a vestibule and in the corner behind that was a courtyard. Today only 208 houses are in the old town of Ronda, where there had been about 1000 Muslim houses in the day.

AND THEN WE WENT TO A BODEGA.

We learned vineyard facts, walked through the fermenting cave and then the fun part: Tapas and wine tasting. Their chardonnay was very good, but when she served the reserve, I was hooked and bought a bottle. I will share it with my gracious hostess, Lyn, on Saturday in Los Nunez where I will stay in the round house my father built.