Sunday 13-8-2006

From Paul again
We were out and about early this morning in order to get the business of the day out of the way, have a swim or paddle in the sea and return to El Pinar in time for a siesta. We are going up to Taberno this evening to see the last big night of the four day fiesta. We understand from Bob and Pam that after midnight there is a big firework display, thus the siesta. More of this later.
As Elayne said yesterday, Nina (my sister), sent us a really lovely, hand made, ’thinking of you’ card. As some of you already know the cards that Nina make are very beautiful and ingenious. This one depicted a sea shore with waves, a yacht, sunglasses, umbrella, flip-flops, fish etc all in 3D(see the enclosed picture).
BTW it was overcast and windy this morning, ‘but it soon got over it‘. Now it is back to normal although there is still a nice cooling breeze (see the other unusual picture of a rough Med with clouds!!!!).
Post Fiesta Evening
We arrived in Taberno about nine and there was lights and noise and happy people and children thronging the streets. We met up with Pam and Bob together with their Grandchildren after we had been up to our plot, just to make sure it was still there. We sat talking and drinking in competition with a youngsters disco at 150 decibels at one end of the main street and a live and very noisy band at the other end of the street. The main street was blocked off where you can normally drive and we were parked by then on the upper side of the town. We were reliably informed (no names P&B) that when we left to go home, if we cut around the back of the town we would eventually come back on to the main road that then leads down once again to the motorway. We finally tackled this exit from Taberno at about three in the morning. We must have left early because we didn’t see any fire works, but by then we didn’t care. Just follow the white line they said and it will lead you round the back of town and then you will be OK. The white line stopped in the very narrowest and darkest part of the back of the town. We tried at least four routes to get back to the main road again, all to no avail. Eventually we got back to where we started and Elayne managed to flag down a lady in a car whom we had seen earlier (she should really not have been driving). She confidently told us to follow her and she would lead us out of town. Great we thought. We did follow her, until she also got lost. As we re-approached the same car park that we had just left twice before she wound down her window and advised us to follow the road down to the left. This was the road that was blocked in the first place for the fiesta!! After about half an hour of this we drove down on to the rambla (river bed) and drove down past the town on a section that was very rough, and very dark, and on which we had not travelled before. It was all a bit breath taking but we came out of it OK in the end. At the last roundabout ,above Los Gallardos, we were flagged down by the Guardia Civil! After we had wound down the window, he peered in and then told us to continue. We think that he was looking for drunks, so we were obviously far too respectableJ We finally got back to El Pina at nearly half past four on Monday morning. Yawn!!!! The pictures are of the fiesta and an ‘evening shot’ of our ruin with the glorious mountains behind just after sun set .