Olvera, one of the pueblas blancas in Andalucia, Spain

I arrived in Olvera at the top of the hill, where I found Rita reserving a parking spot for me, one that didn’t require navigating the narrow streets of the town, nor parallel parking. Perfect. For those avid readers, you may remember Rita from my long ago email entitled “O out of bathrooms in Nicaragua”, where we started traveling together for a couple of months in the region. Since meeting her when Cheryl and I were crossing into Nicaragua from Costa Rica in 2011, we’ve traveled together in Argentina and Newfoundland (visiting Marieke) and I’ve visited her in England. She invited me to stay at her holiday home in Olvera, one of the Pueblas Blancas, or white villages, in the Andalucia region in Spain. I was excited to reconnect, and also for my own room!

My time in Olvera itself consisted of drinking a fantastic wine Rita served me the first night and I loved, and upon discovering it was the high price of 2.50, we continued to drink, eating tapas at her favourite local bar, sunset and people watching from her balcony. Perhaps the best people watching was at the pensioners’ club, just up the road, which was a sort of community centre for retired people, who could take exercise classes, gossip and socialize, and most importantly, vie for the attention of the (relatively) youthful and fit aerobics instructor. Luckily for us, it’s open to everyone for breakfast, and at the cheapest moelletas (toast and tomato and olive oil for 1.20) in town, provided an excellent start to the day.

Olvera is definitely not on the international tourist route, but the few visitors in town could be found at the castle at the top of the hill, which afforded excellent views of the surroundings, and at the time of our visit, a rather strange art exhibit making social commentary on the past and present. Or so we gathered when I climbed up the castle roof and discovered an old television at the top.

Outside of Olvera

We spent the week exploring more pueblas blancas, reached by beautiful and frightening, narrow, winding roads. The routine seemed to be Rita in front of the car, encouraging me down a road slowly, watching both sides, while I held my breath. Of course, you see the locals whizzing past without even looking, making it look oh so easy. But on second glance, if you looked a little closer at the cars they were driving, they all seemed to exhibit a strange streak of white paint, where they evidently misjudged the proximity of the walls of the buildings just slightly. Apparently they’re affectionately known as Olvera kisses. As I was driving a rental car, I was less than stoked about these kisses, and inched my way through towns, particularly the mirrored villages where you had to check the mirrors to see if anyone was coming down the two way road that was only wide enough for one car at a time.

I only ended up in one real jam, where I could not for the life of me find my way out of an impossibly tight turn (at least with my rental car, which was the smallest automatic they had, but still felt absurdly large for this part of the world). The guy behind me did not seem too worried though, as he got out and lit up a cigarette. Eventually, people seemed in a hurry enough to help, and with one person directing, two people checking the back and two people the front, I inched my way into a 20 point turn and breathed a sigh of relief as we continued out of the town. This is why the other half of my time with Rita was spent drinking wine.

Ronda

On day 5 or so, we drove to the town of Ronda, a gorgeous town on a viaduct and was quite popular with lots of famous people I don’t remember. We spent the night there in order to attend the guitar festival (and drink wine of course). The next day we drove back to Olvera, but unfortunately, I had forgotten my favourite pair of shorts in the room in Ronda. Considering I only have two pairs of shorts with me, I decided to detour back to Ronda on my way to Malaga where I had to drop the car off. Of course, this meant going back through the mirrored villages. Awesome.

About 3 hours later, I arrived at the car rental place with about an hour to spare, only to remember that I had to fill the tank with gas. I pulled into a parking lot, pulled out my phone and searched for gas stations. I found one a few hundred metres away, only to arrive and discover it was a station for commercial vehicles. As I was near the airport, the next one was 8 minutes away, but meant getting back on and off the freeway. I finally found a station, spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get the gas cap off (Rita had done it previously), resorted to looking it up on my phone and discovering you have to push one corner in, and left the station. I of course got lost in a roundabout that seemed to lead into a shopping mall. By the time I got back to the car rental place I had about 10 minutes to spare. I have never been so happy to return a car. And that’s saying a lot for me.

I took the shuttle back to the airport, took the train into Malaga and hopped on a bus to Olvera, to start my car-free time there.