January 8th - 11th 2007
Written by Geoff Forster
Another beautiful day.
Jane and Val have been to Gaucín to buy Carmen's mother a plant as a farewell gift.
We went down to Pub Bar Dami for tapas at around 14:00h.
Dami does some excellent tapas. Jane had a chicken fillet and a McDami.
Val and I had a potato tortilla. I also had some pulpo (octopus) salad.
I worked on the Benarrabá website most of the day.
I've added a few new pages of photographs.
The first is the JBNightology fiesta held in Café Bar Guayacán just before Christmas.
Next the visit of Canal Sur to the village to film their program 'Viaje Al Sur' - 'Trip to the South'.
Then I put on the photos from the Three Kings night.
Finally some old photographs, kindly lent to us, so that we could scan them for use on the Bennarraba.com website, by our friend Antonio from the Panadería in Benarrabá.
So if you enjoy looking at photographs ....
The donkeys, dogs and cats are all fit and well.
This is Sophie our Siamese cat. She's squinting because she's clever and knows the flash is coming.
This is Daisy. She's getting on now, she's fourteen.
We enjoyed a quiet evening in, as we're taking my mother Val to Málaga airport very early tomorrow morning.
We're up early and off to Málaga Airport. My mother, Val, flies back to the UK this morning.
We left Benarrabá at 07:00h.
The roads were quieter than we'd expected.
This is the sunrise as we drove through the toll booth somewhere near Marbella.
We got to Málaga airport. Parking is still a nightmare. We got one of the last places in the old multi-storey car park. We had a coffee in arrivals as it's 10x better than the rubbish they serve in departures. Up to departures via the lift and we said a tearful farewell.
We drove to San Luis de Sabinillas and did some shopping on the way home.
We stopped at Venta La Laguna near the Sierra de Crestellina.
They sell goats cheese in a shop behind the bar.
The goats were being moved to a new pasture.
We drove up to the mountains and home to Benarrabá.
Jane started washing and cleaning the apartment.
I went to Café Bar Guayacán to meet John Young.
John has two sheep on his land, 'Dolly and Molly'. Molly has hurt her foot and isn't walking properly.
Yolanda has arranged for a sheep expert 'Paco' to come and take a look.
We drove out into the campo to John and Chris's finca.
Chris was waiting for us, she'd been trying to entice Dolly and Molly down from the steep mountainside without luck.
Here's Chris and Paco.
Paco said the sheep would be in the sunshine. Which ruled out 50% of the mountain.
John went up shaking a food bucket to entice them out of hiding.
Paco and I walked up the track out of sight. The sheep are nervous of strangers.
Jubrique through the trees.
The trick worked and soon Dolly and Molly had been spotted and were heading down for a feed.
This is the injured Molly.
We weren't sure if the injury would mean poor Molly's days were numbered, so we waited anxiously for Paco to take a look at the way she was walking.
Good news ... its nothing serious. Either a sprain or a thorn in her heel.
I was expecting a physical examination and the thorn removed but apparently it'll sort itself out ....?
So we had a drink and drove back home.
I did a bit of retouching with the paintbrush to keep the apartment in tip top condition while Jane cleaned.
I've got a ADSL modem from Telefonica and I'm trying to install it. The manual and installation CD are in Spanish as is the relevant part of Telefonica's website. So its a slow process with the dictionary and a bit of intuition. So far with no luck. I have activated the account (I think), so I'm paying for it!
I'll be glad to get rid of Iberbanda/Avired. The Telefonica broadband is only 512Kb but its twice as fast as I get with Iberbanda for the same money, plus free telephone calls to other Telefonica landline's. We also have International 15, which gives us 15 minutes of free calls to the UK every night after 20:00h. For 10 euros a month.
My mother phoned to say she'd arrived safely home to a cold and very wet UK welcome.
We had a stroll down to Guayacán later in the evening.
We chatted for a couple of hours with Yolanda and the new waitress/barmaid Ioana (pronounced E O Ana).
We're both tired from the early start so we didn't stay too late ...
We're up well before dawn.
Jane's cleaning and ironing. I pop up to help with the wood burning stove and bathroom.
I'm trying to get the ADSL router working.
It's hard work but I get there.
A minute later and disaster strikes. The notebook won't load Windows. Tests confirm the hard drive isn't working.
Our guests Mary and Malcolm arrived at 16:00h.
We show them the apartment before dashing off to Gibraltar to buy a new Notebook.
Of course they sell Notebooks in Spain but I wanted a English version of Windows and Office.
We were in Gibraltar Main Street at 18:00h.
We checked out a few shops before deciding to buy a Toshiba. The screen is amazing, very high gloss, it makes photo's look really good.
We had fish and chips before picking up the notebook with my details loaded on to it.
On the way home we stopped at Venta Carrasco.
Fortunately a lot of our software and photographs were backed up onto an external hard drive.
Including a list of email addresses.
However not all addresses were backed up so please e-mail us so that we can reply and that way we can make sure that you are in our address book. Thanks, a one liner will do.
I was up until 04:30h. loading software and setting up the internet connection.
I started to download all the files on this website, including every photograph!
Fortunately the new connection is working well and is a lot faster than Iberbanda.
I'm up early checking the website is downloading properly.
A few hours later and the whole website is downloaded.
I set it off downloading our other websites.
Not a very exciting day blogging I'm afraid as I'm at the desk all day and night.
I asked Jane to take some photographs of the dogs and cats ...
As you can see they are all spoilt rotten and sleep a lot.
We had a bit of a spring clean whilst the computer was downloading all our files.
A few visits to the tip with things that we should have left in the UK!
Another late night.