The Amazing Race Part I

Readers Warning: Very long due to documentation and emotional drain process - read at your own will.

I need to write down the rest of our Spain Adventure, it has taken me a while to do it for various reasons - the fact that since we got back it was a crazy time to just get back into life, in the last 4 weeks I've had 4 sets of visitors staying at our house - 3 within in 10 days (including babysitting 2 more toddlers), lots of laundry, and the emotional scarring the journey home really left upon us!

So here we go....

While we were in the van on our private tour to Rhonda on Thursday we got a message from Mike's assistant telling us about the volcano. We thought - wow - but surely it will clear up and things would be fine for our flight home Sunday - boy are we lucky we aren't scheduled to go home tomorrow! (Friday)

Every TV station had grim reports of the volcano - we were transfixed. People were coming in and out of the lobby - no one knew what to do, what was going to happen, when or how they would get home. Surely by Sunday we would be okay.

Friday - we took a taxi - well 2 taxis into Downtown Marbella - it was wonderful - the center was called the Orange Square - little shops, a courtyard that was curved around so you would lose your place, all the buildings were white and there was a giant Catholic church at the center. They paint the buildings white and close together to keep them cool. We had a nice lunch in the center of town and headed back to the resort. It was hard to enjoy the rest of our vacation because of the uncertainty we faced. I don't think people realized how stressful it had all was. Mike & I went for a Tapas dinner and left the kids in charge with frozen pizzas & a movie! They loved it.

Saturday we played ping pong and went swimming in the indoor pool with the kids - saw more people unsure of their situation. People weren't leaving - nor were new people coming in. The hotel could accommodate us longer if we needed at 200 euros/night - which was nice for a 3 bedroom condo! Our flights were officially canceled at that point - and we spend hours and hours on the internet.

The problem was we couldn't get out of Spain.

Train tickets to London were outrageous - Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Paris, Eurostar or Ferry to London - It would cost over 500 Euros PER PERSON for the Madrid to Paris leg alone. That didn't even include the cost of what the Eurostar might have been.

Renting cars was excessive, but you were not allowed to drive them out of Spain or they'd charge a 5,000 Euro one way fee.... (for a van) which didn't even include the cost to rent or fuel it.

For those Euro-geographically challenged, Malaga is pretty much the most south you could get in Spain - they only had 2 ferries a week that left from the North of Spain (Santander) to Portsmouth (1 hour from my house) or Plymouth (3 hours). All the rest were out of France. You just couldn't get easily out of Spain. At least out of places like Germany, Italy, France you could try to get a train more readily - out of the Nordic countries you could take other ferries - or be like John Cleese - he paid a taxi driver 3,000 EU to drive him from Brussels to Calais, France to take a ferry!!

We looked at all the routes - everyone was doing the exact same thing - people looked defeated,
the resort was quiet - no one was 'enjoying' themselves - everyone was in a silent panic. Everyone spent their waking moments on the Internet. There was no information coming from anywhere - not the news, not governments, not the hotel, not the airlines - nothing. People were renting all the cars, booking all the trains, new flights for later in the week - things that normally cost 30-40 EU were costing 300-400 EU. The increase of the cost was shocking. The greed and preying on people stranded was at an extremely heightened level.

Everyone had a story - we were all in the same boat - we all had places to get back to in England strangely enough. We met far many more people than we had just being on holiday for a simple week's pleasure.

We were lucky - we had outside help - Mike's Assistant Preet back in the UK looked at things online for us, helped us book & cancel so many alternatives - I can't even keep track of how many reservations we had for various routes. We tried:

-Train from Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Paris, Paris to Calais, Calais to Folkstone
-Renting a van to drive to Santander - take a ferry to Plymouth or Portsmouth
-Take a train to Santander - to take a ferry to P/P
-Rent a van to drive to Bilbao take ferry
-Rent 2 cars - drive to San Sebastian, Spain - return cars - taxi to Bairritz, France to rent 2 more cars - drive to Caen, France for a ferry to Portsmouth
-Rebooked flights on 2 carriers (I couldn't book 7 on one flight) but the following Saturday
And these are the ones I can remember.....

Then we heard of a bus - Malaga to Gatwick......surely no one would take that...

Spain Safari Park & Ronda

Here are a few more pictures of the safari park

This peacock was following the photographers around - it was so funny it was in true peacock fashion - hey look at me!

Chandler's new girlfriend

A real Roadrunner!
They are from Australia and have hair, not feathers and not fur and their feet are huge! But they are fast runners...meep meep

Ronda is the place with the oldest Bull Ring in Spain - there are 2 bridges that bring people in & out of town as the town is basically build on a gorge... it was beautiful.... what I thought was really funny were all of the French Tourists.. every time I turned around there was a guide describing things in French

Down below the old bridge

Spain

Once we finally got home from our extended vacation it has really taken me a week to recover, mentally and the house physically! So I will try to continue to document!! I'm having trouble uploading pictures - so I'm having little patience with blogspot the last few days. Here are actually pictures to go with the last post...


When we first arrived - the beach in front of our hotel/condo looking into the Mediterranean Sea - out beyond - Straight of Gibralter & due south - Africa

The weather wasn't the most cooperative when we were in Spain - from Marbella on a clear day you can see into Africa - we contemplated taking the kids on a Tour to Tanger (Tangier) but the more honest people we met - or not so much 'honest' just not the people who wanted to take our money - suggested it wasn't such a great spot for taking kids. So we planned on doing things around the area instead.
Giant Chess set where the boys spent lots of time

Indiana Jones Bridge

Safari Park