Sick In Espana!

At Janet and Phil's biking tour, they have two social evenings where they drive from the small village of MonteCorto to Ronda, a very beautiful, much larger village.  The first evening was Tuesday, but Janet wasn't feeling well, so stayed at home.

Please see below, Phil's photos of the evening.  Whoops!  There aren't any!

Tuesday, during the day, they rode 36KM along a rail bed was never actually finished, but has been refurbished for walking, biking and horseback riding.  This was the flattest part of Spain Janet has seen thus far!

They rode from Olvera to Puerto Seranno and had lunch at the end.  Check out this industrial size box of wine!

On Wednesday, a break day, Janet with her head cold and Phil went to Ronda.  They also visited some caves that were discovered in 1905 by a farmer.  The farmer was looking for fertile bat droppings for fertilizer when he discovered the interior of the cave.  There are more than 5000 drawings inside that are more than 5 times older than the Egyptian Pyramids!  Janet and Phil were dumbstruck at the interior of the cave.  The Pileta Cave is still in the hands of the original farmers' family, who strictly control the number of visitors.  Anything found after 1911 had to be turned over to the Spanish government.

Thursday, Janet still had her head cold so decided to skip the bike ride.  Drew took Phil to a really cool village called Setinel de las Bodegas.  It sounded so cool that Janet made Phil drive them there for dinner.  Many of the buildings in the village are carved out of caves.

They had delicious tapas at this restaurant.

The interior of this bar was a cave.

  Friday she mustered up the strength to go and asked their super guide Drew if they could go somewhere easy.  Drew laughed, which Janet read between the lines as meaning "are you nuts lady, we have been on all the easy rides!"  He did comply, however and they went for a nice, mostly flat ride in the country.  Check out their riding buds!

This guy was so cute, but then again, Janet is a major sucker for donkeys.

Look at the little babies!

Oh my, what a life!

Here are Janet and Drew getting ready to ride back out of the village where they stopped for a break.  You can see the incline behind Drew where they now need to go.  Janet is trying rock hard to whip out her sick card, but Drew isn't buying into it.

Best.  Thing.  Ever. And, everywhere in Spain!

Fresh squeezed orange juice.  Janet doesn't drink that much juice at home, but now seriously doubts it's possible to drink anything but fresh squeezed.

Everyone knows that Janet watches several times, each festive season, the movie "Love Actually" so she buys into the hype that love is actually all around us.  Turns out it is.  Whilst Janet was standing in a square, she was watching a couple, when all of a sudden, the man drops to his knees and pulls a small box out of his pocket.  Janet quickly grabbed her phone and took a couple of photos.  She left it at that and met Phil for lunch, but was berating herself for not having said something to them.  Phil encouraged her to go find them, so she left lunch and turns out the same couple were still in the square.  The man could speak some English and Janet was able to email the photos to them.  They were super excited that someone had caught their special moment in a photograph.

Lest you think Janet has become some kind of hard core biker, this is how most big hills end!  Walking uphill is good exercise, right?