Más largo que un día sin pan

After much planning, we decided to spend the weekend in Almería, a coastal town two hours southeast of Granada. It’s a pretty little town, and all the main roads are very quaint and personal. There’s a lot of Arab influence there, which is similar to Granada and most of Andalucía. Actually, Almería is somewhat of a desert, and they sometimes film American-style westerns there, and it is the city with the least amount of rain in all of Spain.

Knowing this, you can imagine our delight when it rained until 10:30 on Friday night.

It had been raining since 4 am in Granada, and the twenty-minute public bus ride to the big bus station took an hour. Luckily we bought our tickets on Thursday, because we ended up running for the tour bus and just making it on time. We arrived in Almería at 5:30 pm, and I think we brought the storm with us. The ensuing torrential downpour is best described as apocalyptic. Not wanting to spend the whole night in our two star hotel, humming highlights from our favorite Broadway musicals, we ventured out into the storm. The water was up to my shins on the street, with a heavy current, and it was flooding over the curbs onto all of the sidewalks. The umbrella I bought that same day was practically useless as the rain was coming in sideways (to borrow a phrase from Forrest Gump). All the townspeople just stood in their doorways and watched the weather and us nutty americanos making our way through it. Once we were adequately soaked to the bone, the weather started to clear up and we ended up getting tapas and sangria at a little bar off the main road.

Saturday we got up super early and took a one-hour bus ride to the resort town of San José. It was very pretty, with the usual whitewashed houses up and down the hills and the mountains framing the sea. We rented bikes for half the day in attempts to ride through some of the Cabo de Gata Nature Reserve next to the beach. We biked up the hilly paths along the coast, with the sea always in view. It was one of my favorite activities of the trip thus far. When the road ended at the side of a mountain, we hiked with our bikes around the side of it. It was actually pretty rugged and somewhat dangerous – just a typical day in my life, as I’m sure you know. Down below, we saw a secluded beach in part of the reserve and climbed down to it (we had come prepared with our bathing suits under our clothes). As we descended, it became increasingly obvious that bathing suits were entirely optional. So there we were, americanos with mountain bikes and exercise clothes and backpacks and camelbacks, on a Spanish nude beach. Awkward.

We actually stayed at the beach for awhile, though we kept our eyes towards the sea. Needless to say, it was pretty silly.

We took an 8 pm bus back to Almería and had a really good night’s sleep. On Sunday, we walked around to see some of the Arab ruins in the city and left Almería around 4:30. I seriously fell asleep in the middle of my homework at 10:00 last night – but the exhaustion was worth it. It was a very good weekend.

Question of the Day – should I spent 100 euro ($140) to join a gym for three months?