We are staying at a resort property that feels like a little white village surrounded by 350 hectares of olives and oak trees in the Montanas of Poniente Granadino between Sevilla and Granada. The hotel is just days away from the annual transition to their olive harvest season and is closed from November to February. Walking from the car park to the hotel we noticed a Bentley with Russian plates parked in a handicapped stall and started making up stories of an injured Russian petrochemical oligarch hiding out in southern Spain from Putin who is determined to sell the Bentley and send him away for life, to a work camp in Siberia for crimes against the State.
Now more about the title. The hotel has an entrance gate off the highway, three miles down a road winding through olive groves. Lunch was good but we always try to get outside the walls of a hotel complex, simply because we want to see more than just the hotel. And the location is insulated from the town that it’s near.
Trip advisor, our trusted travel companion suggested dinner in nearby Loja, just a short 7-mile drive. Remember the earliest that you can have dinner in Spain is eight. Leaving in the dark, the road to the highway was an inky black, a Halloween moon nowhere in sight. There is zero ambient light in the country. We followed another car once we got to the highway and made it to downtown Loja where Christopher Columbus, our GPS, said we are headed to Cuidad Centro. I was concerned, CC usually means that this is the oldest, least improved, tiny streets part of the city. The city streets can be seductive, they lure you in by having other cars parked on them which you can get around slowly. Then the lanes becomes more of a path, not so many cars, local cats startled by your presence. I said seductive because the streets are like a funnel, it’s easier to go forward even though it is tight. At one point Vicki walked ahead to make sure we could get through. One more very tight corner and I’m sure that we will be out of the maze. THEN we get to a banged up car that there is no way, NO WAY we can pass by. It looks like at some point someone did try to get through and took OUT the whole rear quarter panel of the parked car. Now we just need to back up around a tight corner, uphill on a street that is about as wide as the car and one moped in a standard transmission vehicle. Good thing it’s not raining. Thank you, Catey, for warning me to get the smallest car that I could afford. The insurance is covered by our United Airlines credit card.
I called on those years of truck driving experience, said a little prayer, closed one eye and backed out. I’m pretty sure at one point we were centimeters from one of the walls scored by the many unlucky ones. That smell? It’s the clutch. Once we were out of the corner there was just that stairway directly behind us to deal with before we could turn around. With Vicki’s expert directions we got out, took a few deep breaths and decided that the hotel would be a great place to eat.
Thank God we didn’t take the Bentley.
Federico the F&B director of the hotel told us that he had been working in the area for seven years, had visited Loja once and promised to never go back. Trust me on this one there are times to explore and times to chill. This hotel is a spot that you won’t want to leave once you are there. We were fortunate to have the last meal the hotel served for the season and had no choice but to leave. The next meal served will be on February 28th, 2016.
One of my readers has asked for more on the injured Russian staying at the Hotel and with an abundance of spare time, I thought a bit a research would be time well spent.
Bentley has recently opened their third dealership in Moscow, a city of 12 million. While other lower priced car companies have nearly closed their doors in what the Russians are calling a recession. The drive from Moscow to Loja Spain is 4558 km or about 44 hours if you don’t stop for a vodka along the way, about the same distance from Santa Barbara to New York. Los Angeles a city of 4 million also has 3 Bentley dealerships. So if my math is right you are 3 times more likely to own a Bentley in Los Angeles than in Moscow.
After a couple of weeks in here, it is hard to distinguish between Spain of the Moors, Christians, and Jews. From a tourists point of view, it seems that the cultures have blended forming the pastiche of modern Spain. While in Seville, Maria, our Segway guide told us about that Flamenco was a result of the blending of the cultures, each of which brought an element of their own histories to the music and dance. She took us across the bridge to Triana, an area of Seville that had its own downtrodden personality, a history which included gypsies, artists, performers, and other colorful characters. The colony that was looked down upon by the wealthy across the bridge, They were to close to the real Sevilla. ?? Renovations were done in the past to modernize both the buildings and the denizens.
