Granada to Malaga, on our personal winding road.

29/1/13

First up, for our West Aussie friends, it's not Mar-lar-ga - it's Mal (Malcom) - u (up) - ga (guppy).

We're out of here. We punched Malaga into the sat nav. At Suzanne's suggestion we then pushed the "winding roads" button, and it told us it was going to take three and a half hours to cover a hundred and sixty kilometres. You know what that means. Fun time.

Getting out of town was a very pleasant ride.

Feel like an orange? Just reach out and grab one as you ride past. There are orange trees everywhere here.

Just a small decoration over the front door.

Once we were out of town, the first part of today's ride was a run down the freeway, then it was onto nice little flowing roads up into the mountains. It was a very relaxing ride to start the day. 

Here we go.

Hmm, snow. I wonder if we'll end up there today?

Roller-coaster roads

There was no shortage of three things today...

Rocks,

mountains,

and olive trees.

Our stomachs told us it was time to eat just as we rolled into Los Canos De La Alcaiceria. These guys are switched on. They have a great hotel and offer guests ATV and horse riding along with a lot of other activities. We broke our own rule last night and booked a hotel in Malaga. If we hadn't, we would probably have spent a night or two here.

The best part though was what Suzanne found. Over near the gigantic fireplace was a small cage. In that cage there was a...

...baby hedgehog, or erizo in Spanish.

Does Suzanne look happy?

Just how cute is this?

We've been keen to see a hedgehog for our entire trip, and today we scored, big time. Not only did we see one, but Suzanne got to cuddle it as well. It made a great day even better.

After I dragged Suzanne away from her newest friend, we had our usual soup lunch, then took a few photos of the hotel lounge area.

Now that's a fireplace.

Is this a barking Gecko?

WARNING - If you're not a fan of animal trophies, you might like to scroll down the page a bit.

You think this is scary?

Check out how big he is.

Then it was winding roads time again...

 The road was like this for miles, and miles, and miles.

The terrain was incredibly rocky,

and home to hundreds of goats.

Suzanne got creative with the camera and our shadows.

There are buildings like this all over Spain.

It's a shame they've fallen into disrepair.

The roads just kept getting better and better.

The roads were from heaven and I was in the groove enjoying them. Then Suzanne asked me to slow down for the first time ever. I think it had something to do with the Big Mykolajenko Wheelbarrow scraping it's way through one particular corner. I'm just trying to get the most wear out of my tyres. Honest.

Not much later the camera battery went flat so there are no more photos from the camera, only a couple from my phone.

As we rode along one ridge I saw a bridge and said to Suzanne "I'm glad we're not riding over that. Look how high it is".

We looked down on this bridge and I thought it was scary...

...then I saw this one. I hope we don't come back this way.

Then I realised we were probably up a mountain twice as high as the height of the bridge. That was our last photo stop and we sat back and enjoyed the winding ride the rest of the way into Malaga.

After our one star hotel in Granada, we deserved a treat and checked into a nice hotel. It even had hot water - very nice thank you. Putting my bike in the garage was a new experience. I had to ride into a lift to go down to the car park.

We wandered out and finished off the day with a nice Tapas snack in a little bar near the hotel.

All in all, I'd call it a bloody fantastic day.

One last photo of today's roads. Fun, fun, fun.