Malaga, Spain

Malaga

On Thursday, we docked in Malaga, Spain and there was that Royal Caribbean ship as well. Apparently, their

itinerary was to depart and return from Southampton, UK, and visit all the Azores, Canary Islands and Spain. It is

probably a welcome break from the usual UK weather and there were also a lot of kids on board.

The port facilities at Malaga are very impressive, like an airport, with duty-free shops and all. However, it means

a relatively long walk to everything, like buses. We decided to do an excursion this stop. Other than Ponta

Delgada (which we knew nothing about) and Malaga, we just did our own thing. This time we wanted to see the

Nerja Caves. We had been to see Karchner Caverns in the Tucson area last spring and have done some other

caves, both with the motorcycle group and on our own. The Nerja Caves, unlike Karchner, are dead rather than

alive, so no further structures are being grown. Unfortunately, the caves in which the Paleolithic and post-

Paleolithic cave drawings can be found are off-limits except to archeologists and archeology students in certain

times of the summer. Too many people caused too much damage. These caves are extremely old and large and are

about 75-90 km away from Malaga, so a tour made sense. Apparently it was not the most popular excursion, so

there were only 16 of us and that made it a lot more manageable.

We drove through a lot of Malaga and then out into the eastern suburbs and along the coast to Nerja. Our guide

told us that tourism is the primary money-maker for this area, that there is no industry, but a fair amount of

agriculture because it does not get cold in the winter. So farmers have constructed greenhouses by the hundreds

primarily of heavy plastic and they grow 3 crops yearly. There is a lot of citrus, but it is the peel that is sold, for

the making of marmalade. They also grow bananas and kumquats, sugar cane and food crops for local use.

Tourism is a 6-9 month a year business so the locals have some financial difficulties. They have also had a lrage

influx of Brits and Germans who have bought second homes and have pushed both the population and the real

estate prices up greatly. He expounded at length in both directions about how gobalization has changed the world

in the last 20 years.

The caves were very interesting, if you like huge caverns and stalagmites and stalactites, as we somehow have.

After 45-60 minutes of wandering, the bus took us into the town of Nerja, so we could see the Balcony of Europe,

which is a large marble plaza built on the edge of a cliff over the ocean with views as far as the eye can see. We

wandered around Nerja for 45 minutes and checked out hotels and the price of apartments ($500,000 for a decent

2 bed/2 bath, and not even a guaranteed ocean view.) The beaches looked nice, although it is a long way down to

them. The town seemed packed, as there are indeed tons of Brits, Germans, Scandinavians, etc. On holiday or

living there. Rodrigo said that part of the problem is that the new people do not assimilate into the culture (heard

that somewhere before!) and indeed there are Irish pubs, Mexican restaurants, pizza places among the hundreds of

artisnal ice cream stores and stands. It looked like a nice place to visit, though, with lots of little cafes offering

tapas and wine. What could be wrong with that we ask?

We had the bus driver drop off about half of us in Malaga town proper before continuing back to the ship. They

were running shuttles every 15 minutes until we had to be on board at 7:30pm for an 8pm departure so we had no

problems getting back. Malaga was dressing itself up for Santa Semana which is the celebration of Holy Week

starting on Palm Sunday, and they have parades of penitents going on all day long, sometimes 1000 people. They

set up grandstands and other seating, just like for the Rose Bowl Parade. We walked around the Cathedral and

through the well-maintained walking streets. Since it was "siesta" time, many of the shops were closed but all of

the bars and restaurants were open so each street or alley was filled with tables and chairs spilling out of the

doors. After a walks, we headed back to the ship for our own siesta.