Return to Malaga

A Very Wet Costa del Sol

06.03.2025 - 17.03.2025 12 °C

We survived our 9.5 hr. bus ride from Salamanca back to Malaga, departure 1:20 am, arrival 10:30 am. The upside was little traffic on the roads until we encountered the morning rush hour. The bus lighting was dim, it was quiet and the driver seemed very careful. I even slept on and off. We stopped in Placencia, Cáceres and Seville, where we had time to get off the bus, use the loo (there was one on the bus but I was dubious) and have a coffee. More people got on and Jim had to give up his unreserved seat next to me to a guy who immediately started arguing with someone on his cell phone. I let him have two calls but when he started in on another one, I pointed to the Spanish ticket info that requested no cellphone use. He wasn’t happy but he stopped phoning and started texting.

It was light as we began going through the hills, olive orchards and vineyards above Malaga. It is such a dramatic landscape anyway with incredibly steep slopes and the occasional odd upthrust of sheer rock but the slopes were now startlingly green from all the rain that has fallen on the Costa del Sol this winter, unlike last year.

We finally pulled into the bus station and were relieved to see our bikes and panniers still underneath. After unwrapping the bikes from their shrouds of plastic and resetting the handlebars, we headed off on the now very familiar cycle paths from downtown to the waterfront paseo, and along it to the Pedregalejo neighbourhood and Julia’s apartment. It was hard to believe we were back in known territory after our departure almost two months ago and such a long series of new places. Happiness can be a predictable place.

Not having had breakfast or lunch we headed for a favourite little cafe - scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, oj and coffe, did a grocery shop and later had a drink at our favourite little beach bar, feeling satisfied our journey and happy to be by the ocean again. It wasn’t sunny but it wasn’t raining either - and there was certainly no snow.

The following day, Eva, the owner of the other apartment we also rented last year and would be staying in again shortly during the last half of our Malaga stay, invited us to her home for breakfast, as she was heading for her daughter’s in Valencia and we would not see her. We had such a nice visit with her. She and Julia had been following my blog and often sent us comments or suggestions. Both women feel like friends now.

Then it was my 73rd birthday - worthy of a celebration for having survived intact our 1062 km of cycling and a total elevation climb of 8000 m. It poured most of the day so we Ubered to a Moroccan restaurant in the hills above us.

The next day we met up for coffee with Darlene and John, our biking friends from Victoria who were doing their own circuit in Spain. We all had “war stories” to share. The excessive rain had necessitated some repairs to their e-bikes in Malaga so they had rented a car to see some of the nearby towns before resuming their cycle. Last fall they cycled along the coast of northern Spain from Bilbao to Gijón along and then south down through the centre of Spain to Seville where they left their bikes before picking them up again in mid-Feb. to ride from there to Gibraltar and Tarifa, then up the coast to Cádiz. The weather was not cooperating.

With a longer than planned stay in Malaga for all of us, we were very happy to have friends to socialize with. We had Darlene and John over to our apartment for a home-cooked dinner that night. They were staying in an apartment nearby but had a very wet walk home that night.

Their bikes repaired, we met up again for coffee the next morning before they took advantage of a weather window cycle to cycle off for a big climb into the hills above Malaga and then the next day, onto the small hilltop town of Antequera. Antequera was a town we had planned to visit for the day via bus from Malaga so we made plans to see them there.

All hoping for dryer weather, the forecasts were not good. The Costa del Sol, in severe drought for a number of years is getting pummeled with storms this year. Here are some photos of the arroyo near us in Malaga that we had only seen completely dry. It fortunately funnels all this water from the mountains into the sea. The lovely aqua Med - on a sunny day - was brown a long way out. And there was an enormous amount of what appeared to be bamboo lining the shore, apparently all washed down to the sea from the arroyo.