Curves ahead

On the way to Ronda A397- road, squirming in the mountains of  Serranía de Ronda, offers the travellers pretty spectacular scenery. Before one reaches the altitude where even trees won't grow, the views, with the villas surrounded by cypress trees remind of Tuscan countryside. 

No, this is not our house. Not yet, anyway...

Occasionally, especially in the evening as the dusk sets over the mountains, one could almost imagine being in Africa- Far East even!

The scenic road is, particularly during the weekends, also popular among the bikers. Here and there the flowers brought to the side of the long and winding road remind of the dangers these serpentine roads have in store.

Sceneries have a very powerful language of their own that brings back memories from very different (and distant) places. 

For The Gentleman the mountains take him back to his roots: Derbyshire and Yorkshire whereas to me the lookout points echo the scenes from a park located close to my old home in Jerusalem. As the terrain gets tougher and more barren, they transport me back to the unforgiving surroundings of the Bedouin camps I got to know back in the West Bank.

By the time one gets to Ronda, the altitude will have reached almost a kilometre from the sea level and one can see and feel it. In the couple of hour drive the temperature drops almost 10 degrees.

Up here the warning signs don't warn about the herds of cows anymore. In the winter the mountains here, just as in Sierra Nevada around Granada and Alhambra, actually get some snow.