Chad and Kari's Big Adventures: A very special birthday

From Grazalema, we headed to Ronda, where we'd spend the next 3 days and also my (Kari's) birthday. Ronda's a very impressive city, not for its size, but for the fact that it is on top of a cliff (like Arcos-from the earlier post).

The city is divided into two by a bridge that connects the older part with the newer part of the city.

Here's a picture of Nancy and Tom on the bridge:

How about this campsite!!!

We decided not to camp there but opted stayed at a pretty ranch outside of Ronda complete with horses, chickens and barking dogs. After the heat in Sevilla, I was so excited to stay at a place with a pool. However, we were now at a higher elevation, and it wasn't so hot. I didn't even go into the pool I'd dreamt about in Sevilla. :) We shared an apartment with Nancy and Tom. It was great to have more space and a mini-kitchen to eat breakfast at home. We missed our cereal! We even had our resident cat there. He loved to run inside to keep us company (and hope for some food scraps.) He was cute:

My birthday was September 10. That day we went to visit some prehistoric cave drawings outside of town. Many of the drawings just looked like scratch marks, but others were of horses, fish, people, deer and animals eating fish. They were drawn in different eras, and range from 10,000 to 30,000 years old.

Here's Nancy and me at the entrance:

Here's just one of the drawings:

After visiting the cave, we had a picnic on a lookout over the valley. After we finished our wine, cheese and leftover pizza lunch, Chad climbed some boulders to the top of a rock outcropping. I was worried he'd fall, so of course I had to join him.

We told Tom and Nancy how great the view was, so they decided to come up too:

Nothing like heights to get my blood pumping and to celebrate another birthday.

The day drew to a close with a most beautiful sunset over the mountains.

After leaving Ronda, we headed east and stopped for lunch in a small city called Antequera. We ate lunch at a streetside cafe-restaurant. They served average Spanish tortilla sandwiches and pretty good gambas pil pil (shrimp in a spicy garlic sauce ... thanks for the recommendation Karla Kuhn! We loved it.), and had excellent customer service. After our meal, the waitress brought out some ice cream on the house (what a great belated birthday treat!) and then she brought out this miniture old gas pump that served up some great after lunch sherry. The owner came out to talk with us and kept filling us up. It was quite sweet!

When we left the restaurant, we stopped to visit an ancient dolmens (monoliths, or huge stone arrangements, sort of like Stonehenge). They were built 5,000 years ago by the original Iberian people. We watched a short video about how they created these massive artificial caves, which took years to build.