Road Trip from Granada to Alicante

Wrapped in a Polythene,
Tucked away safe in my mind
A little goodbye maybe or just a passing smile….

I was up early today, to take some pictures of the sunrise in Granada. Sylvain, the guy managing the hostel, told me that the sunrise is at about 8 these days. I had the alarm for everything from 6 - 7, but as expected I slept through them all. Rather kept switching off the alarms. At 8 15 sharp my consciousness forced me to open my eyes and end the lethargy. Hurried out of the bed and put my jeans on top of my pyjamas to fight the morning cold. Put on the first jumper I could lay my hands on and rushed out of the room. Hurrying down and then up the stone path there was only one thought in my mind, missed shooting my first sunrise, how can I be so daft. We were to leave Granada later in the day and head to Alicante, so there was going to be no second chance unless I came back (Which is very much possible).
Daft yes, because I could not see the sun anywhere as yet and could not put two and two together. As I went up the hill, the realization sank in that the sun has not risen as yet. It was almost 8 30 and it was easily another 30 minutes before it would show its face.

I busied myself with capturing other things. There were strange looking caves all over the upper face of the hill. Sylvain later told me that these are like the slums of Granada and people live in those caves. I dared to walk into one of them, which seemed abandoned. Smell of faeces greeted me, with a heap of toilet paper lying in one corner. It was too dark and unappealing to take any meaningful photographs, instead I headed to another one of these cave shacks. This one had a door (yes, the modern cave man was here to stay) and it was closed. Possibly there were people sleeping inside. On the outside there seemed something that could be called a kitchen, though there were no stoves to light a fire. But strewn around were some utensils that indicated someone had been gratifying their appetite in the recent past there. Wishing that whoever had been subjected to eat and drink in such filth gets to see better days, I shot some pictures and got out of there before someone came out of that door to club me to a painful visit to the local pharmacy. Considering that my Spanish is as good as my Martian, I would not get an opportunity to explain what I was doing here. In all possibility my camera would have been mugged in return for a black eye.

Soon I could see the sun popping out of the mountain in front and that gave me a reason to make a quick exit. Trying different configurations with my new toy, I tried to take as many pictures of the rising sun. The first rays of the sun hitting the mountain on this side created a beautiful effect and those images ended up trapped in my memory chip too. The main difference between the rising and the setting sun is that the former is very bright and does not create a great effect, while the latter is very simmered down (after a hard days work of brightening this world). It is easier to capture good effects of the setting sun, especially considering that it makes the sky a combination of wonderful colours.

After spending more than an hour clicking various interesting object in and around the Granada Slums, I headed back to the ‘Rambutan’, the hostel with a difference. Abhi was still fast asleep and seeing him tempted me to hop on to the top of the bunk bed and get back to my slumber.

At about two in the afternoon we hit the road again, to head to Alicante, this time a long distance trip of 350 Kms. Our desire to see as much as possible in eight days was still going strong and we were meeting the time table nicely. Abhi looked a bit happy as he had received a text from a certain German friend of his from Quito, Ecquador. Yes, these Germans are everywhere. I took the car out of the super narrow lanes of Granda heading toward A-92, the motorway to Alicante. Abhi took over once we hit the main roads and here I am whiling my time on the keyboard. It is very foggy here as we have come up on the mountains and there is snow around. Does not seem very cold though, especially not from in here. These roads are long, empty and kind of give one a feeling that you are here to have a good time and we have made the best arrangements for that. Thank you Spain!