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Marbella is the upscale location on the Costa del Sol. It has flower decked narrow streets lined with stores and restaurants to explore, wild Dali sculptures on a broad walkway leading to a promenade where you can walk several Km beside a great beach.
We love exploring local markets and Malaga had the best. It was a sight to see and hear. It was packed with displays of fresh fish, meats and vegetables and all the vendors beckon you to their stall by singing out their speciality.
We missed the 
bullfighting season but we saw
bullrings in almost every town. Even the tiny village of
Benamahoma, in the Parque National de Grazalema, west of Ronda,
had a mini-bullring. Most of the time the village road runs right
through the bullring, but a few days a year the doors are closed
and the bullfights begin. We toured the bullring in Ronda, the
most famous in Andalucia. It almost made me sad not to be able to
see it in action. Instead we watched a small boy, a future
bullfighter, pose with a cape for his parents.
We couldn't leave Spain without seeing a flamenco performance and Sevilla claims to be one of the birthplaces of flamenco, so we booked an evening of entertainment. We joined busloads of tourists at El Palacio Andaluz to watch talented dancers, musicians and singers perform a well-choreographed and colourful show. I would have loved to attend an impromptu performance in one of the many flamenco bars but the starting time of midnight is past my bedtime.
Tarifa, a small town at the most southerly point in Spain, can be windy. Perfect for the windsurfers and kitesurfers who congregate there. We watched about 50 kitesurfers practising in the waves on a Saturday. On a hill nearby are fields of towering white windmills, one of many Spanish power projects funded by the EU. Poor Don Quixote, he would have had to be a giant to do battle with these modern windmills.
Gibraltar was more British than Britain. There
were pubs galore and British Bobbies directing traffic. Tourists
galore walked the shopping districts looking for duty free
bargains of liquor, electronics and English clothing. We took the
cable car up to the top of the Rock where the Barbary macaque
apes lie in wait. 
One unwary fellow had the plastic bag
he carried ripped out of his hands by one ape. The apes may be
cute but they are not stupid. Despite signs warning of fines up
to £500 if you are caught feeding the apes, I saw a tour leader
feed oranges to several mothers and babies. The view from the top
was excellent and the audio that was included with our cable car
ride gave lots of fascinating information about the area.
Cadiz has a long promenade along the seafront, perfect for Sunday strollers and us. We had lunch before our walk at the popular Plaza de Mina. The small square was crowded with families enjoying lunch at the many restaurants or picnicking on the park benches. People brought their own beer and wine and bought smoked tuna or tiny shrimps sold by street vendors in paper cones.
From Cadiz we headed to El Puerto de Santa Maria
which, along with nearby Sanlucar de Barrameda and Jerez de la
Frontera, make up the Sherry Triangle. 
We had seen huge black silhouettes of
bulls beside the highways on our travels. These are the sherry
and brandy advertisements for the Osborne company of El Puerto.
The signs carried the company name when they were first erected
in 1957 but Spain outlawed highway advertising in 1988, so the
name was removed. The Spanish government tried to remove them in
1994 but a public outcry decrying the removal of a national
heritage resulted in them being left as they were. Now another
Sherry company, Gonzalez Byass, has erected equally large
nameless signs advertising their most popular brand, Tio Pepe, a
man dressed in Andalucian garb with a guitar beside him.
We made a day trip to Sanlucar where
we visited La Cigarrera, a Manzanilla dry sherry Bodega (a winery)
named after the women who rolled and sold cigars on the streets
of town in the 19th C. Carmen of Opera fame was one. I visited
the Sandeman Bodega in Jerez on another day trip while Ray
watched horses being washed and exercised at the Royal Andalucian
School of Equestrian Art across the street. It is just as well
that both of us did not take the Sandeman tour as neither one of
us would have been able to drive afterwards. They were very
generous with their tastings and even I had to limit my drinking.
Jerez also has an interesting
Alcazar, an 11th C Muslim fortress, to visit. It was much smaller
than the Alcazar in Seville but it had a camera obscura in the
top of a tower. We huddled around a large concave dish while our
guide turned off the lights and opened a small hole in the roof.
Mirrors projected a panorama of Jerez onto the dish, a live
action movie with people moving about the town.
We sought out the hiking
trails in the many National Parks where well maintained paths led
up mountains, through forest and along rushing mountain streams.
Between our visits to Cordoba and Granada we took time off to
visit and hike in Cazorla National Park. We had a great day
driving through the beautiful mountain range and taking two
hikes, one in the spectacular Cerrada del Utrero gorge and the
second along the Rio Borosa. The last was great until it started
to rain. We didn't bring our raincoats that day as the morning
had been sunny, so we were reduced to huddling under one umbrella
for the hour walk back to our car. Thank goodness for quick dry
clothing.
Grazalema, just west of Ronda, offered the
greatest variety of walks. One day we had our most challenging
hike to the top of El Torreon for great views. Another day we
took a more leisurely walk from El Bosque where we were staying
to the next village of Benamahoma, one of the picturesque Pueblos
Blancos, white villages built in the hills.
We drove over mountain
passes to Zahara de la Sierra next to a large dammed lake. We
walked up the hills to the partially restored castle and a
hilltop keep. Warning: Do not attempt to pick prickly pear fruit
off the cactus without leather gloves. I did and I was picking
slivers out of my fingers for days. 
We liked the town so much we stayed
overnight to try another hike the next day. The Garganta Verde is
a lush ravine, a 300 M descent down a steep path to a rocky, dry
river bed. A short distance along the river is a huge cave, Cueva
de la Ermita and the narrow entrance to the gorge, rising more
than 100 M on each side. The gorge is the nesting area for 50
pairs of Griffon Vultures, several of which could be seen
swooping across the gorge gathering sticks for their nests.
There is another 400 M gorge in El Chorro that
sounded interesting. The main railway line south to Malaga runs
through the gorge over 6 bridges and 12 tunnels. 
A path called the Camino
del Rey runs into the gorge. The Lonely Planet said the catwalks
clinging to the side of the gorge were in extreme disrepair but
we went anyway. They were closed to walkers and looked extremely
dangerous but it was a beautiful stopover. We stayed in a simple
room on the second floor of the station and walked around the
area. The next day we drove 6 km to the top of hills overlooking
the gorge where to our surprise we saw a huge reservoir, which
supplies water to a hydro project below. A bonus was sighting
more Griffon Vultures as they left their nests in the cliffs
below where we were standing.
We stopped in the Alpuharras, a mountain range adjacent to the Sierra Nevadas, twice. After one short walk the first time, we decided to return towards the end of our trip. This time we stayed in one of the Pueblos Blancos, Pampaneira, and hike again. We just did a two-hour walk to another village and back but we met an American couple who had five days to hike from village to village, taking a bus for their return - an idea for another trip.
On our return to the coast we stayed in Nerja. It
is a popular resort for British tourists, but is not as crowded
as the Costa del Sol. Our Dutch hosts at Hostal Lorca have
several writeups of walks in the area. We took two of their
suggestions. 
We walked up to pretty Frigiliana, a
small town noted for its colourful wall tiles depicting the 1569
bloody defeat of the Moriscos, converts to Christianity, by the
Christian rulers. We had lunch in a small restaurant where I
recognized a Japanese man who was staying at our hostal. He was
flabbergasted to find out that a local resident who was in the
restaurant at the same time had paid for his lunch. The only
reason we could come up with is it was the local man was
impressed by the fact the Japanese man spoke such good Spanish.
Our friend is an English teacher on sabbatical from a Tokyo
college who likes languages. He had just spent a month in Germany
learning German and another month in El Puerto improving his
Spanish. Sometimes people are just nice.
But all trips must come to an end. We drove back to Torremolinos for our last night. It is very British, with a long, sandy beach, but an imposing cliff separates it from main town. Its main advantage for us is the proximity to the airport. This is important when you have a 7 AM flight home.
We arrived home the evening of November 30, 2004, just in time for winter to set in the next morning. It was quite a contrast to autumn in Andalucia. We now understand why so many Europeans and North Americans stay in Spain to escape the winter.
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