Ruben writes: This week has been marvelous! We went to the biggest cave of my life so far and still probably the biggest for the rest of my life to come. We hiked into the Pileta Cave for over an hour and saw prehistoric paintings from the Palaeolithic period over 25000 years ago! One of the rooms of the cave that we went into was probably the same height of our house at home. The jaw-droping’ly huge cave was created when it was under water, with whirl pools creating the big spaces. The cave paintings were of animals such as the famous huge fish, horses, stick figures with bows, goats, and many calendars. We visited the Alhambra, a palace and fortress. The main thing I noticed about the Alhambra is that every thing was so incredibly ornate. Each door way was carved in a way that was meant for you to believe that you were looking up at heaven. The hallways were echoing with the sound of running water from all the many beautiful fountains. I practiced more of my photography with my iPod, and in the first half hour took over one hundred photos. In Ronda it was sensational because our neighbor was a huge Roman amphitheatre which was perched on top of a cliff it looked like it sat a lot of Roman and Spanish butts in its day. We headed south and explored funky Cadiz where we saw the well renowned and beautiful Flamenco dancer Sara Baras from high up in “nose bleed” seats. It was well worth the pain in the neck as the show was pretty incredible. We had to make a quick stop in the United Kingdom (Gib) to pick up a Moroccan guide book before making our way across the waters to Africa! In Morocco we stayed in a well kept hotel in Tangier for three hundred and fifty Dirhams (about thirty seven dollars). We explored the streets, Medina and Kasbah of Tangier with a guide who knew the city like the mole on the back if his hand. We saw loads of stray cats, drank cups of sweet mint tea and listened to traditional Moroccan music as we ate Tagine. We thanked our friendly guide as we set of for the big blue of Chefchaouen. Till next week Ruben
Mia Writes: We visited a cave near our house in Rhonda. Where there were bats cave drawings and small lakes. The cave was discovered in 1905 by José Bullón Lobato and his descendants look after it now. The Pileta cave is famous for its prehistoric drawings of many symbols. There are drawings of donkeys, goats, fish, seals, stick men with spears and some unknown symbols as well as many line calendars. For the black paint they used coal and animal fat and for brown paint they used red ocher or iron oxide mixed with animal fat.
We made our way to Cadiz where the highlight was seeing the flamenco dancer Sara Baras in a production called “La Pepa” celebrating the bicentennial which has become the symbol of the 1812 constitution. The show is about that spirit that marked the course of history in Spain. According to some Sara Baras is the best flamenco dancer in Spain and certainly the best we have ever seen apart from my grandmother. The costumes were brilliant and the dancers feet were on fire. We sat in the bleachers high up near ceiling and although we got kinks in our necks we had a great birds eye view of swirling skirts, swinging scarves and vibrating feet.
We left Cadiz and took a boat to Morocco where the African chapter of our journey will begin.
