Yes, they are here! The almond trees are blossoming everywhere in hues ranging from white to a sharp pink. It is absolutely beautiful and some of the hills here where I live are covered giving them a slightly furry look.

And here is a picture to show you the nice flowers. I took it while I was out walking the dogs (El Rubio was at home playing with his daddy) and again I am really impressed with the quality of photos that come out of my little phone. Go Nokia!

As you can see the weather is looking a bit dramatic, let me just get you another photo so you can see the countryside a bit better.

There you go! Nice isn’t it?

Just before the almonds trees blossom they look all boring and dead with their dark branches and hardly any leaves. And then this explosion starts. I don’t think I have seen this amount of flowers on any other tree, they are so closely bundled together you almost wonder how they manage.

I do prefer the view here more when it is not summer. First of all you get some great dramatic clouds like the ones in my photo. Completely changes the whole landscape. Secondly, in the summer when the sun is high in the sky it almost washes out all the colour and contours and makes everything look much more flat and just yellow and hot. Of course it is yellow (due to the dry grass) and it is very hot, but you definitely get the best photos in the early morning or in the evening when you might manage to get a bit more depth in your images.

Over and out, must go and pick up little one from nursery.

Unfortunately my blog has been down, so I have not been able to let you all know that it was my birthday in the weekend.But it was, and it was a really nice day, even though the weather has gone a bit cooler and it was a bit overcast.

We drove to Marbella and had a really nice lunch in the harbour, just me and my little family. And when I say the harbour, I don’t mean Puerto Banus. I think I would be silently grinding my teeth (or maybe not so silently?) during our meal just thinking of how large the bill was going to be, had we gone to Banus.

Anyway, I don’t think Banus and Nuevo Andalucia (located just behind Puerto Banus) has that much atmosphere, I much prefer some of my secret places down in Marbella. Those sorts of cafes and restaurants where you won’t find many tourists and you certainly won’t find steak, eggs and chips on the menu.

I wonder what it is like living in Puerto Banus? Would it feel like the real Spain (and what is the real Spain anyway? That’s a discussion for another day…) with all the rental apartments, villas and hotels everywhere? I really strike me as one of those places that triple in size in the summer and might be a bit empty the rest of the year.

This post wasn’t supposed to be about tourists and non-tourists in Spain and where they live, but about my birthday.

Suffice to say I had a really nice day. With El Rubio being so small and the fact we have a really good routine going at the moment, I find it so much easier to go for a nice lunch rather than go out for a meal in the evening.

Tired now, even though the little one slept through last night! Hurray. Let’s have some more of those.

Look what I found on youtube, a little film about Olive picking here in Spain.

On reading this post by Fat Sals Smoking Lounge

He he, that must have been quite an experience. Has it happened more than once? We get loads of cyclists on the roads here, but now you mention it I never do see anyone jog.

Hi Phil of My life in La Alpujarra

I have been following your blog on and off for the last year and just got back to Malaga area a few weeks ago after spending some time in Las ALpujarras. I love following your progress through your photos, so more before and after pictures please!

I have discovered that Magdalenas in Cadiar seems to have the best mature cheddar I have tasted in Spain, if you are not aware of it I would strongly recommend trying it out. I personally bought a kilo!! to take back with me to Malaga.

Here we are again. On hold on the phone trying to get through to Telefonica. Telefonica, the company we love to hate…

As the name suggests Telefonica has to do with telephones here in Spain. They used to have monopoly on offering phone lines, but some years ago they got privatised and other companies could move into the market.

Tele2 now offers line rentals in some areas, but of course they start in the larger and more populated areas and cities, so I will probably have to wait a few year more…I wouldn’t mind being able to move away from Telefonica straight away.

Some areas in the countryside/campo you cannot get a phone line. Telefonica used to be obliged to provide every house with a telephone connection if they so desired, so some places they had radio or satellite phones (not quite sure which) but this is no more. So you might be so unlucky that they don’t want to provide you with a phone now.

Anyway, it was all about being on hold. Which I have been. A lot.  And sometimes they put you through to this stupid automatic system which tells you you have tell them which department you want to go to. About 50% of the time it does not understand what I am trying to say and hangs up on me after 2 attempts! How bad is that? Doesn’t even put me through to someone, just hangs up on me.

So as soon as it is possible I will get a fixed line with someone else. I guess you can expect me to be whining about them when that happens.

Today I am going shopping! The sales start a bit later here in Spain, just after Reyes, and with us being in Las Alpujarras I just haven’t had a chance at all.

Usually they are quite good here in Spain. They have a big sale in January and a big one in August and if you need something fairly expensive there are some good deals to be made.

So we are going to La Cañada, the shopping centre in Marbella and just maybe moving on to another shopping centre in Fuengirola, but I think that might be a bit too much for our little man.

The great things is because he is still so small, it doesn’t really matter that we buy his birthday presents whilst he is there. I doubt we will be able to get away with that next year though.  The only bad thing about all these sales and the shopping is of course that everybody else will be out as well. It makes me so tired walking around a shopping centre absolutely full of people, but with all the rain we’ve got today, I doubt I have much choice. Maybe it will be a little quiet because it is Monday?

I shall keep you posted…

Here is our harvest. (Notice how I keep going for the “we” even though I didn’t do anything.)  21 big sacks of olives. The weigh so much that we had to load the car several times to drive down the bumpy  campo track  to the mill in the village.

From the village you can just see the snow covering Sierra Nevada, even though I doubt we will be going up there this winter to have fun in the snow. Not enough time  and the little one will enjoy it a bit more next year.

Look how stained ones hands get from picking olives! It is quite incredible how that ends up as golden. I wish I knew the whole process of making olive oil, but I don’t. I did have a tour of the local mill but that was some 6 years ago when my spanish wasn’t that good. And my memory has gone to shit anyway, so I don’t remember all the little olives have to go through to become olive oil.

The sacks weighed in at 631 kilos which will translate to approx 120 litres of olive oil. I think there might be a lot of cooking to be had over the next few months. And a lot of pressies!

Luckily I have not had the experience of olive oil going all over my luggage when I transport it home, but now I can’t have it in my hand luggage due to the new restrictions, I could be in for a nasty surprise one day…

So we did end up picking olives anyway. Or to rephrase that, El Hombre ended up picking them.I have been involved in picking them before and quite enjoy doing it (maybe for the first day or so, but then…) but with the arrival of El Rubio there was little I could do. Olives stain like crazy anyway, and I can just imagine him crawling around on the nets covering the ground, squashing olives and getting absolutely covered in the red colour.

And then he would probably try to eat it. Yummy, you might think. I love the taste of olives. Well so do I, but never ever bite in a fresh olive as they are nothing like the olives you know and love. The are the most bitter thing you can imagine, and I have several times stopped people (tourists) in the nick of time (or not quite in the nick of time, unlucky for them) from showing fresh olives straight into their gobs.

Our olives are not going to be eaten but going to the local mill so we can have some liquid gold, Olive oil!
Since we don’t have enough olives to make a proper business out of it, we just take them to the mill and get some oil in return. The miller will keep some of the oil as payment and will probably sell it on. We will be collecting all the olives together soon, so you can see how many we’ve got!

Yesterday the “Reyes Magos” the three kings arrived here in Spain. They replace the tradition of Santa Claus even though I am quite sure that most children get presents twice rather than having to make the choice. In the bigger cities it is a massive event. A big parade takes place and kids line the whole route waiting for Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar. When they arrive they are throwing sweets and toys to the eagerly awaiting children, dressed up in all their garb. Quite impressive in the larger cities with floats, thousands of kids and parents.

Today is “Día de los Reyes” the day of the three kings where the children open the presents in the morning that the kings might have left for them. It really is very Santa Claus like, and I wonder what kids believe in here in Spain. Both? One of them? I must ask some of my Spanish friends how it all works.

In our village I saw last year how it was just a little dumper truck driving around the streets with the 3 kings on it throwing boiled sweets. A rather more simple and demure affair than the Malaga one and I really don’t think any of the kids where left breathless by the whole experience.

And check out this picture I found. Looks like a Lego version of the three kings with their respective presents. I wonder if Lego also does the whole nativity scene?

We are on holiday in Las Alpujarras in the Granada region.  The plan was to see some family who are down here for a while, and when we realised that the nursery is closed until the 8th of January anyway, this was a good time to go.

Since it has been pissing down more or less since we arrived, activities have been restricted. But I don’t really mind as it means that we have been spending a lot of time cooking and, more importantly, eating. Kind of like a continued Christmas which is fine as we didn’t overeat that much in December.

We were hoping to pick some olives, but we have had conflicting information on whether they are ready or not. There doesn’t seem to be much point if they are not coming off the threes easily, as you will spend so much energy beating the poor threes over and over again to make the olives come off. Yes, that’s how you do it. Beat the threes with stick and then collect them as well as hand picking some of them. First though you cover the ground with netting which you can easily gather together, getting all the olives on the ground and then gathering up the net once you are done.

I’m guessing we have to come back later in the year when the olives are more mature.