Rosie and the Operator are checking out the Pueblo Blanco (white town) of Zuheros en route to Granada. Its only a small detour and we are winding our way up into the hills to get to there.
Rosie thought it only rained on the plain here in Spain…well, it’s raining in the hills here too, and going to be one of the wettest weekends ever in this area where there is hardly ever a drop. Typical holiday luck for Rosie and The Operator, on the other hand we are assured by the locals it is just typical spring weather and it will soon pass.
The day is really closing in, so much so the mist is coming down just when Rosie wants a pic of the awesome view and rolling countryside full of olive trees that is opening up in front of her the higher we climb. A thin covering of snow actually sits on the hilltops surrounding this valley and the temperature today is only 6 degrees!
The roads themselves are narrow and worse for wear but the landscape is rolling and full of olive trees for as far as the eye can see, seriously, the trees have been continuous like this for the last 100km at least!
Here’s why. Spain is the worlds largest supplier of olive oil in the world, supplying about 40% of the worlds total. Andalusia, the area we are driving through now has the largest olive tree growing area on earth, with 4,500 square kilometers of trees….Rosie nods sagely reading this fact and looking out the window.
Breaking it down this equates to 40 million olive trees in this area of the world! During an average year these trees produce 900,000 tonnes of olives which is then turned into 200,000 tonnes of olive oil. Wowza! We have sampled a lot of olive oil here in Spain…it comes on everything you eat….and it is gooood!
The village of Zuheros looms out of the mist and we see its Moorish 9th Century castle sitting on its high hilltop perch surveying the valley for miles around.
Imagine it on a clear day! It was a shame we could not fully appreciate the majesty of this location, it had a killer lookout but the wind was blowing the rain horizontal and it was freezing cold at this point. Rosie nearly got blown off the bluff as it was trying to take these pics sheltered behind the car which didn’t really offer much cover.
Ten seconds after stopping, we were on the road again, thawing out, with the heater on full blast defrosting us and demisting the windows.
The lower into the valley we descended the more the weather cleared up, when suddenly there was a dinging from the dashboard of the car and a light came on telling us…. we had a flat tyre?! Really, we were back on the motorway and cruising along nicely at 120kmh.
Does it feel like we have a flat tyre Rosie asked The Operator? Having never experienced one herself Rosie was sure it must just be a glitch with the car. Rosie had full faith that The Operator would ‘know’ if there was a problem. No it doesn’t he said, but in true ‘Operations,’ ‘check the alarm’ style and ‘never think the alarm is an instrument fault’ The Operator pulled into the nearest services to double check the warning.
The tyre wasn’t flat, it just needed a bit more air and the other three were duly inflated too….did you know that the recommended tyre pressures are printed on the inside door jam of the passenger door? Well I’ll be darned, Rosie learns something new every day…Rosie probably should then have taken note on how to pump up the car tyres and made for a really big learning curve day. But hey, thats what The Operators for. Lol.
Hang fire, we are nearly in Granada!
