30 Even More La Manga

Tuesday 9^th Nov
We went off exploring again, only locally to a little place called Los Nietos, it looks like a pretty little fishing village, but most places were closed.  We had a stroll along the beach and saw some of these monsters which reminded me of a boil on the bum.

No matter how old we get, we never grow up...

Ghost town ....Ghost beach

We had a wander around the village, and having had a bar recommended to us, but this was also closed, however we did managed to find a tiny little Spanish bar that was open, and for a change, there were no other English people there and they only spoke Spanish, it was really seedy and full of smoke, but we really liked it. 

The only place on town that was open

We headed from there back to Los Balones and had lunch, in another predominantly Spanish restaurant, plenty of Tapas.

I am not sure if we mentioned it before, bet we were having problems with visiting cats squaring up with Leon. He was able to hold his own, but the poor little sod is getting on now and there is only 95% of him left so we thought we had better help out. Now, we still like (other) cats and would not want to harm them so water is the only answer left. We had previously bought a Rambo style pump action water pistol. Since we bought it we have not realy had any problems with them despite not using it. However, it was not for the want of trying....

Karen practicing her SAS techniques

Oooops - nearly blew that one - duck NOW !

 

Wednesday 10^th

It was a relatively quiet day, we were saving ourselves for the evening when we were going out for a meal with Dick, across the way and another couple, called Jacky and John, (Jacky was originally from Dumfries and used to live in Lovers Lane when she was little), and another female called Fran, who was recently widowed.  The restaurant is called the Casa Rufino, again in Los Balones. The speciality was a fabulous lamb dish, where the meat is slow cooked on the bone and when it arrived it was served with these great herby roast potatoes.  This was our first meeting with the others and we had a thoroughly good evening.  We all laughed a lot and finished the evening off with a couple of glasses of wine in Dick’s motor home.

Thursday and Friday during the day were quite quiet again, although on Thursday Ray and I went to Cartegina again and we found a fabulous shopping centre, so I’ll be going back there for a spot of retail therapy soon. Friday morning, Ray and I went to the gym. I know I shouldn’t swear on the blog. We followed that up with a swim in the indoor pool.  There were two German women in there already and then another female, possibly Dutch joined in. You are probably wondering where this is going, but stick with me, the Dutch lady got into the pool and swam her first few lengths in breast stroke.  Then she turned into an exocet missile.  She started doing back stroke and all of us had to dive for cover.  She actually had boobs of a mammoth proportion, and once she was on her back, these things took on a mission of their own.  I admire the old girl for actually getting into the pool and looking after herself, but when the rest of us are put in danger… She was trying to throw her arms back as you do with back stroke, unfortunately her limited movement from her arms meant that her arms went out to the side and slapped the water, the side of the pool or the nearest person to her, until we learned to get out of her way.  This in intself was quite difficult, because she would start at one side of the pool and crabbed to the other, taking no prisoners.  It was quite amusing and she did manage to clear the pool, so maybe she got it right after all.  She must have realised that we were all laughing whilst trying to make our escape.

Friday night we all got together again and went for a Chinese meal in St Javier.  Fran was returning to Britain on Saturday, and is not sure when she will be back, so we had round 2. It is a buffet meal, and you can have all you want and lots that you don’t, and they will also cook your own concoction in a wok infront of you, it was all very lovely.  It is very useful having all these really good restaurants to go to and people who know where they are, otherwise it might have ended up very hit and miss.  Finished the evening, with wine at Dick’s again. Poor Dick hasn’t had to do so much washing up for a long time.

Sat 13th Nov

After thew previous lazy couple of days we decided to take Wallace out for another expedition.

We teamed up with a couple on the side that have a new Yamaha XT660Z, the same as the one we part exchanged for Wallace.

The couple, Chris and B (we still do not know her full/real name) are here on a semi permenant basis and spend 8 months on site and 4 months in the UK driving large motorhomes around for pop stars, racing drivers and people with lots of money and no ability to do it for themselves.

The Badlands

So, remind me, which end ids the front...

The smiles say it all

Short break before the mad bends of the national park

The team at the end of the road

Karen and Bea by the lake

Yeeehaaa

We went along a similar route to the one we did last week but took in a lot more of the good roads.

We drove to the mountain range and found a restaurant and had coffee. Chris was looking at a small side road and said "where do you think that goes". We had just driven past "The badlands" as mentioned in the last post and it was likely that this road went into them.

No contest, off we went and what a fantastic time we had on the undulating dirt roads. We were likes kids in a fun fair. We found a rain damaged dirt track and we were off. We rode around for about an hour. I will let the photos speak for themselves.

Sunday and Monday again have been quiet, Dick has connected us to his huge satelite dish and we can now get BBC, so Sunday was spent watching the grand prix and a bit of housework, unfortunately reality is never that far away.  For some reason, it still takes me as long to do the housework in my little motor home as it did when we had a four bedroom house, I really don’t know how I had the time to go to work aswell!

The weather, although sunny, has been a bit windy, okay a lot windy, and pretty cold, we have had to put jumpers on, Ray has been complaining that it is freezing, goodness knows what he’ll be like when we come back to Britain. (It is actually 18 or 19 degrees compared to your minus temperatures). We have been keeping an eye on the weather over there, and it does look horrible.