Ronda is gorges

So I'm on the bus to Ronda this morning, twisting around the Sierra Nevadas, and on the side of this big hill is a car. With a tree through the roof. Like someone drove the car down the hill right into the tree and then just left it there. The tree was all the way up to the windshield, so it must have hit pretty hard. I'm choosing to believe it was done intentionally; it's the only way I can get a kick out of how comical it looked without being a horrible person.

The bus ride this morning was a little chaotic. Everything is a little chaotic in Spain. The online schedule showed buses leaving every hour or so, so I got to the bus station around 8:30 to catch the 9am bus. The guy at the ticket counter said the next bus was at 10. I asked if there wasn't a 9am bus, and he told me that maybe another bus company had one leaving at 9 and I should ask at the information booth. The guy at the information booth told me to go to ticket booth 14. So I went to booth 14 and there was a sign saying the booth was closed and to go to track 13. There was no one at track 13, but there was a bus from the same company at track 8. So I asked that bus driver if he was going to Ronda and he said yes, but not until 2:30 (was he gonna sit there for 5 hours?) and that the 9am bus would leave from track 11. And sure enough, at about 8:55 the 9am bus to Ronda pulled into track 11. So it all worked out, but with maximum confusion. Then on the way back, my bus was supposed to leave at 5pm from track 4. There was a bus at track 4 with a sign that said Málaga; so far, so good. I went to the bathroom and when I came back the Málaga sign was gone from the bus at track 4. 5pm came and went. Around 5:15 they put a Málaga sign on the bus at track 1. People started putting their stuff on the bus. A few minutes later a guy in a grease-stained jumpsuit who looked like he was still in the process of fixing the bus herded us over to a different bus across the street. I can think of no better explanation than that they try to make it confusing so people will have chaotic bus stories to tell.

Anyway, I ended up not liking Ronda as much as I thought I would--it's a lot more touristy than I wanted it to be. It has this huge gorge which is pretty amazing, but the other attractions (churches, museum, a former palace) felt a little forced. I was picturing an old deserted frontier town, just me and the gorge and some oxtail. I should have known better--the place is in the Lonely Planet, of course it's not gonna be deserted. I guess I've gotta get over the guidebook thing if I want to get away from other tourists. Still, the gorge was pretty cool. You can climb down to the bottom through this cave, complete with authentic puddles and water dripping on your head. Coming back up hurt. And there are some really nice gardens to feed my new obsession with photographing flowers. Bullfighting is big here (I guess some of the modern bullfighting techniques were developed here) but that's not really my thing. And I had oxtail. So in the end it was me and the gorge and the oxtail. And souvenir shops and films stores and tourists. Whatever. Oh, and I got this crazy map from a hostel here that had south at the top and north at the bottom. I was about ready to have myself committed before I figured it out.