June 20: Andalucia - Mijas & Ronda

I'm sitting in the small hilltop village of Mijas at the end of day. The flat white walls of small Andalucian homes are punctured with small, black squares of hiding windows. The air is pure up here in the hills, almost scented with a sweetness of pine trees, jasmine and orange blossom. The bells of passing donkeys chime. Swooping swallows play together as they fly, creating unseen messages in the evening sky. People walk slow here and many congregate outside the small Farmacia to talk to the owner. There is always much to watch in a village square. It is here that I catch my first glimpse of an Andalucian woman - rumoured to be the most beautiful, daring and passionate on all the continent. Close your eyes and imagine what I can see; long black hair running in curling waves down her back, gold hooped earrings catching the last of the sunshine, a long flowing white skirt follows her every move. Her skin is dark brown, and her arms swing free in a white embroided vest. This is the stuff of hypnosis that eyes were made for.

Andalucia is a hotbed of insatiable beauty far, far from the beaten track, almost lost in a trance that time forgot. The spells that have been cast over this land linger still. This land seduces and continues to captivate. Time collapses. Up and up in between towering mountains secret Shangri-La's exist. The colours and light are clear. Flat hills sprawl on forever in colours of straw and terracota, some quarters burn to a cinder beneath the ferocity of the sun, others shine the colour of saffron. Oceans of sunflowers grow here in carpets of green and gold. This ancient land of al-Andalus is full of ghosts that continue to call; it is a thin place - one of those holy lands where the veil between this world and the next is thin, allowing a connection to truth with very little effort.



High in the valleys beyond the Sierra de las Nieves lies the village of Ronda. The New Bridge of Ronda, el Puente Nuevo, was built in 1740, at the second attempt. It is one of the great landmarks of Andalucia, sitting at almost 93metres above a sinister gorge. It's of a particular personal interest to me because of a persistant recurring dream I'd been having for the past two years. In my dream I am asked to come to this bridge. Once there I am always made aware that there are rooms inside this bridge which I must enter. True to form, there are rooms inside this gigantic monument, accessable via some steep steps down one side of a cliff face. Inside the Puente Nuevo, high above the gorge, there are windows that look out over the land of Andalucia. And written on one of the walls is this message in English; "A bridge takes us somewhere which is always on the other side. However, only some bridges can take us beyond their structure and pillars, where writers and dreamers and creators roam, where images of dreams and imagination are built. The New Bridge is this place."



I am out on my balcony under the night sky. The sky is black. Black black. The real thing. The black that was there to begin with before night became day. So black that it allows all the stars to shine. They are all so clear and bright. Some more so than others. One is bigger than all the rest. Must be Venus. It sits just below the bright crescent moon. The sky is charged with electricity. Shooting stars can't be far away. If you look a little closer into the darkness you can just see the outline of the Sierre de las Nieves. At the peak of this mountain range, tiny villages cluster in singluar pale lights. A glass bottle rolls below my balcony and my attention is switched to listening. Crickets sing so loud in this sweet, perfumed air and a single voice of a bird squawks danger though the silent groves of sleeping trees.