And then, so you are some kind of connoisseurs,” he says this while waving his hand in the air, as if he were in a book club. I say no, not at all. We are just hungry travelers, on a carefree mission in the sun. “If you’re traveling on a budget,” I say, “forget restaurants, just go to the market, buy a bread, an apple or pear, and a hard cheese.” I tell him how this combination can make a fine travel companion.
Jane and I leave the next morning, ascending the coastal Bermeja mountains, until our lawnmower-car is putting along a road between wind-sharpened rocks, lichen and foggy meadows. When we descend toward the city of Ronda, we are in the heart of Andalucía.
Much of Andalucía is the sun-baked watershed of the Rio Guadalquivar Basin, the same river that Columbus and Magellan sailed from. It would appear in the dry-season a moonscape, although brighter, almost yellow. The rolling empty is punctuated by old farming estates, many of which are buildings of incredible beauty. Some have viewing towers, and even others are outlined in tiles or mosaics in the colors of ochre, blue and brick red.
The interior of Andalucía is solely responsible for all the fantastical images we have of Spain, and in spite of this, much of the small roads of this interior are almost unknown to the outside world. The Spaghetti Westerns were filmed here, because this desert-like landscape resembles our imagination of New Mexico and Arizona two hundred years ago. And the prickly-pear cactuses help that image. They were brought back on Columbus’ ships, and felt at home.
We read from our imaginary book about traveling in pursuit of artisanal cheese. Montclair, our make-believe expert on all matters of cheese travel, was adamant about the value of history to appreciating cheese. He mentioned Ronda as ‘one of the last beacons of the Muslim world in Europe.’
Jane and I are crossing through the western Andalucian interior the slow way, taking our time and avoiding the larger cities. Our rented car is shorter than a mini, nearly as ugly as a Citron, and sounds like a vacuum cleaner at high speeds.
Ronda is a city on a limestone bulwark. A castle of steep rock. In the middle ages, as the Christians advanced on the Moorish land, Ronda was almost the last to fall.
“Without this age of Moors being pushed back by Christians, we would not have the finest cheeses of Southern Spain,” Montclair writes.
“Arabs and Berbers conquered and settled in the South of what we call Spain, bringing with them their sheep and goats, their Middle-Eastern knowledge of olive groves and agriculture, adding to a tradition of farming already enhanced by the Romans long before.”
“The Arabs created a caliphate in Cordoba, to the east of here, and ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula for seven-hundred year. Until the first millenium, this Muslim-Arab world prospered, provided tolerance to the Jews and Christians who remained, and built a kingdom ripe with art, philosophy, poetry and exquisite architecture.”
Overnighting on a chain of small towns, we eventually make our way to the isolated Sierra de Aracena. All these roads, and Jane seems to humor herself by giving commentary on the world outside. Of two pigs copulating, she mumbles ‘pig porno’, of sheep grazing, ‘dirty!’ and of a goat with a long beard, ‘Gandalf’
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