The waterfront where we are staying at Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Cancun on December 17th!

Sunday, January 1, 2023

We were not successful

Happy New Year to you all!

Friday night had been spent in the big parking lot at Guadix. Not a bad night, considering it's just a big parking lot. Maybe a dozen other vans spread around. Not very scenic, but we were only there for the convenience of visiting Guadix. 

But I had seen a sign that said there is a Saturday market in the parking lot.

And sure enough, just before 7:00am we started hearing the noise from people setting up their stalls for the market.

Good thing we parked where we did because by 10:00am there wasn't much room left!

It was a huge market... mostly clothing and footwear.

Ruth, doing some shopping.

She managed to find a lightweight top that she liked for our Mauritania trip. It's going to be hot there during the day. Total cost, one euro!

From there, we headed to the nearby town of Purullena. This is where the people we asked in Guadix had said that we might find the location of the photo we were trying to recreate from my dad's visit to this area in 1954.

But we were not successful. We wandered all around the town but just couldn't get the right angle that showed the same ridge of landscape. Here is the 1954 photo we were trying to recreate...

The writing on the slide had said "Houses built on the hillside near Guadix east of Granada, Spain."

Maybe if we could have found the lady in the photo she could have pointed us in the right direction!

Scenery around Purullena.

In the town of Purullena.

We could find lots of cave houses... but none that matched up with the hills.

We hadn't had the best overnight spots the past two nights, so we figured for New Years Eve we wanted to be somewhere on our own with a little more scenery. So we drove north about 25 kms (15 miles) to a recreation area near the village of Huélago.

Scenery along the way.

This could almost be the Canadian prairies.

But then we went down into this little valley.

Not a bad spot for New Years Eve!
GPS 37.421602, -3.272922

We went for a walk along this gravel road, but there was nowhere better to park.

We figured we wouldn't have a normal dinner, and decided on a variety of snacks for New Years Eve. 

Veggies and dip.

Cheese and sausage and appetizers.

Crackers and pate.

Oh, and we played our final games of the season of backgammon, cribbage, and yahtzee. It was the closest yet in cribbage and yahtzee, but I ran away once again with backgammon.

Here are the final scores...

Backgammon:
Kevin 479
Ruth 391

Cribbage: 
Ruth 40
Kevin 38

Yahtzee:
Kevin 247
Ruth 246

It came right down to the wire for Yahtzee. In fact, on December 30th, Ruth had been ahead 246 to 245, but there were still two games to play on the 31st, and I won them both.

We watched a movie last night, and were in bed by 11:00pm.


Last sunset of 2022.

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And in Canada...

NordicTrack Treadmills at Amazon.ca

2 comments:

  1. I love the look of your "tapas" dinner (fitting for Spain). Yum! And what a lovely, secluded spot to park. Better luck in 2023 in the Yahtzee competition, Ruth. Both my husband and my college football teams lost their bowl games by one point in just the past couple days, so I feel your pain! ;-)

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    Replies
    1. We enjoyed our tapas type dinner too, we were full and had leftovers to put away for the next evening too! Our boondocking spot was perfect, nice and quiet, we couldn't have asked for a much better spot to spend New Year's Eve.

      Sorry that you college teams lost their games but as I said to Kevin, there is always next year, lol!

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