Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Car Trouble

We rushed breakfast (fried eggs today - I see a pattern emerging) to be outside and waiting for the delivery of our car at 9 am.

The car didn't turn up.
We went to see the rep - she hadn't turned up either - despite the manager at the hotel she was based at insisting she'd arrive any minute, it turned out she'd been drafted in at the last minute to accompany a trip to Gibralter - we found this out by phoning the travel company's call-centre back in England - who also advised us to go to the Avis office nearby as the rep insisted she'd booked the car - Avis had never heard of us - not surprising when we looked at the brochure we'd been given - a completely different company.

It turned out the rep's boyfriend worked there and she was supplying customers to him against company policy of using Avis - funny thing was, this other company hadn't heard of us either.

So two hours wasted and by this time it was too late to set out on the 3.25 hour drive to Ronda.

Instead we took the local bus to the whitewashed village of Frigiliana up in the mountains.



Its speciality is a wine similar to the Malagan wine we'd had the other day but, rather than this, after walking around the village we had coffee/hot chocolate and cake/cream at a little place run by a multi-lingual dutch couple. Delicious.

Once back in Nerja we walked to the main beach, Burriana, and found a place for a very late lunch.



A couple of hours later and we were back in the main part of town trawling round car hire offices trying to get a car for tomorrow and Friday.

In the end we went for a local firm, Crown - no problems and we'll pick up the car tomorrow at 9, filling in the paper-work then.

After drinks by the pool we skipped the hotel dinner and, instead, went for a huge mexican meal and the now ubiquitous late night coffee....

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