Road Trip Day 2

The day started with me on the phone to Bupa Australia once again, you cannot believe how hard it is to try and make the send a simple insurance transfer form. I finally resorted to facebook and gave them both barrels, then they responded, but refused to ring me even though we were told a couple of weeks ago that they can call anywhere in the world no problem! Its OK for me to call them from Spain, but not OK for a multi million dollar business to call me from Australia.

I wont bore you with all the details but I will say that BUPA Australia would have to be the worst company I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I now have BUPA Spain on their case and they assure me that they will get it sorted.....I wait with baited breath!

Next it was to see a young para legal in Vera who is sorting out my NIE for me. I had  totally incompetent girl doing it, but she has been attempting to do it since December, the new girl sorted it within 10 minutes!! The NIE is an identity card for foreigners wanting to buy property, cars etc in Spain, I have a motorbike which I want to put into my name but without an NIE it cannot be done.

Whilst in VERA we ended up down some very narrow streets I had to do lots of shunting to get around some of the corners and parked cars, we ended up driving the wrong way down a one way street as I could not get out! I will put the video on from the dash cam later, it was such fun.....not.    

Phew.....then it was time to carry on with the road trip, we didn't go too  far, driving for about an hour until we came to the tiny village of  Agua Amarga.

A really lovely little village.

We moored up right on the beach. 

I went for a walk with the dogs then sat in the sun drinking beer and reading a book. 

Elaine was tired so crashed out in her nest in the motorhome for a few hours.

Only problem was that there was no internet signal, which I needed to do battle with BUPA Australia the following morning.

I said to Elaine we will have to move to a more populated area where there is a signal, as we were getting ready to leave the old bill pulled up and said No Camping, good job we were moving then. Its the first time we have been moved on anywhere in Europe so no big deal.

We drove for an hour down the coast to Almeria where we spotted a gaggle of motorhomes moored up.

Its not a brilliant spot but will do for the night.

Road Trip Day One

Elaine rang the hospital this morning and told them she was in agony with a swollen belly so they told her to come in at midday and they would once again drain the ascites fluid..

We  had the van half packed , so we took off to the hospital in the van with all the dogs as we didn't have enough time to arrange dog sitters.  

I sat in the van with the dogs and on the internet trying to sort out our Spanish NIE and also trying to get medical insurance. We have a glimmer of hope that we may be able to transfer our Australian medical insurance to a Spanish health provider as they are both under the BUPA umbrella, unfortunately the Australian end is playing hardball and making it very difficult, mind you after putting a post on their Australian facebook page things are starting to happen. If it comes off it could mean that Elaine could be covered for any future medical expenses, it could literally save us thousands, but we are not there yet.

By 14.30 Elaine had been drained along with her wallet, we drove the 90ks back to the villa and carried on packing.

By the time we had finished it was past 17.30, but we headed off for a 20 minute drive up the coast and have moored up a a clothing optional beach!

The average age of the nudista is about 70 so it would be a lot kinder to out eyesight if they took the option of wearing clothes!

It is a nice spot though.

We have German, Norwegian, Spanish and Polish neighbours. 

Tomorrow we will head of along the coast with no destination in mind.

Mojacar Is A Changing

Mojacar is changing in a few ways.  The 'snowbirds' have all moved back to Northern Europe or Canada etc, - the last one of our winter friends returned to the UK last week.  

It's a really good option to head back to the UK for summer.   I read a lot of the narrowboat blogs and looking at the pics makes us quite envious!  There really is nothing on this earth to beat England's green and pleasant land in the summertime, especially viewing it from a narrowboat ...

The snowbirds have now been replaced by the holiday makers, who are quite a different breed from the long term winter stayers.  They are here for a short time so they spend big eating and drinking out every night.  The holiday makers are welcomed by the local businesses as this is the time that they start to rake in the cash.

It hits the peak in July and August and, according to the locals, it gets absolutely packed down here; consequently we will also head north to escape the herds of tourists and the oppressive heat. 

As you can see from the below pics it's still far from packed at the moment.  The top pic was 09.00 this morning and the bottom one 18.00 this evening ...

The other thing changing is the weather - there are no more cool parts of the day or night.  It's not too hot by any means just a nice 23-28 during the day and 14-18 at night.  It will be t-shirts and shorts now all the way through to November.

Our next guest arrives from the UK in a couple of weeks so tomorrow we are taking off in the van for a few days. We are going to head along the coast towards Gibraltar.

Unfortunately, our first stop will be the hospital at Almeria as Elaine is in agony with her belly swelling again through ascites.  They will check her out and drain off the fluid if required.  Once it is done it's instant relief for her so we will carry on with the road trip.  

Our trip will be a good test for the van to see if the gearbox oil leak is fixed.  I'm pretty sure it is but it will be nice to do a few miles and make sure its 100% before we head off back to the UK in July.  

We have also made a decision that June is going to be a guest-free month!!  It's lovely to see people but Elaine really does need to rest and, because she is who she is, doesn't like to 'lay around' when we have visitors.  It's a shame but needs must etc!

Wedding Anniversary Followed By Betty Swollocks!!!

 Yesterday, (14th May) we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. 

Nine years ago we were living in Sydney but both our families lived in England.  Neither of us wanted a big, fussy wedding - what we wanted was a small service followed by a nice long honeymoon. 

We decided to get married as close as we could to halfway between England and Australia.

The result was ... Las Vegas.

We sent out invites out but knew that it was going to be too hard for most people, so we ended up with two guests from Macclesfield, Jane and Andy ... which to us was just perfect.

We stayed at the Bellagio on the strip ...

We got married at the Little Church of the West which was a lovely little church ...

The bridal party - Andy, me, Elaine and Jane ...

It was such a fun day and so easy and stress free ...

We went back to our room for the cutting of the cake ...

 We finished off the day in the best Bellagio restaurant overlooking the fountains ..

After Vegas we went to New York ....

We are looking a little scruffy here as the American Airlines lost our baggage
on our way from Las Vegas to New York ... so we were down to only a few clothes for 3 days!

Then we had a tour of the UK, including Cornwall ....

Mind you we still look scruffy here - even with our baggage found !

Then we had a week's holiday aboard a narrowboat, which of course sowed the seed for later adventures on a boat ...

London had to be on the honeymoon list ...

Six weeks later we headed back to Australia via Bangkok where we spent a few days in a superb hotel overlooking the river ...

And that was that!  A lovely wedding followed by an amazing honeymoon.

Nine years later and I am still having adventures with the most fantastic, lovely and bravest  person on the planet.  Even though now Elaine is going through hell she has never moaned or played the 'poor me' card.

Here is to the next nine years xxxxx

So where do you go to celebrate your wedding anniversary????

Down to the local to watch the amazing 'Betty Swollocks' who in reality is the barman at the Emerald Isle!

His alter ego Betty Swollocks is a world renowned drag act who used to perform in Soho.  He/she has been a resident of Mojacar for the last fourteen years.

A fun night was had by all, we finally hit the sack at 02.30!

Favourite Spanish Stuff.....

Firstly paella, lots of restaurants serve paella, but finding a good one is a bit more difficult.

The best ones locally are made in one of our local restaurants El Sitio.

We went there on Wednesday night, the Paella was once again superb ...

Not much left ...

Another one of our  favourite Spanish things is La Carolina Beach.

We went there yesterday in the motorhome.  It is a one hour drive up the coast. 

It is a lovely spot and is frequented by motorhomes from all over Europe ...

The girls stayed by the motorhome soaking up the sun whilst I went walking up and down the surrounding hills with the dogs, well two of them.  I cant handle all four at once, especially walking along unfenced cliffs!

It was a tricky hike to the top but as an extremely fit athlete I took it in my stride!

Our motorhome is the little dot in the middle.

I downloaded a short video from the dash cam, which shows the road along the coast back to Mojacar.  There are some fantastic roads for motorbikes with so little traffic. 

The quality isn't great.  I'm a bit of a Luddite with this video malarkey!  It's crystal clear out of the camera, but by the time I put it on the blog the quality is crap ...

Julie heads off back to the UK tomorrow.  It's been a pleasure having her with us, and a great help around the house ... and the little doggies love her. 

See ya in Bath in July, Julie xxxxx

Bits And Pieces ...

My new Crocs finally arrived, or should I say I had to go and pick them up from the cargo depot.   The driver claimed we weren't at home twice.....we were, he was just a lazy bugger that could be bothered to drive up the hill!

These are probably my tenth pair of Crocs.  I love them, including their good looks!

This motorhome passes through Mojacar quite frequently ...

It's an ex military missile carrier, he is a bit of an eccentric and travels on his own ...

We have another visitor at the moment ... Julie lived and worked with Elaine during the eighties in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, and they have kept in contact ever since ...

The weather has been pretty grotty for the last few days with a fair bit of rain.  It even felt cold!  We often check the weather back in the UK ... it was 14 degrees here the other day and 24 in Macclesfield!!!  Thankfully the crap weather only lasted a few days we are now back to the normal warm sunshine!  

We took a little trip up to Mojacar Pueblo this morning (the old village) and had a few tapas while we were in the area.  Here are the girls and the doggies posing at the top ...

We spotted this today.  I think it's the new Jag 4wd, but stand to be corrected!  Nearly all the European car manufactures test their cars in this area, the main reason being a huge variation of roads, great weather and most importantly the roads are virtually deserted ...

Re Elaine, we went to see the Oncologist on Monday.  Unfortunately the news wasn't good this time ... the chemo El was taking isn't working any more, which was very upsetting but, as per usual, Elaine took it in her stride.  He did give her an injection of an anabolic steroid to try and perk her up a bit.  Thankfully it has worked and the last couple of days she has felt a bit better.  He also started on her on a course of a hormonal therapy drug, to try something different for her.

Good news to hear that NB No Problem has been sold, apparently the buyers were drawn to the boat by reading one of the boating blogs, good eh!

Tonight we are off to sample a local paella with Julie - yum !

The Road To The Beach

I have bought a dash cam for the little car, the main reason being to have some good evidence if we have the misfortune to have a prang with a Spanish car. The driving is not quite as bad as the Aussie standard however if you do have a prang, being a foreigner, it's always going to be your fault!

A friend of ours had a prang with a Spanish driver a few months ago.  The Spanish driver lost control and crossed to the wrong side of the road and crashed into their car.  She admitted liability in writing but they are still having problems trying to get the Spanish insurance to cough up.

Hopefully with a camera it will make it more cut and dried should it happen to us.

We will also put the camera in the motorhome when we are using that.

I shot a little test clip which shows the road from the villa down to the beach.  You can see why we needed the little car, it's a bit tight on some of the bends, plus it doesn't really show you how steep the road is ...