From Boar to Moor

The sound of tinny Spanish music is belting out from the juggler’s van next door, several dogs are barking, children are throwing fireworks on the ground and Hugo is about to turn himself inside out with terror. Other than that it’s lovely. We’re in Badajoz, an interesting city on the Portuguese border with a strong moorish history.

Senora del Dolores 

It’s a bit of a change for us as we’ve been in smallish towns and villages for the last two days. In Palma del Rio we also ‘enjoyed’ a plethora of firework fans but it made up for it with a church full of terribly sad Madonnas, a scary baby Jesus, a weird ‘priest with child’ in a glass box,  and, excitement upon excitement, an unexpected Black Madonna.

More sadness

Love a Black Madonna

Make of this what you will

Scary baby Jesus

Yesterday we entered Extremadura and spent the day and night outside a small town called Berlanga. We were excited to find two restaurants, a lake, and weirdly, a zoo. Hugo enjoyed meeting the wild boar in particular but was a bit confused by the ostrich.

Never seen an ostrich before

Lakeside view

Good greetings Miss Boar

We had lunch at one of the restaurants and to say they have not embraced the idea of ‘nouvelle cuisine’ would be an understatement. The photo below shows the vast extent of our starters. This was followed by calamari and a custard desert.

This is the starter

Tomorrow Portugal.

Fuente Found

The best decision we made today was to ignore the arrow suggesting we turn right for the Fuente de las Pilas and keep going straight ahead.

Ignore this arrow

Mr Fluffy pretty much skipped up the steep climb in a carefree manner as I struggled to keep up, panting and limping due to my dodgy knee. Eventually, at the top of the hill, our fuente was found, complete with a wasps nest and a fox poo for Hugo to roll in.

Tempted to throw him in to clean off the fox poo but I didn’t

Wasp nest cleverly hidden

Continues his carefree skipping

Needless to say Hugo had a shower on our return which is no easy task in the van but he now smells divine until the next time.

A couple of hours drive through, yes, even more olive groves, and we’ve arrived at Palma del Rio. The Aire is right next to a children’s playground that has a cafe with WiFi. Hoorah! We might be able to catch up on the Christmas Strictly Special tonight - Mr Fluffy will be so pleased.

Tomorrow we head closer to the Portuguese border.