CHAPTER 30: ROTA, SPAIN
Friday, December 3

We made it to Rota, Spain, which is in the southwest corner near Cadiz. This was a long trip. We left Aix en Provence after a two-hour delay for a flat tire. (A thousand thanks to the outstanding staff of our hotel. They went out of their way to help us get the tire changed, a process that should have been simple but wasn't. The French have a reputation for being standoffish, but these people were super). Crossing the south of France was really rather boring. The land was flat and uneventful. Right at the French-Spanish border, the Pyrenees mountains suddenly loom up, then the land flattens out again to the south. We drove down the east coast, found a motel for the night, then continued on our way. Once on the southern coast, we moved inland a few miles, running about one mountain range north of the coastline. Most of what we saw of Spain reminded us of the American southwest or Mexico. It had much of that dry, arid feeling. However, we saw miles and miles of olive and nut orchards. We finally arrived in Rota on Monday evening. We quickly settled in to our hotel and crashed hard. On Tuesday we recuperated from the trip and explored the town and military base a bit.

I found out that we won't be able to sell the Range Rover here in Spain because the Spanish bureaucracy is still definitely third world. It takes (at best) one week and mucho hundreds of dollars just to get the paperwork done so that we can put the car on the market in Spain. Ouch! And there's no way I could sell it to somebody on the base. However, all is not lost. Gibraltar is two hours away and is a British territory, and since the Range Rover is registered in Britain, it appeared that we might have a chance to dispose of the car fairly easily. I went down on Wednesday to check it out.

The trip down went along the coast, past Tenerife (the windsurfing capital of the world), over some mountains with rows and rows of windmills generating electricity (with good reason for being there: I've never seen such wind, not even in Washington!), and through Algeciras. Getting across the border into Gibraltar took a half hour because the Spanish police are deliberately as slow as possible. (It's all due to politics: they don't like the fact that the British have Gibraltar, so Spain makes it a royal pain to go across the border). Once through the gate, though, Gibraltar was an interesting place. The Rock itself is impressive: huge and steep. One side is nearly vertical, while the other side is steeply sloped. The town nestles on the sloped side. Everywhere are old fortifications dating back to the 1700's. There are lots of Mediterranean-style buildings, but with a veddy BRITish twist. Lots of people, too. It's very cosmopolitan: British, Spanish, Muslims, Jews, Italians, Scots, Yanks, you name it, they were there. Well, there was one notable exception: I didn't see any Japanese bus tour groups! Since this was a business trip, I kept sight-seeing to a minimum. I didn't actually sell the Range Rover, but made some progress, then went back to Rota.

I returned to the Rock today (Friday). I got two offers on the Range Rover, but was unable to sell it because I don't have the right registration papers. After buying the car in London, it took the British registration people six weeks to process the title, and Janis and I were long gone by then. I asked our friends in London to forward the title to another friend of mine here in Rota, but the people in London dilly-dallied around for a week before mailing it. As a result, no papers, no sale. However, we can't wait around for it to arrive, because we hear that mail can take forever. If it doesn't arrive in time, we'll leave the car here. I'll return in a month or so by myself and see about selling it then.

We've changed our travel plans again. We signed up for a possible Space-A flight from here to the States. Space-A is a method of travel available to both active duty and retired military people. There are often unused seats on military flights, and these are made available on a space available basis to anybody with a military ID card who wants to travel. It's very iffy and there are no guarantees. You sign up and should be ready to go at a moment's notice. We're willing to take the chance in order to save the cost of commercial travel tickets.

Now that we're on the last leg of our trip, we've really lost the urge to do any more sightseeing. Although we explored Rota a bit, we had no real interest in seeing anything. Even while walking along the beach (a completely deserted, beautiful, wide, sandy beach lined with hotels shuttered for the season), most of our discussion was on getting settled in our house, wherever it will be. We're both ready to head home. We just want to sleep on our own bed, slop around our own house, look at our own stuff, read our own newspaper, and leave our own dirty dishes in the sink. And we don't want to have to pack up all our suitcases every week or two and start all over again in a new place!

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