Here we are on 25 March already and I have not bothered to write another entry in this blog since early February. Why you ask? Well, the weather had been quite depressing for a few weeks actually and I just did not feel up to writing anything.
There was so much rain from mid-December through to early March. In fact, it is raining again today but not like in January and February. Mother nature was just un-relenting with pounding rain, day in and day out. Of course there were a few dry days but it did not leave a lasting impression because the rain came back in full force again. We even had a hurricane pass though here in mid-February which did some damage in northern Spain and killed some people in France. I went out to see the clouds passing from the hurricane and it was obvious that they were indeed hurricane clouds, one could see the pattern that a hurricane has in the could structure. Plus it was noticeably warmer that afternoon, very comfortable actually.
The rain has left quite a lot of damage around the provinces of Andalusia. Collapsed roads, mud and rock slides, water logged houses and stores, damp rising in most houses, leaks as well. The hotel did not escape intact either. One room was full of mold where the damp was creeping along the rafters of the ceiling and the wall. We found a fantastic product to clean it up without having to paint which worked wonderfully well. A lot of the spray and the black of the damp mould disappeared in minutes.
I have been on hand and knees scrubbing the tiles of the bar terrace which have turned black and green from the algae and dirt accumulating there; the dirt tends to become pasty and stick to the tile and scrubbing it off is the only way to bring it back to looking clean and welcoming. I did half the terrace main entrance to the hotel yesterday but with the wet weather today, I will have to wait until tomorrow to get the remainder completed.
Ivan was painting in the bar yesterday to bring that area back to a comforting warm room. The bar had lots of water damage on the outer wall where there are a couple of leaks. With the amount of rain that came down, we had a puddle in the bar at one point or another and pots of agua. But it looks quite nice once again with a roaring fire in the stove today.
Business also suffered from the weather; it was actually quite a bad combination of things in January and February which would be discouraging to anyone. Jan and Feb are a slow time of the year in any case but add on top of that bad weather and bad economic times and you basically should just close the doors for the month, it would have been cheaper and I could have had a holiday on an island somewhere, had I the extra cash to spend. But I stayed here and weathered the bad times; Ivan was a way for a couple of weeks. I was here with the new puppy who is quite cute actually.
Yes, Bandit had another litter of mixed pups in mid February but only one survived and he has turned into quite the little cute puppy indeed. Not sure what we will do with him but Ivan wants to keep him... that remains to be seen.
The cherry trees had their blooms out recently but their red leaves are now sprouting and the flowers waining. The almonds had a late bloom this year as well but went quite quickly with all the rain we had. I am expecting quite a few wild flowers this years as they certainly had a nice amount of water to get them on their way this year.
The hotel is just about full for Holy Week and Easter weekend. I think a lot of people are anxious to get out and about this year after spending weeks in home waiting for the bad weather to pass. so that's it for now.
We are having a Scottish Ceilidh on Saturday evening, 01 May so if you are in the area or if you know someone in the area, please tell them to drop in, it should be a lot of fun.
