heading south.

Above: view from the back yard in Ronda. Below: driving to Zahara de los Atunes, stopping along the way for a pee at a place called Venta de las Acacias, where I had a tapa of lomo con Pedro Ximenez cream sauce for €1.50. It's a crazy place, apparently only closed for 3 hours per day (and here's what most people eat there, glad I didn't know about it).

Then we somehow narrowly missed a giant storm and finally made it to Zahara de los Atunes to find that well we were the only people there. They're pretty much closed from November to April. I didn't even think to look because our restaurant's Facebook page kept saying "Open now" when I'd look at it, and heck, we'd had quite a hard time getting a room.

Yes, that was because none of the hotels were open either. Well two were. Ours, and one where you could drink a beer and play some cards. But in a town of 100 restaurants, maybe 10 were open: two pizza places, five seafood-centric tapas bars, probably something else, and then the place that I braved a serious Death Mope to get to. Arrocería Zokarrá.

They were open, we were the only people there, they even asked us what kind of music we wanted to hear. The food was about the best we could possibly have done that night I think: that's a tomato magically filled with burrata over quinoa, and a really tasty rice with payoyo, roasted vegetables and fried artichokes. I accidentally ordered nasi goreng in a pineapple. But everything tasted great and the hosts couldn't have been nicer.