Self catering holiday rental accommodation in the Alpujarras, Andalucia, southern Spain

This is my page, and that's me, sniffing the air. As pedigree dachshund in chief, and officially awarded a prize as best puppy in my class - see link here - my job is quality control and looking after the welfare of the guests staying at Cortijo Opazo. Big responsibility, don't know how I find time for it all, but I think I'm doing OK. Anyway, on this page I bring you up to date with the various happenings at Cortijo Opazo and the world around us. I welcome comments, just adress them to Oska at info@cortijoopazo.com. Thanks for reading!

By the way, I am supposed to mention that it's a pretty fab place for a holiday.

Saturday April 30th

More on the dangerous art of walking.

Walking, a good healthy activity, or so I was told, but it seems to me it can be a pretty dangerous activity too. Readers of my last blog entry will remember the enthusiasm with which this puppy recounted his adventures whilst out walking, but now I can report that whilst strolling through the most beautiful scenery imaginable, full of the most exotic smells, one has to keep ones wits about one. The danger lies not in crossing raging streams over rickety bridges, nor from the various eagles that fly over head, but it comes in the form of masked two wheeled riders who descend from above with no warning and threaten to bear down upon and break the bones of unsuspecting dogs and possibly humans too. After my first encounter last weekend with the aforementioned terrorists I raced into the undergrowth to take cover, and there I sat, trembling with this new fear for about half an hour, ignoring even the urgent calls of my human companions until I could be sure it was safe to come out. From now on, I'm on my guard and more than a little nervous about this walking business. I'm told that we have to share the footpath network with many users, including something called a 'mountain biker' - a person who needs the use of a mechanical device of two wheels in order to enjoy the beauty of the natural world here. There are not so many of them and I don't mind the notion of sharing things - Ella and I regularly share a bone or a chew toy - but this particular notion of share seems to mean that us walkers need to leap out of the way and let the cyclists pass at their own rapid speed. Another notion of sharing the footpaths might suggest that it is the bikers who should slow down when encountering walkers and pass in a controlled, possibly dismounted pedestrian manner, but it is not my place to start of feud between us all. Below, you can see a lovely picture of Ella and I, sharing the footpath:

Click here to see past blogs:

March 2011

Feb 2011

Jan 2011

Blog from 2010

I have to report that we have been 'enjoying' some more rain during this last week, and all four of us yesterday were housebound. Just as well for me since it gave me an opportunity to be inducted into a strange cult that exists far away in the land where my human companions were born. I speak of the cult of 'The Royal Event'. Apparently there is, in the United Kingdom, a Queen who rules over her people with a benign wave and a powdered smile. She is the head of the Royal family. She has a son, Prince Carlos I believe he is called, who 30 years ago married a beautiful princess called 'Of Wales', and together they had two strong sons, who are also called princes and seem to like dressing up in costumes. Though much water has raged under the bridge in the years that have passed, it is now the turn of the eldest son, Guillermo, to marry a princess himself, so they took a a beautiful girl from his place of study and dressed her in a long and magical dress, a dress so mysterious that nobody knew where it came from but everyone wanted to see, more than anything else. The long white dress, although not as fashionable as the designer number her sister wore, had special powers for when she put it on it turned her into the lovely Princess Cambridge from Middletown and it transformed her dad's big black car into a golden horse drawn carriage. The Prince and the Princess both met up in a large building, a building so big that it had trees growing inside it; a man who had a much nicer dress than anybody else and therefore must have been very important, said a few magical words that made all the people who were asleep start to sing about a place in the middle east in the country of Israel, then 'hey presto', they were married - that means they can't escape from each other unless the spell becomes broken, which I think is what happened to the Prince's parents. Everybody seemed happy and the streets of this big city were full of cheering people. Later they all walked, very slowly, along a long road with trees that had huge red white and blue leaves. They all stood outside a big grey building where the Prince and Princess had been locked up. After a short time the Prince and Princess were allowed to come out onto a shelf accompanied by the Queen and lots of other people wearing strange costumes. The crowd cheered and then Prince Guillermo leaned over and licked the face of Princess Catarina of Cambridge, just like I try to do to Ella, only it's not always her face I lick.

All very interesting and it certainly passed the time on a rainy day. I wonder if Ella is supposed to be my princess? Do I have to find a magical dress for her to put on?

Yours, in search of a seamstress,

Oska

Friday 22nd April

The adventures of being a puppy just keep on

Well, the most exciting thing I can tell you about, and I am really excited by it, is that I have at last been allowed to go on a long walk. Every morning we do a little trot around the local fields and into the gorge, but a real walk, lasting three hours or more, well, that was something else. Ella came too - well, this is her true domain, walking and general mountain exploring - and she showed me how you could run away from the humans for ages on end without them even noticing. And the smells, wow-eee! So rich, so complex, so much fun to roll around in. We walked from one of the highest little towns around here, Capileira, then down into the v-shaped gorge below where there is a river bursting with rushing water, then up along the valley side through meadows of wild flowers until we reached a part where two rivers join, way up in the high mountains. Here we turned around, but I wanted to go on. Apparently, my young legs shouldn't be stretched too much, but I'm sure it was more to do with my human companions being a little tired. So we came back another way, via a deserted village then back down to where we started from. It was excellent, can't wait to go again. It was a bit strange, though, because after supper time that evening, I just couldn't move very much and my long body felt a bit stiff. Wondered whether I was going down with puppy flu, or something, but next day I was firing on all my cylinders, so must have been nothing.

What else? Well, Ella's been showing me how to keep the goats out of the garden. Of course, I'm new to this horticultural scene, but I have to say things are starting to look pretty colourful in the garden. There's an English language newspaper called 'El Sur' who became interested in what the humans have been cultivating here, so much so that they did a nice spread in one of their recent editions - if you want to see the copy follow this link, then scroll to page 24. On the strength of this delightful piece we had a coach party of visitors come and see us. They parked at the top of the road, walked down the steep hill, and spent a happy half hour following me around the flower beds and borders. And again this week, a smaller group of eight horticulturalists from Malaga shall be doing likewise, so it looks like some of my efforts are putting us on the map - well, it was the prize winning puppy they came to see, you surely don't think it was a load of flowers do you?

And one other big event that has happened - well, there have been so many really I've scarcely had time to write my Dogblog - is that we now have a new system of heating our hot water. I'm not quite sure what hot water is, but it is something that humans use a lot of in the bathroom and the kitchen, and it costs a lot of money to make it hot. Well, thanks to a couple of men from Yegen and a strange looking construction next to one of the terraces, all our hot water will be passed through what is called a 'solar panel' to heat it up using the warmth of the sun. Often this means it will be hot enough for showers etc without using any other form of energy, but just in case it isn't quite hot enough, this water then goes into a boiler to be brought to the right temperature. Some might call it magic, although to me, hot water seems vastly over rated and unnecessary. A river of rushing water is far more fun. But, the humans seems excited by it, so it must be worth the effort.

This weekend is Easter, a busy time for the Spain and for Cortijo Opazo. Lots of guests around the place and a lots going on in the villages. In the cities of Spain huge processions are planned when a statute of Christ on the cross is brought out and paraded around the city. Very elaborate platforms are held aloft, decorated with priceless metals. This year, it's a bit damp. In fact we've had some very heavy rain; this is good for the garden and the land in general, but not so good for polished silver and gold. All over Spain processions have been cancelled and the news is full of pictures of grown men crying because they won't be able to show they dedication by carrying the ensemble high on their shoulders. Well, this is of no concern to Ella and I, the only thing that bothers us at the moment is - will anyone catch us sitting on the sofa?

Happy holiday season,

Oska

To view the March 2011 blog, click here.