On the way to Cordoba this morning we got a little bit of a Spanish language lesson. Highlighted were some of the differences between, Castillan Spanish and Mexican Spanish. The main ones are when an S or Z comes in a word, the Castillan says a TH sound as if lisping. Also Mexican Spanish says the Y sound for double L and Castillan says 2 L sounds.
Also learned that the Spanish word for Columbus is Colon.
We heard a lesson about plate techtonics and why the Iberian Peninsula looks like it does--I must admit, I dozed a little, so don't expect an explanation here. The advent of people in the Iberian Peninsula were the Carthegenians, the Phoenesians, Greeks, Celts and Romans. We heard a little about how the Celts may have been on "funny mushrooms" to frighten the war machine of the Roman Legions. (Yep, we're getting lots, and lots of history) The language called SPANISH is a combination of Latin, Celtic and Arab languages. Any Spanish word begining with Al has an Arabic root. We're driving and driving and then we see some little white dots over to the left. Remember we're in Mancha and those white dots are the windmills that Don Quixote attacked, thinking them to be giants.
And in Spanish we were told that his name is pronounced "Don Ki-chote"
We stopped for comfort break at a little inn looking place that had a statue of Don Q--and we took pictures with him.
Next subject of discussion after the break was olives--- we saw all different sizes of olive trees and learned about black and green olives and how they are processed. We learned that Spain is the world's largest producer of Olive oil.
We were driving through flat land until we came to Andalucia (southern part of Spain) which is characterized with mountains. Really interesting scenery.
Let me take a detour here to talk about the bus. It holds 50 and we are a group of 49. It is made by Mercedes Benz and has had special protective additions to keep people from hiding in the undercarriage. These busses do tour into Morocco and it is not unusual for refugees to try to hide under the bus to get to "freedom" Also attached to all buses and trucks is a system for monitoring the driver's performance (speed, rest breaks, etc) the police may check the digital log at any time and the fines for not abiding by the laws are stiff. This is why we take so many comfort breaks, not for our comfort, but to obey the union guidelines for the driver.
As we drive along someone asks about the river beside the road. Oops that isn't a river a flood has covered all the land at the side of the road. We see more water, and more and deeper water. We see news services filming and talking to people. Houses are 3 feed deep in water. When we get to our destination Cordoba, the little tame river running around the town is a wild tempest.
And half the population of the city is on the bridge we crossed, just looking and exclaiming. Our tour guide did a little research and discovered that the river has 15 times more water than usual.
I'm getting sleepy, but I haven't covered the amazing church we saw today, so more about that next time.
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