Andalucia as the Moors would have seen it: Jo soaks up the view from the castle at the top of CasaresI blink and then blink again. Bamboo walls, like Goliath’s personal collection of panpipes, surround me. This two-bedroom structure, perched on stilts and stuffed with curios from Nepal, Bora Bora and Laos, reeks of eastern mysticism.
On the balcony, a stone monkey wears a similar face of confusion, something like: ‘Love the view, but I’m thousands of miles from home and I can’t speak Spanish’. Beyond him, green mountains rise and fade on the horizon.
The weather tells tales on the architecture. This isn’t the steamy, wet heat of the east but the bone-dry burn of a European summer. I’m in Andalucia, in a hut that might have been teleported from some southern hemisphere jungle. To add further muddle to this transcontinental broth, my hosts, Alex and Olga, are from Russia.
‘We’ve travelled around the world, to more than 60 countries, and we wanted to use our experience to create a rare concept for Spain,’ Alex tells me. ‘Instead of flying to Asia to find this sort of spot, you can enjoy it all just over two hours away from the UK.’
Every so often you come across a life that isn’t yours but that you wouldn’t mind having, thank you very much. When this enterprising couple stumbled across an undulating piece of land overlooking Casares, one of the region’s most beautiful pueblos blancos (literally, white villages), in the last nugget of Spain before Africa takes the reins, they quickly snapped up four hectares of it.
Alex and Olga have taken inspiration from their extensive globetrotting...the pool has a North African ambienceIn the decade since, they've created DDG Retreat which, (forgive me for what might be deemed an assault on the English language), could be described as a micro-resort.
Put simply, there is everything here you’d want from a high-end holiday – privacy, a knock-out infinity pool, ambitious architecture, a tennis fan’s dream court, the option of a private chef and as much tropical foliage as these surprisingly verdant mountains - part of the Sierra Crestellina range - can muster. Only there's no big company lurking in the background, just Alex, Olga, a tiny staff and boundless enthusiasm.
Guests must leave their nerves in Casares though. The sharp, meandering incline that leads here requires foot-through-floor acceleration. The reward for flirting with death on the way up (and down) are views to, erm, die for.
There are six properties, of varying sizes and styles, and our eight-strong party stayed for a week in the biggest, Villa Daria. A mere smudge of coral pink from the road which wraps itself around Casares, up close it’s a five-bedroom affair with a rock-star interior.
My 12-year-old niece quickly bagged the bedroom with the home cinema and managed to unearth Harry Potter (with Russian subtitles) from a formidable DVD library. The rest of us marvelled at the space-age kitchen, the tree that magically sprouts from the living room floor and the lift (yes, an actual elevator) that glides passengers between floors. Outside, there’s a jacuzzi carved into a beach-themed outdoor area that offers eyebrow-arching views of Casares and, some 50km beyond, the Rock of Gibraltar.
There is luxury but there is value too. In high season, Villa Daria costs £4,000 a week, which may initially sound as steep as the surrounding hills. Fill it to capacity though - five ample rooms sleep ten people - and you’ll pay around £400 each. Commit early and low cost flights to Malaga will set you back around £200, possibly less. With a car thrown in, you're looking at around £650 per person, which for a holiday in this kind of property in mid-August is nothing short of a bargain.
There’s also the small matter of having Andalucia as your own personal playground.
British tourists may spread their love more thinly these days but this diverse portion of Spain was our first holiday romance and many have stayed faithful.
Spanning three generations, our group spent our days in different ways. My parents enjoyed Gibraltar for its spellbinding views across to Africa while my sister’s brood spent days tumbling down slides at waterparks and hopping on the hot, hot sands of resorts such as Estepona.
We all ogled Puerto Banus, the super-glam enclave of Marbella that is waist-deep in posh yachts, creosote tans and souped-up Bentleys (and, if you believe Piers Morgan, criminals).
After a warm-up act that features white-washed villages such as Casares, Gaucín and Algatocín, Ronda is one of the region's main attractionsI was bewitched by the region's interior, particularly the pueblos blancos. Take Casares. This somnolent little town has fewer than 5,000 residents but the slim streets have made their own dent in Andalucia's history.
When the Napoleonic armies came here in the early 19th century, Casares clung steadfastly to the mountain and refused to fall, a feat matched only by Cadiz.
A walk to the town’s highest point – the castle ruins – offers some insight as to why those troops might have preferred the wrath of a petty tyrant to conquering a town that counts a foxing maze of streets and steep, steep climbs as powerful weapons in its arsenal.
From the loftiest point, it's possible to see Andalucia as the Moors would have done some 900 years ago. The Genal river valley, just visible on the horizon, is home to Europe's most southerly evergreen forest and once provided the main route for pirates arriving through Gibraltar to plunder these lands.
The sense of pride lives on. On an oven-hot afternoon, we watched decorators roll licks of dazzling white paint on Moorish walls in a bid to keep Casares looking pristine. If the obvious grumble about the Costa del Sol is that pockets of little England have sprung up along the coast, then a short drive inland instantly offers day-trippers a warm handshake from the real Andalucia.
On the winding A-377 route from the coast to Ronda, which is partly chaperoned by a whirling wind farm, make whatever bribes are needed to bag the passenger seat because it's hard to keep your eyes on the road. The route - bumpy in parts but improving as you rise and turn onto the A-369 - runs like a loosely coiled rope through mountains that are home to olive and almond groves and the striking pueblos blancos.
Beyond Casares you'll find Gaucín, Algatocín, Benadalid and other villages, all luminous white and melded into hillsides that peter out into valleys or grow into mountains.
Pressing on to Ronda, which feels enormous in comparison to its smaller siblings, the drama of the El Tajo gorge unfolds as you walk over the 18th century Puente Nuevo bridge.
Staring at the drop below, which reaches depths of 200metres, it’s hard not to think of the passage from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls when Nationalist sympathisers in an unnamed village – largely believed to have been inspired by Ronda – are marched over the precipice by Republicans
Villa Daria's cool interior evokes influences from owners Alex and Olga's travels and, right, Jo puts the finishing touches to an Andalucian-inspired mealBack at Villa Daria, we tried not to puncture the tranquility at the pool - our fellow guests being mainly couples - and paid homage to 'Rafa' with a few sets on the immaculate tennis court.
I’ve blamed my iffy game on many things in the past (wrong shoes, wrong knees, wrong opponent) but sending a forehand slice skywards has never before been the fault of a bird soaring overhead. This is the territory of griffin vultures, kestrels and Bonelli's eagles though, the latter possessing a wingspan of up to 1.6metres - quite a sight when you're trying to dole out a serve.
At nightfall, we'd tackle some of the dishes we’d seen on our travels during the day. We watched beads of fat fall from plump chorizo on the BBQ; cooked fresh prawns laced with garlic and lemon until their grey flesh turned white and diced humble spuds into salty patatas bravas, served up with oil-soaked roasted peppers.
Supermarket rioja - costing no more than four euros a bottle - tasted four times as good as the price tag suggested when drunk in this context.
The skies above Villa Daria felt like Mother Nature’s grand riposte to a technology-obsessed world. At night, we gawped upwards at the silver-spattered darkness and watched stars shoot across the black.
Alex and Olga take a merry-go-round approach to DDG Retreat, spending their lives shifting between properties according to which ones have been booked. ‘There are only two of us and we want to keep our lives interesting so we keep moving!' Alex tells me as we leave the bamboo house.
I look back at the monkey and wonder whether he’ll swap places…I swear his stone-dead eyes dart back: ‘Not a chance, amiga’.
Travel factsA week's accommodation in Villa Daria costs from £3500 in mid season rising to £4000 in high season, book through www.villarentals.com. A multitude of airlines fly into Malaga Airport including easyJet, BA and Iberia. Hire a car from Malaga Airport through www.holidayautos.co.uk.
source :dailymail
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