Day 6: December 30 ... traveling to Granada through hectares and hectares of olive groves

I rose before sunrise on a cold chilly but clear morning in Madrid and dragged my suitcase along the cobblestone streets to a nearby train station that would lead me to the Estación Sur de Autobuses, the bus terminal to southern Spanish destinations.  I passed the familiar gate of the park where I had stopped everyday during my stay in this neighbourhood referred to as Lavapiés (historically, the Jewish quarter of the city until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492), and I observed several people, silhouettes in motion, walking dogs or jogging.  I descended into the station before the first hint of daylight.   At the bus station, I sat quietly, eyes closed, listening to music through my headset and failed to notice that night had suddenly turned into day.  My bus departed at 9 ... sharp!  The morning was crisp, and light filled the bus.

I had purchased a Premium Service ticket that entitled me to a coach with wider and more comfortable seats; an aisle separated 2 seats on one side from 1 on the other.  There was a coach hostess, and her English and Spanish were practically unrecognizable to my ear ... my guess, eastern European ... and she performed her duties perfunctorily with a disingenuous  smile.  A "meal" was served shortly after we were on our way ... an "energy" bar, a plain yogurt and a packaged croissant that might just as well have taken any shape.

If there was any question about Spain's capacity to be among the largest producers in the world of olive oil, one need only take a driving trip to any destination south of Madrid.  5 hours of landscape dominated by olive groves.  In an earlier blog, I referred to the French word dépaysant ... and this landscape was indeed dépaysant and stunning in it's uniformity.

A hectare, by the way, is a unit of area equal to 1 square hectometre (1 hm2) or 10,000 square metres (104 m2).  Land is measured here in hectares.  One hectare contains about 2.5 acres.

click here to view a video of the landscape along the way