SEVILLE – ZAHARA DE LA SIERRA – SETENIL – RHONDA – MALAGA (MARBELLA)
25 September 2017
“Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at the destination; It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way”; Emma Chase.
Why this Road trip
Let me first brief about the planning and execution of the road trip. The tourist centre in Seville recommended that we take day trips to Cordoba, Granada, Rhonda, Malaga. We visit the train station for checking out train schedules to go travel to these locations. Seville has excellent connectivity and there are trains to go to various places.
At the train station, we encounter another tourist help centre. He tells us about the famous white village of Seville – Zahara de la Sierra. He also informs us about a place called Setenil de las Bodegas which has whitewashed houses built into the cliffs, and that place is known for olive cultivation, a big olive oil factory, and olive oil bought from here is most genuine. So he maps out this entire route as above for us. There is a train to Malaga and a train to Rhonda, but for the other small villages like Zahara and Setenil, buses have to be used.
Since there are too many stops in between, he suggests that we drive to all these places as they all fall in the same route to Malaga. So, this plan is finalised, and with his help, we book a car for our road trip. This travel guy is from the countryside and stayed at Setenil for a long time working in the tourist centre there; hence he could give our itinerary a whole new perspective.
That is why folks, I recommend you speak to different people at different visitors centre – each one of them will have a different perspective towards travel and you could find your perfect itinerary that matches your personality.
Our experience
On 25th September, at 7.30 am, we reach the station as we have to collect our car from here. Now, it so happens that they do not have a sedan and offer us a minibus – which gets us excited at first – its a beautiful vehicle, but when Hiren sits behind the wheel he realizes that it is too big and risky to drive such a big car on foreign land. So we return back the minibus asking for a smaller car, and the lady offers us a mini car, apologizing for not able to provide a sedan. We gladly take the keys and load our bags of food and water into the car.
A journey full of unique experiences begins. Our first stop is at the white village of Zahara. The roads that lead to this village are beautiful – it is slightly uphill.
Zahara De La Sierra
It’s a beautiful small village – white houses, small alleys, small shops. Now only senior citizens remain in this village, most of the younger generation have left this village for the cities.
There is a trekking option also available here. There is a fort on the top of the hill where Zahara is located, although there are only remains left over, the view is marvellous. We walk around the village for half-hour exploring the food and shopping outlets and head to our next stop – Setenil.
en route 
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ZAHARA 
zahara 
en route 
en route
Setenil
For some reason, we haven’t clicked any pictures here onwards, so I wouldn’t be able to give you a virtual tour. But there are lots of pictures on the internet which will give you a fair idea of the beautiful place that Setenil is. The sight of these little homes underneath the cliff is breathtaking. Most of these homes are now converted int restaurants and cafes, simply sitting at any of these food joints and eating something gives an old-world feeling. Now, we are looking for the olive oil factory. Its 12 noon and we are tired and hungry but determined to visit the olive oil factory and buy authentic olive oil. Language is a big barrier here in such small towns. No one understands English and we are unable to ask where do we get olive oil because no one understands what is olive oil. So, I ask the sweet restaurant lady, pointing to the bottle of olive oil as to where can I buy this and she utters the word “aceite” – and that’s how I know the local name of olive. She draws a map on a paper and directs us to a grocery store. We visit the grocery store next and show the bottle of olive oil and ask the person about “aceite oil factory” and he gives us a brochure of this factory and gives us directions. Next, we take the help of Google and reach the factory – 20 minutes walk.
Here we discover that the factory operates only in the harvesting season when olives are harvested from the trees and transported here to the factory. We are unable to see the olive oil manufacturing process, But the factory shop is open, and we buy olive oil for us and also for gifting to friends and relatives back home in India. They pack the bottles in nice gifting bags.
Rhonda
We are famished now. But no vegetarian food available here in this small village of Setenil, so we decide to go to Rhonda and find someplace for lunch. Rhonda boardwalk has lots of restaurants and shopping, and Google helps us locate a restaurant called “Toro Tapas” which has decent vegetarian options. Here we have eggplant fritters and salmorejo. Beautiful holiday town, excellent downtown. Driving is difficult in Rhonda downtown, as many one-way direction roads and we get easily lost, we would reach the same place after going around, again and again, GPS was confusing and so was the map that I was referring to. Its definitely easier to walk around the city. Finally, we managed to get out of Rhonda and head towards Malaga.
Malaga
It is the town for the rich of Spain. Beautiful huge houses – big roads and a very modern city. Just walk on any of the roads and admiring the palatial homes is itself an activity here, although Beaches are a special attraction. We now head towards the beach and watch the sunset in peace. Immediately after sunset, we leave as we have a journey back to Seville and do not want to get lost in the dark. But if it is destined that we will get lost – so we will. We miss an exit, took the next one and had a long route to be followed to get back to the highway. However this internal route takes us through small villages and for almost the whole path, ours is the only car on the road – which was kind of scary as we are in a foreign land, it’s getting dark, and we do not want to be stranded. Thanks to Hiren’s excellent driving skills and direction sense, we merge back on to the highway, and that’s a great sense of relief. By 8 PM, we get back to Seville in our apartment.
There are no pictures of the 2nd leg of our road trip. We reach Setenil when the sun is at its peak and we are sun-burnt, At Rhonda we are hungry, and then post-lunch, scouting for a way out of the town. By the time we reach Malaga, we are enjoying this road trip admiring the beauty with our two eyes rather than through camera lens. But be assured, the road trip is beautiful and totally worth it.
Traveller Tips
- Road trip HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
- Carry lots of food and water with you.
- Highways are long, exits do not have food outlets and it is a waste of time to stop and look for restaurants for food, rather spend time in sight seeing.
- Try and do the trek on Zahara. There is fort uphill and about a 3 km trek. We didnt do it, but am sure it would be beautiful.
- Setenil – Enjoy the restaurants which are under cliffs. Enjoy the serenity, just have a cuppa coffee here and doing nothing else.
- Rhonda – park your car somewhere, or rather wherever you get parking and then walk around the downtown.
- Malaga – I am sure there are more things other than beaches. Try and explore. Maybe you will discover something off beat.
- I would have preferred to cover this route in 2 days if we had the luxury of time.