Arcos de la Frontera, Spain
by Curtis Harrison; photos by Jason Bingham & Curtis Harrison
While on a backpacking trip through Europe last summer, my friend Jason and I stopped for two weeks in an Andalucian pueblo called Arcos de la Frontera. The pueblo is inaccessible by train, so we took an eastward bound bus from Jerez de la Frontera (known for wine and brandy) through groves of cork trees naked to their branches to reach Arcos. These pueblos have the phrase “de la Frontera” added to their names because at one point they formed the southern border of the Christian kingdom in Spain. They are also known as the “pueblos blancos” because of the prevalent color of the buildings.
We arrived at the small bus stop in Arcos and began to hunt for a hostel. This is not the most efficient way to travel; carrying fifty pound packs in the middle of an August day in Andalucia will leave you wishing for the shade of a cafe, a sweating glass of cerveza and a tapa. The heat is not made any better when you consider that the pueblo of Arcos consists of two neighboring hills. At the bottom of one hill is the bus stop, and as you go up it you find a grocery store and various cafes. Then you descend the hill and begin to climb the next to find the hostels, the residential areas and then, at the top, the castle, the church, the convent, and the cliff.
Arcos is not a common spot for tourists, and so even in high-travel season we found a room that was fifteen euros a night, and additionally, it sat atop a cafe. We left our packs in the room and settled down for a “menu”; a full multi-course meal. The man who owned the cafe (and the hostel) was known as “Tio”, and for eight euros he offered us fresh bread, our choice between fish, beef, pork, or pasta, and a “tinto verano” (a liter of local wine and a liter of lemon Fanta; this combination is a life-saver in the heat and dust of the region), and to finish we picked an ice cream from the freezer.
We went back to our room to sleep off the food and the heat, and came down again in the evening to have some local brandies in the cafe. With the sun gone, and the heat mostly gone, we decided to explore the city. Every street in Arcos fulfills the stereotype of the narrow European alley, and every street in Arcos is at an extreme slope. The next day we worked our way up to the old part of town. We stood at the edge of the cliff and were able to see farther than any Angelino has ever imagined possible. Below is the river, and groves of oranges trees. These and various other farmed lands extend to the horizon which is capped with easy hills.
Moving through the old part of town, we came to the convent. It is not marked and there are no signs in English, but I had read about it so we decided to investigate. There is a one-way pane of glass that does not favor guests, and a bell. We rang the bell and a revolving table below the glass turned and brought us boxes of cookies. We found a box that looked like powdered-sugar cookies and called through the glass “Que es el precio?”
“Cinco!” came back through the glass, so we left a five-euro note where the box had been and went back into the heat to eat our cookies and explore more. There was a small park near our hostel that we decided to visit in the evening. We went to a store and bought several liters of beer and went to the park to drink them and enjoy the lack of sun. We had not yet met a single person that spoke English, so when the local teenagers started coming to the park on their mopeds we greeted them in Spanish.
Andalucians are known, even in Spain, for having a heavy accent, and a rural town in Andalucia only makes it heavier. We could barely understand their Spanish, and they could barely understand ours. We managed to get along alright anyways and we drank our beers with them and answered their questions about the ever-mysterious Los Angeles.
As the night moved on we made several more trips to the store, our Spanish undoubtedly became worse as we became more entertaining and we all had a good time as our new friends showed us the different empty lots and small parks that they liked to frequent.
We eventually made it back to our room, somewhat worse for the wear and certainly leaving the locals with some good stories. As the days moved on, we divided our time between exploring the streets of the old part of town, drinking beers in the cafe with Tio and watching the Spanish Olympic teams compete in Beijing, and visiting with our friends at the park. When it was finally time to pack up and head for the relative metropolis of Granada, we were sad to have to leave the pueblo of Arcos de la Frontera.
