Ronda
SPAIN
Bridge Over Tajo Waters
By LYNDI
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Sometimes iconic landmarks that you’ve seen in photographs over the years are ultimately disappointing in person. Professional photography gear, filters, perfect timing and invisible crowds all contribute to letdowns when you actually arrive in person. So imagine how pleased Aaron and I were when we arrived at the Puente Nuevo in Ronda and it was just as impressive as we’d dreamt.
Earlier that morning, Aaron and I said a sad goodbye to our amazing hotel and breakfast in Nerja and walked to the bus station to grab transport to Malaga. The layover at the bus station was actually pretty pleasant – we grabbed a coffee and met two other travelers from Canada that had gotten on the wrong ferry from Morocco and thought they were in Tarifa and were unsure how to get back. We’ve been lost before, but I don’t think we’ve ever been 150km off…
At any rate, from Malaga it was a pleasant 2 hour bus ride to Ronda. The road from the tropical coast of Malaga to the small village in the Sierra de las Nieves National Park was beautiful. Palm trees and coastal views gave way to mountain ranges and olive trees, and our bus somehow navigated through narrow roads as it picked up and dropped off passengers in the small towns that dotted the landscape.
We arrived in Ronda around 1pm and had an easy walk to our 4-star hotel (thank you hotel points!) in the center of town. While I took an epic nap, Aaron headed to the rooftop bar of the hotel for a beer and tapas that overlooked Ronda’s bullfighting ring that is open to the public.
He was entertained for at least an hour while dozens of tourists went to great lengths to capture the perfect photos for their social media accounts – many of which included boyfriends obediently taking the same photo of their girlfriends’ sunset heart hands over and over and over again until the perfect “candid” photo was completed.
Groggy from my nap, I headed up to the rooftop bar to meet up with Aaron and we took a stroll around the New City to see some viewpoints and to give me a much needed wake-up call. Ronda is situated on top of a narrow canyon, and today three bridges over the El Tajo canyon connect the New City to the Old City.
The most famous bridge, the Puente Nuevo (or “New Bridge”) is a bit of a misnomer. Built in 1793, it is the only bridge that allows vehicular traffic, but it’s location at the edge of town has brought Ronda fame and hoards of tourists ever since. The bridge sits at almost 400ft above the Guadalevín River and seems to single-handedly hoist the entire city on its back.
We walked down to one of several lookouts near the river shores around 5pm to get the best view of the bridge, the city and the sun setting simultaneously.
As usual, we were not the only ones that headed down for the sunset for clear and unobstructed views of the classic bridge – there were probably fifty other people with the same idea, but amazingly we were all fairly well behaved and took turns taking photos for other people.
Now, I’ve been told I’m a Millennial before – clearly by people who are defining this generation strictly by birth dates. And as someone who was born in February 1981 – one of the earliest months that could squeak in to this somewhat hazy timeline – I can assure you I in no way resemble a Real Millennial. And it was never more obvious than at the Puente Nuevo viewpoint.
First of all, Aaron and I were there with a camera. The kind you keep in a little camera case and have to have at least a casual awareness of how many photos your memory card can store before you have to connect it to a computer to upload it to the cloud.
Second, when someone asks me to take a picture of them, I gladly accept and take 2-3 photos for safe measure. However, when Aaron and I ask young women nearby to take our photo in front of the bridge, they snap a minimum of 20 photos. For the life of me, I will never understand why someone would need to take that many. If you don’t look good in the first 5, the next 15 will only be more photos of you looking like a troll.
And finally, the “sitting on the edge of cliffs for epic selfies” behavior has never even crossed my mind. Don’t get me wrong – I want to look as cool as the next person, but hiking out to rocks that are ready to crumble into the canyon below for a good and isolated setting would never naturally occur to me.
So even though the crowd was quite polite and helpful, we soon tired of waiting our turn while small groups and couples took at least 100 photos of the exact same selfie and headed out on a narrow path to get a little closer to the bridge. The hike up and down was pretty easy and the views were absolutely stunning, but after about an hour exploring down below we headed back up for a sunset drink in the Old City.
Even though we had felt great while the sun was beating down on us and we were hiking up and down steep paths, when that sun went down, our sunset drink turned COLD! We moved from a nice patio setting to an indoor table and quickly left before dinner time since the Old City offers overpriced, unattractive food for tourists exclusively.
We ended up eating dinner at an empty tapas bar (never a good sign) not far from our hotel in the New City. The food was decent, and the hair in my salad was a nice extra touch.
Though Ronda makes a great stopover, there’s not much to do in the town, so we were on our way to Madrid the following morning for final leg of our Spanish Babymoon.
