My 58-year-old brain is so full that I have only managed to learn one new word of Spanish during our week long sojourn here.  It’s’Medusa’ – which I always thought was the name of that Greek monster-woman with live snakes in place of hair.

Yesterday Faye and I drove 15 minutes in the boiling sun on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road along an unknown route to a beach called Playa de la Cala el Canuelo, where I had to inch the unfamiliar car backwards along the side of a precipice lined on either side by other cars, even though I haven’t paid the extortionate extra-insurance fee they always charge you when you hire cars abroad; and I couldn’t find reverse gear in the Ford Fiesta as it got tangled up in my flimsy floaty top, and the clutch of the manual got stuck under my sparkly flip-flops.

We queued in the boiling sun to catch a minibus down a sheer cliff to the pretty beach below; and finally, I rushed into the cool welcoming water.

OUCH!!!!

I had been stung on the ankle.  I looked around.  There were floaty red jellyfish happily bobbing along on the waves in every direction.  No one else was swimming.  They all knew better.  And after all that effort to get here, too!  No mention of anything like this in a single raving TripAdvisor post!

What to do now? Nothing.  Keep on reading, and order yet another bottle of lovely cooling Cava.  And learn that pesky word: Medusa.