Leaving Mertola?

I’m up and ready and packed (with all my extra jars of honey, liqueur and truffles) in good time for the bus to Alcoutim, a town about 25km downriver. In fact I’m a little early. I looked at the time on my mobile (which I left set to the time zone of my clients) rather than my watch. When I get to the dining room in time for a quick breakfast I find the blinds are still drawn, the breakfast trays are not yet laid out, and the coffee is only half percolated. Time for a slow breakfast. I take a cup of coffee outside – watch the black winged heron cruise up and down the river searching for his breakfast, the goats being driven across the road on the opposite side of the river to the fields that go down to the river where they have their morning drink, read a chapter of my book. Another coffee.

There are only two buses a day towards Alcoutim. They actually don’t go to Alcoutim, but down to the coast – but they do go past (and hopefully stop at) the Alcoutim turn off stop - about 5km from the town itself. I could go down to the coast, and then catch a bus back to Alcoutim – making a journey of around 100km. But with a frequency of two buses a day the chance of the connections working seems remote. I had tried to get the number of the taxi service in Alcoutin to arrange a pick up at the turn off but my hotel reception couldn’t find that. So I decided I would take my chances and try to hitch hike the last stretch. Country people are pretty good about giving lifts, especially when they know that there’s no public transport, although I’m carrying a (wheeled) suitcase - not a backpack – which isn’t the ideal way to hitchhike.

I’m just about to check out and embark on that adventure when the hotel receptionists tells me the bus is at 1530, not 0930 as I had been told the day before. This kind of changes the equation. I ‘check back’ into my room, check my emails to see if a promised commission has arrived (it hasn’t) and redo the equation. Standing by the side of the road waiting for a lift at ten in the morning is acceptable. Doing so at four in the afternoon, when anyone with any sense is in the coolest place they can find is considerably less attractive. Mm I could skip Alcoutin altogether, or enquire how much a taxi would cost.