Monday 18th April

Another sunny but windy day. Went for a walk around Estepa which is in fact an extremely beautiful town.  The main road is a little ramshackle but the residential areas and plazas are immaculate and the white washed houses so clean and crips.  I felt like we were walking through Monaco, not some little town in southern Spain.    Estepa is about an hour North of Malaga and the sea, but we kept expecting to see the sea at every turn.  The one thing that was sorely missed from the holiday.

Instead we have row upon row of olive groves as far as the eye can see, and in fact, stretching for miles and miles as we were to discover when we ventured further afield later in the week.

As it is Holy Week, the town is preparing for the passion pilgrimages which will be held daily in the town.  A lot of the residential balconies are adorned with pictures of Jesus, Mary or a favoured saint.

 

One of Estepa's churches preparing for the Holy Week Processions

Hazel had told us that one of the processions would be coming right through our Plaza later on Monday night - and advised us to turn our lights out when they came.  Something to look forward to!   I was sat reading in the living room in the afternoon when there was a very loud knock at the door.  What my Mam would have called a 'money knock'.  She would have been right!  I opened the door and nearly jumped out of my skin.  There was a chap dressed in a white monks robe with a black pointed hood covering his head.  He looked like he had walked straight out of  a Klan meeting in the deep American south.  He turned out to be one of the penitents who would be walking later, and they were collecting money for the poor.

Scary Klans Man!!

We had tea at one of the local cafes - the Vulcano Cafe.  Pizzas all round (just about the only veggie food they served).  Not the most salubrious of venues - but the owner was pleasant and appreciated our bungled attempts at a bit of spanish and it got us fed and watered. 

We were back in plenty of time to see the parade pass by.  The square started filling up with local people around 10pm and at about 10.30 you could hear the sound of a solitary drum beat a little way off.  It was a little eerie seeing rows of cassocked people, walking silently through the plaza.  There was a shrine almost opposite our front door, where the procession stopped to pay silent homage to the effigies therein.  We had a grandstand view from our bedroom window, and I was just about to go back in when a huge flower decked float passed by with a life-size statue of Mary holding the broken body of Jesus across her lap.  It was a solemn and moving experience, and I felt a little like an intruder sharing it with so many of the locals.

Shine on Plaza Del Aire

Silent Procession of Penitents

Mary with body of Jesus