... and now for the muse

Costa del Sol - Coast of the Sun. Lluvia is the Spanish word for rain.

Well, it's been a good two and a half months since coming back to update things - and the main reason has been lack of enthusiasm due to the weather. Spain, the idealic country of sun-drenchedness. Costa del Sol, the epitome of that drenching. But, since mid December we have infact endured the worst winter that Spain has seen for 60 years. For an area where the average annual rainfall is 30 days a year, the constant rain caused havoc - flash floods, houses washed down banks, and small mountain villages not 20 ks from here being evacuated during the worst of it. Twice we had to abort taking the kids to school because the roads were impassable. Although the temperature only got as low as 4 or 5 degrees it was the stir-crazyness of being housebound for weeks on end that really took a toll. It's hard to describe just how much the spirits are dampened :-) by such weather - especially when the expectation was for the opposite. Anyway, we have borne the brunt of it and are emerging in to a fairly pleasant spring. Not quite sangria weather yet, but at last the skies are returning to their healthy cloudless blue, and the rain has mostly abated. If you are thinking of coming to this area my take on that 30 days average rainfall a year means that it won't rain again until June 2014. So, what - apart from the weather - of our life in Spain.

Things have certainly been testing over the last few months. Amidst the thunderstorms and chill of winter I have spent far-too-much time caught up at work preparing the startup for its marketing campaigns and stockmarket listing. The more I put in, the more there was to do. It proved a stressful situation and, coupled with the inclement weather, certainly put a grey edge on our adventure. After the initial 3 month contract was up at the end of February I decided not to continue am back out on the hunt for work.

So, we also brought a car. At least, we've paid money for it! But, after two months have still not successfully transfered the ownership to us. The system is soooo bureaucratic here. Usually you'd hire a gestor who undertakes the form filling and waiting in queues and jumping through the hoops to sort the paperwork. I contacted one to begin the process rolling and was told the list of necessary paperwork that I should obtain to get the transfer done. As I was stopping working I determined that I could undertake the transfer myself and save the considerable funds required to employ the gestoria. It turned out that the required receipt for proof of the previous owner's municipal tax payment that we were supplied at purchase time was for a completely different car - and so, for the past three weeks I have been trying to get that paperwork from the car dealer. What a rigmarole. Still waiting on that. But on Thursday I decided to take the next step towards getting in sorted by - get this - driving to Malaga, some 50 minutes away, as this is the only place for our area where you can submit the paperwork and pay the appropriate charges. Unfortunately, the paperwork proved beyond my Spanish skills and Casey and I returned from Malaga with our intent firmly on finding out what Google Translate made of forms. That's where we're at at the moment. My understanding is that, if the car dealer doesn't get the receipt to me, I can drive to the town hall where the previous owner would have paid the municipal tax, produce the car papers (which we DO have) and request another receipt. This town we think is Alhaurin, about 40 minutes drive away in a slightly tangental direction to Malaga. It could yet be that the gestoria's services will need to be employed ... but for now we continue to try to overcome the bureaucracy ourselves.

We first experienced the levels of bureaucracy when organising what is known as our NIE (nacional identificacion de extranjeros - foreigner identification number) and residency cards. This was all undertaken back in Novermber-December and required trips to and from banks, back and forth to the the estacion de national policia for the area we lived in, and lots of waiting. Because we moved during the process it threw things in to a tailspin. Initially the national police station that we needed to go to was in Fuengirola, and on my third trip back there to submit the completed paperwork was advised that now the paperwork had to be submitted in Marbella. All this in Spanish - somewhat bewildering. In the end we achieved things, finally getting my residency card prior to Christmas, and getting Case and Brae's in late Jan. Fiona remains an illegal alien because, well, as a kiwi married to a British national it seems that the system just steps up a notch in complexity.

We undertook an adventure, and we are certainly getting that. That that doesn't break you can only make you stronger. The next thing that tested the mettle was our last power bill. For the first two months our bill was 250 odd euro. We figured that - even though we had refrained from using heating apart from a couple of times - this was passable, having been warned that Endsa, the monopolising electricity supplier charged like a wounded torro. But two weeks ago we received the NEXT bill - for twenty days since the last one and it was for 540euros. Holy smoke, over $NZ1000 for less than three weeks usage. It turned out, after the initial panic, that there is an error on the bill ... fairly obvious on reflection, in that the 'starting' meter reading noted on the bill was considerably less than the 'ending' meter reading on the previous bill. So, that should be sweet ... no problem. Uh uh. The process here is that you have to go to the Endesa office, lodge a 50euro non-refundable payment to get them to come and look at THEIR mistake. Moreover, you are still required to pay the bill that is in error (or be cut off, pronto) and should the error be in your favour the money credited against future payments. What a croc. Of course, they may not finalise their investigation for 4 or 5 months, meanwhile they'll be throwing additional bills through the mail which, again need paying to save have the electricity cut off. Fortunately the agency we rented through is undertaking the chasing for us - tho' they also expect payment for services - and, at this stage, we don't know what the outcome will be. Fun.

So, here's the straw for the proverbial camel's back. Our place is nice, and we're taking care of it as we would our own. But, the other day, having just used the little boy's room half of the flushing button - after I'd pressed it - came up out of its position atop the cistern and fell in to the bowl. Reflecting it was kinda comical ... I had a quick pause as the situation dawned on me, then tried quickly to recover the plastic button from the flushing water. Nice! But, alas, the button won the race to the S bend, leaving the toilet with only half of the flush mech. No doubt this will sap a portion of our bond, as well as a reasonable amount of our resolve.

If you got this far, you might appreciate why the enthusiasm to keep the story rolling had been put on hold. Anyway, I decided to dump all the gloom in to this one post, and will fill in the details of the OTHER things that we have been getting up to over the past three months in other posts. I tell ya, I really wanted to title this post Costa del rSol.