ROAD TO MANDALAY

IHAD been set the challenge of getting from my flat in Duquesa in Manilva to La Cala de Mijas via public transport.

Two coastal resorts on the Costa del Sol, just 60-odd kilometres apart, it should be a cakewalk I thought.

Armed with my trusted mobile maps and a good level of Spanish (it’s my university degree, after all, at Bristol), what could possibly go wrong? Little did I realise, the answer was everything.

The News Editor set me a generous arrival time of 3pm and at 11am I began to plan my route.

After an hour of scouring Google maps, the main bus company Avanza’s website and downloading the pointless ‘Moovit’ app, I began to realise how wrong I was. Not only was there no apparent feasible route, I also couldn't find the waiting times of changeovers, or accurate timetables.

I changed tack and decided to ask the tourist office in Duquesa, where a friendly lady told me I needed to go to Sabinillas, and with no bus in sight and my foot hurting I ended up getting a taxi – a cheat I know.

The Olive Press sent student intern Nadia McDonald on a short midweek mission to get to Mijas… or should that be Mandalay?

To add insult to injury, the bemused taxi driver told me my assignment was nigh on impossible and that I should just cough up €140 to get there and back… or realistically expect not to make my appointment. As it was by now approaching 13.00, frustration was building up, much like the clouds overhead.

However, not one to quit, and refusing to walk into my office, which happens to be in Sabinillas, to report that I had aborted the mission, I eventually found a bus stop.

I didn't know if this was even the correct bus stop, but two locals suggested I start by taking the bus from there to Estepona, which at least gave me some hope!

That hope very quickly turned to dismay as the bus timetable at the stop reported a wait of an hour and a half for the next bus.

Another youngster at the stop (who looked as though he too was losing the will to live) said he had already been waiting for 40 minutes for the previous bus which had still not shown.

At this point I instinctively reached for my phone to get a live update of the buses in the area, which proved to be a fantastical idea.

After I waited for 50 minutes and it started to rain, I figured there was no way I was going to be on time. I would definitely have been late. I didn’t even know how or where I could change in Estepona?

With no sign of a bus and a phone battery down to 20%, a level broadly reflecting my own waning patience, I decided I needed to be better prepared. The next time I try it I’ll buy a portable charger, a good book and headphones for my own sanity, as well as some spending money in case I end up stranded. All in all it was a logistical nightmare and definitely a challenge for another day.

Our article on the new tourist visa tax (if you missed it online you can read it on page 14) has had a massive 338,000 page views in just three days.

The news that non-EU citizens will be charged €7 to enter Europe was obviously hugely important to our readers and the millions of tourists who visit Spain each year.

And this is not a one off.

Our team of experts provide authoritative information on every key legal, business and cultural development related to life in Spain every week, indeed every day. Our website has dozens of stories every day that matter to you. We already have over 30,000 subscribers, thousands of them paying a small, but excellent value fee to keep our dozens of journalists, writers and specialists.

Can you afford not to be one of them? Do you really want to rely on unsourced and unchecked stories from untrained writers who work for socalled ‘news’ websites that simply steal stories and run council press releases word for word? News, investigations, authoritative analysis, culture features, explainers, warnings, reviews, interviews, well researched travel features, and even opinions. Strong ones.

Whatever you are interested in about your life in Spain, we have it covered.

Visit www.theolivepress.es today and sign up for as little as 15 cents a day!

The top five most read stories on www.theolivepress.es in the past two weeks are:

1- Spain wakes up to threat the EU’s new ETIAS tourist tax poses to its British tourism

2- Sharp and shoddy practices land dozens of foreign villa buyers millions out of pocket as Costa del Sol developer collapses

3- New study: Increased diabetes risk for people previously hit with Covid-19

4-

A little Gaudi glory: Discover the house that was the first designed by the Catalan architect

5- Three youngsters in Spain found guilty of the biggest fraud ever against amazon in Europe