Spanish Coffee

One Saturday morning Gail Meredith-Smyth, one of Sunnyview School’s two office staff members, arrived at our house. It was early Saturday morning, in fact. Joanne and I were still in bed.

Gail did not come to our house on a whim. It had been pre-arranged that we would all go to the village of Antequera together by bus. The bus left early. Gail knew that. We had not internalized that information.

To go to Antequera by bus we first had to go from Torremolinos to Málaga by bus, and that bus was leaving soon. She brightly announced that she would “put the kettle on,” and she did. I don’t know why she put the kettle on. We certainly didn’t have time for a pot of tea before we caught the bus for Málaga. Maybe it’s something in the British DNA.

We dressed in a hurry, turned the kettle off, and left. We arrived two buses later in Antequera shortly after 9:00 a.m., too late for breakfast. Spaniards are not big on breakfasts anyway. A slice of bread dipped in olive oil and freshly minced garlic (delicious) and a shot of brandy, and they’re good to go. Or if not brandy, aguardiente, “toothwater”, a really disgusting licorice flavored booze. Joanne and I were not raised that way, and we wanted some real food for our breakfast. Too bad. So sad.

We did promote some coffee. You could tan leather with Spanish coffee. For a demitasse of coffee you run steam through a demitasse of grounds. The result is mixed with milk and a generous helping of turbinado. Turbinado is the brown, lumpy sugar you find in some health food stores. It’s about all we used in Spain. The resulting beverage was almost as effective as mainlining caffeine and it kept us on our feet and going all morning.

And go we did. We climbed up the tallest hill to visit the Moorish castle ruins. Then we walked over to the local palace to visit the museum. Then we walked out of town to see the dolmens, burial chambers dating back to the Bronze Age. No bodies in the burial chambers. No bronze, either.

We walked everywhere until 1:00 p.m. when we could wrap ourselves around some pork chops and wine. I had drunk Spanish coffee before, but this was the first time I had ever put it to a real test. It’s amazing stuff. Jet fuel.