The day I melted down
Travel days are tough
I’m going out of order with this post, but it feels like I should share it now versus wait to do things chronologically. So, to be clear: I’m still going to go back and finish documenting our time in Madrid, but for now I’m jumping forward to arriving in Salobreña.
Who knew renting a car in a foreign country could be so difficult? Actually, driving it would prove to be just as hard. But let me back up because the day actually starts with leaving Madrid. And really, this story starts with renting the car the night before we left and picking our next accommodation the night before that. I’ll use days of the week to keep the timeline straight.
We were due to check out of the apartment in Madrid on Monday, which meant we needed to arrange some additional accommodations stat. I had been considering Sevilla, but after searching a few days prior and not seeing anything that looked good for what we wanted to spend, I pivoted and started looking at the Costa del Sol. As much as we liked Madrid (and we really did), we needed a bigger place, a bit more quiet, and some sun. In short, we needed somewhere we could just relax for a bit. We had hit the ground running in Madrid and needed to slow down.
There’s a world schooling community in La Herradura that I knew about, so I targeted that general area and selected a handful of potential AirBNBs. I sent them to the family and asked for their thoughts. C deferred to S and she began nitpicking every listing. The beds in one looked too uncomfortable; the rooms in another looked too dark. Mind you, they all had great reviews. She and N ended up between two different places. We finally picked one with amazing views of the water. I was so tired at that point that we could've picked almost anything and I would’ve said yes. It was after 11pm and I just wanted to go to bed but also needed to know we were going to have a place to stay! I felt very anxious.
I messaged the host with a few questions; we were past the cancelation window, so I wanted to be sure he’d be communicative at the very least and I wanted to make sure wifi stretched throughout the house. His response Sunday morning was encouraging, so I made the reservation.
We left Monday morning and I knew we’d be a bit crunched for time because we’d all been waking up late (it’s been hard to adjust to European time). I hadn’t slept well (again) and needed to finish packing, plus run to Lidl to buy sliced cheese and deli meat so I could make sandwiches for the train. It was a good call to bring the food, but I should’ve gone to the store the day before, as it definitely ate up time we didn’t really have.
I ordered an Uber and was a bit nervous because there was no XL option available; I hoped we could fit with all our stuff. When the first Uber was about 4 minutes away it missed a turn and those 4 minutes became 8; then they became 12. We didn’t have the time to spare, so I started to panic. I fumbled with trying to cancel that Uber and order another. I don’t take Ubers often and it wasn’t intuitive to me. I finally did it, but in my head I heard a ticking clock. N was feeding off my energy and she was vocally anxious. The second Uber arrived and, mercifully, our luggage just fit in the trunk, with some careful Tetrising. We sat with our backpacks on our laps.
Mercifully, it was a short ride to the train station but, as with getting to the airport in Lisbon, the “last mile” was a parking lot. We sat in a line of cars that didn’t move. Finally we just asked if we could get out because we knew we could walk faster than the car was moving. Our driver helped us with our stuff and we dashed into the train station looking for a place to print our tickets.
Sidebar: When I bought our train tickets online, the messaging made it very clear that my receipt would not grant us entrance to the train. We would need printed tickets or we would need to download them in the Renfe app. Great, I figured that’s what I’d do. Only it wasn’t possible. For whatever reason (I never figured it out) I couldn’t associate the tickets I’d bought online with my profile in the app. It was truly frustrating. I Googled but couldn’t find a solution that worked for me. I finally found a post that said you could print your tickets at the train station; all you needed was the credit card you booked them with. Great!
So at the train station I looked for a machine where I could print our tickets. The first machine I tried didn’t work; I think it must’ve been a parking machine? At this point I started to panic. We had <25 minutes to catch our train and I had no idea where we needed to be or how to print our tickets. I looked around for someone to consult, but only saw other travelers. Shit.
So we headed downstairs in hopes something would become obvious. I saw a woman directing people and approached her. She asked where I bought my tickets and my mind temporarily went blank. What did she mean? Online, duh. But she meant which operator did I buy them from. There are multiple companies that run trains out of the station. I scanned my mind for the name: Renfe! She pointed us toward the corner and said their office was over there. I was confused because I thought I needed a machine. Gah.
So we walked to the “office,” which was a booth, really, and the woman there printed our tickets for us. PHEW! Now we just needed to go through security. Shit. I hadn’t planned for security. Was it like airport security? Would it take as long? Could we bring water through? (Yes, I asked the ticket lady—double phew because there are no water fountains in Europe to refill your water bottle.) What about shoes? Laptops? Apparently, we could just shove everything through together. Relief. Only as N was trying to get her purse off, it snagged on her sweater, which made her panic. I helped her get disentangled, but it tore a small hole; our nerves were shot and she and I were in quite a heightened state.
Once we got through security we had to find our gate. I looked at our tickets and thought we were at 7b, but we couldn’t find a 7b so found an information desk; they said no gate had been assigned yet and that we had to wait until it appeared on the monitor. This was similar to how it had worked at the airport, so we went and stood with the masses. By this point we had about 15 minutes until our train was set to leave. Our tickets clearly said the doors would close 2 minutes prior to our departure time, but how could we board without a gate? It was confusing and I was worried we’d miss our train. The stress level was high.
Finally, with about 8 minutes to go they announced our gate (11) and everyone rushed towards it where we stood in line some more. The line led to an escalator that went down to the platform where we had to walk and walk and walk. Why was our train parked so far way (just like the plane in Lisbon—was this a trend?)?! We got to our train but the entrance to our car was blocked, so we had to get on in the car before and then navigate to ours. I was SO happy to plop down in our seat and just start to decompress. We had gotten “comfort seats” (more room, essentially) and they were so worth it.
The train ride itself was pretty uneventful. Very few announcements were made. At some point the train just started moving and then we were on our way. It picked up speed slowly until it was humming along. I think we reached a max speed of about 180 mph? Maybe only 160. I didn’t pay close attention. We slowed down in certain areas and we made a quick stop in Cordoba. The train made a side-to-side motion as we sped along; I don’t know that I could sleep on a train. I was glad we were just doing a day trip. That said, I much preferred the train to flying.
I mostly passed the time staring out the window at the landscape while eating my lunch. It was much greener outside than I anticipated. It looked a lot like California and was also similar to the landscape in Portugal, which makes sense.
Though I had decompressed on the train ride, my stress came right back as we went to rent a car. When I had made a reservation the night prior, I spent time comparing rates across various companies. I finally went with Hertz. The cost to add an additional driver (with any of the companies) was outlandish. I realized how much I take for granted that the US doesn’t charge you more for a second driver. Yikes. We couldn’t justify the cost (it was enough already), so I would be the driver for this part of the trip.
I got checked in and they tried to upsell me on various things, which I expected. I declined additional insurance (though this made me nervous, but we were using our Chase Sapphire Reserve, which provides primary coverage, plus we had our insurance from the US, though I wasn’t 100% sure it covered anything). I finally got through the process and had key in hand. We had to go down the elevator to the parking garage, walk almost all the way to the other end and then halfway down an aisle to find our car, all while transporting our luggage. Fun.
Actually, the real “fun” was discovering that our luggage didn’t fit in the trunk of the car. Also, there was barely any leg room for the girls in the back seat. Fuuuuuudge, only I didn’t say fudge.
Instead, we took our stuff out of the car and walked back down to the start of the aisle. I left C and the girls with our luggage and made the trek back upstairs.
I explained the situation at the rental car counter (as best I could in Spanish, but it was getting difficult because I was tired and stressed). The woman tried to help me, but she said they didn’t have anything bigger in an intermediate; I would have to go up a car class to get what I wanted. There was some lost in translation going on (including the fact that I was unfamiliar with 90+% of the car makes and models being offered); the net net is that my idea of intermediate car did not match the reality of intermediate-sized cars in Spain. What we needed was something bigger and I didn’t want to pay the rate quoted (it was $$$). I was super frustrated and stressed.
I knew I needed to consider additional options, so I told the woman I’d be back. I stepped out and took some deep breaths and decided to shop around at some of the other rental car companies, despite not having a reservation. What did I have to lose? I started at Enterprise. I’m grateful the woman there offered to speak to me in English; my brain was really taxed. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help me, as they didn’t do same-day reservations, but she said I’d have good luck at the airport, if needed. She also suggested that I try next door at Budget/Avis, so I popped over there and started all over again.
Fortunately, the man there was really customer focused. He listened to me, quoted me a price that wasn’t horrible, grabbed five sets of car keys and headed down to the parking garage with me to look at the cars. C found us as we came down and joined us in the hunt for the right car. The kids also caught up and we just started loading suitcases in until we found something that worked. It ended up being a Peugeot 3008; it was manual. I hadn’t driven a manual transmission since we were in Portugal, but I was relatively confident I could do it again. I left the family there and went back upstairs to do the paperwork.
Nearly two hours after arriving at the train station, we finally departed. It was a little sketchy getting out of the parking garage; everything is smaller in Europe and, remember, I was in a “big” car. Oy. Chris navigated for me on top of the Google maps audio and I finally made it to the highway. Mercifully, there weren’t many people on the road, so it was fairly easy driving. It took about an hour to get to our exit and, from there we made some zigzags around corners and up and down hills. And then we arrived at the turn into the neighborhood where our AirBNB was. And this is where things got really interesting.
The neighborhood was built into the side of a hill and the narrow road that ran through it zigzagged up. Remember, I was in a manual transmission, and I started having flashbacks to Portugal. I started to panic. When I drive hills in a manual, I rely on the e-brake, only the e-brake in this car was newfangled — it was one of those small “tabs,” the ones that look like the button you use to raise and lower the car window. How the hell was I supposed to use that?! There was only one way to find out: Try. Because I had no other option.
I had come up behind a work truck and didn’t think I had room to get around it, so I had stopped. Now I was on an incline and had to figure out how to get started again and get past the truck without crashing into anything or injuring anyone. My heart was in my throat and I was FREAKED out. Like, crying/screaming and losing my shit. It was not my finest hour, but I was good and truly scared. It took a few tries before I made it past and when I got to the hairpin turn ahead where things flattened out a bit, I stopped and cried. I had NO idea how I was going to make it up to the house. C asked if I wanted him to try. I said no because my brain simply could not function at that point. When humans are triggered, we go into fight/flight/freeze mode because our amygdala takes over. I was frozen. Completely and utterly. It was such a primal feeling of fear and helplessness. There’s really no other way to describe it.
But I had to keep going, so I started again and crawled up the road; the key was forward momentum without stopping. I managed to get around the last hairpin curve and to the house, but there was zero way for me to get the car into the garage. First, it was tiny. Second, the road was narrow. Third, I couldn’t figure out how to reverse the car. I mean, I could put it in reverse (C confirmed that the backup lights were on), but I couldn’t get it to go backwards; instead, it just rolled forward, which terrified me. I was shaking I was sobbing so hard, so I messaged the AirBNB host (don’t worry, the car was fully stopped with the e-brake on) and he said it was okay to park the car to the side of the road. So C directed me as close to the edge as possible without going into the drainage dip (don’t worry, it was against the house, not at the edge of a cliff).
I turned the car off and just sat there, crying. We had no way to turn the car around, no way to go anywhere, and no food to eat. The sun was setting (ironically, it was a beautiful sunset over the Alboran Sea that I couldn’t begin to appreciate because I was so worked up. I managed to get out of the car and C just embraced me while I sobbed and shook. I had completely freaked the girls out (dear therapist: apologies) and I had freaked myself out. I’m honestly not sure why this particular situation felt so threatening to me, but it absolutely did. Even writing about it gives me a panicky feeling.
We managed to lug our suitcases up a couple of flights of terraced stairs to reach the front door. There was a beautiful patio overlooking the pool below and the view of the sunset was magnificent. I took photos, but I wasn’t present in the moment. I was going through the information our host had sent, including for taxi drivers, and was messaging one to see if they could drive us into town to get food. She was one town over so recommended a colleague, who I started a new message thread with. My brain was so tired and my soul was so shaken that it took every brain cell I had left to put sentences together in Spanish. In between messaging, I got my things inside but didn’t explore a single part of the house, even as I listened to the girls checking it out.
At a quick glance, it looked lovely, but I was so concerned with how we’d ever leave that I couldn’t think of anything else. I secured the taxi driver to take us to a restaurant at 7pm; it was just after 6pm. But no sooner had I done that than I realized we’d be in the same predicament the next morning, so I messaged back and asked if he could take us to the grocery store instead. Yes. I went in search of our two bags, plus I found one more in the kitchen. I was starting to calm down a little bit, but only just so. My body had so much adrenaline and cortisol running through it.
Our taxi guy, Tony, was so nice. He was from Salobreña but had lived in Switzerland, Germany, and other locations before coming back. He spoke multiple languages, but we spoke in Spanish. My brain was still tired, but with less stress I could carry on a lighthearted conversation. He dropped us at Lidl and told us to message him when we were finished.
Of course, grocery shopping in a new store is disorienting and takes longer, so we wandered the aisles and did our best to pick foods we could make meals out of for at least two days. We couldn’t find natural peanut butter or carbonated water (aka Perrier); everything else seemed to have sugar in it. But otherwise we got what we needed. Tony swung back by to pick us up and dropped us at the house with no problem. Oh, to be so adept at navigating steep, narrow streets in a manual.
Now I could finally relax and check out the house. We would solve the car problem another day.
Have you melted down while traveling? What happened? What helped you move through it?