Spain: Stranded in Alicante!

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We just got back from a two-week holiday in Spain. I’m planning a full write-up of some of the stuff we got up to on holiday, but first I want to share the biggest disaster of the holiday.

We’d hired a car for the fortnight. Driving in Spain is pretty straightforward, and I really enjoy being able to go further afield from wherever we’re staying. Renting a car is the smart thing to do, and we’ve done it about four times now.

However, on this occasion, we’d decided to head for the town/city of Alicante. It was the biggest thing on all the road signs where we’d been travelling, so we figured that there must be something worthwhile seeing there. Sadly, when we got to Alicante, we followed the signs for the Gran Via, assuming it to be the city centre. Disappointingly, there was nothing notable to see there. Nothing at all. It was just a big, hot built-up city.

After getting frustrated about our inability to find anything remotely interesting, we stopped at a service station to refuel. We both did a double take at the pump to make sure we were choosing the right juice for the car – we were worried about putting the wrong fuel in and wrecking the engine.

So, you’ll appreciate the irony when we drove out of the station, got down the road and conked out at a roundabout. Hmm, first time I’d stalled a car in ages. So I tried again. The engine started just fine, but conked out when I tried to put in in gear. Tried again. And again. It kept conking out.

We eventually managed to get the car to move long enough to get it into a side street. So what’s wrong? Did we put in the wrong fuel after all? Not possible. Let’s check the obvious stuff – what about oil and water? Well, that was easier said than done – could we find a switch to open the hood? No. And the instruction manual was in Spanish. But after a while, I found a diagram showing that the lock was actually hidden behind the Ford logo.

Once I’d gotten the hood open, it didn’t take long to realise that it was out of water. But…we were in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, and it was siesta time.

Hold on! There’s a fountain at the roundabout nearby! We can get some water from there!

So, off I set to the roundabout armed with a small water bottle, and a beach bucket covered in sand. I skipped through the afternoon traffic and filled up at the fountain. Even that wasn’t enough to fill the water levels up enough. We’d discovered by that point that there was a Chinese restaurant nearby, so I went there for more water. Thankfully, they were open and they spoke English! I can speak un poco de Espanol, but not enough to explain car faults.

In the end, we got the engine running again. Hooray! But we’d seen enough of the tower blocks of Alicante. And in fear of our car letting us down again, we decided not to go back into the city, just to drive back to Villamartin where we were staying.

And to this day, we don’t know if we actually missed out on a golden opportunity in Alicante. Did we? If you’ve holidayed in Alicante, why not tell us what we’ve missed.