G The Costa according to Raj

Spain - Costa del Sol

My parents have an apartment up in the hills of Calahonda, mid way between Fuengirola on the east and Marbella to the west, in a municipality called Mijas.  Málaga lies about 50 minutes drive to the east and has the most convenient airport, whilst Gibraltar is just over an hour in the other direction.  As a consequence of having visited a few times in the first few years of the decade I am fairly familiar with the region, and I love it.

Travel arrangements

Flights

I have worked in IT with the travel industry for several years, since the early 90s.  Until being made redundant in March of 2003, I worked for Avro plc (a seat-only tour operator, operating as part of the same group of companies as the more familiar Cosmos brand, and who consistently win the trade's own awards for best seat-only operator with almost embarrassing regularity).  During my employment there I had access to up-to-the-minute deals on seats which made the travelling aspect easy and relatively inexpensive.  For flights,I used to recommend Avro - despite some lingering bitterness - but they long since ceased trading, and their sister companies Monarch Airlines and Cosmos took over retail and trade selling channels respectively.  More recently, Monarch went to the wall in October 2017.

These days unless you want a complete package holiday, I currently recommend booking online directly with one of the major carriers.  Certainly better that than the "no frills" cattle carriers for the simple reasons of comfort and quality of service, particularly in the case of delays or mishaps.  There just is no comparison.  If you don't object to being herded like livestock, legitimate complaints ignored or belittled, and money is your only concern, I'm sure that the economy airlines have something to offer, although at the present time all the airlines are under such stress from reduced air travel that they are all relatively cheap.  For me the flying is an integral part of the holiday, as much to be enjoyed as reaching the destination, and these things matter.  You get what you pay for (or more accurately you don't get what you don't pay for).

Car hire

With a package holiday it is perfectly feasible to book the holiday and with the exception of excursions or occasional taxi or bus ride stay within walking distance of your accommodation.  In independent accommodation such as the developments at Calahonda where building ranges back from the coast for a couple of kilometers up the hillside to an altitude of 200 or 300 metres it simply is not practical to manage without a car.  There was a "road train" which wound its way up and down the hill providing public transport, but that service is now long since defunct.&bsp; Public bus services do, now, serve some of the upper reaches of the hill, but only part way up, and since development is extending ever further up the hill.

It is entirely possible to hire a car on the spot on arrival at the airport at Málaga, but it tends to be cheaper and more convenient to make arrangements in advance.  Over the last two decades I have had dealings with a number of different car hire companies, both large and small.

Several of the companies I used to deal with for car hire are no more.  Santamed were based on Merseyside in the UK and offered extraordinarily good value, but the owners sold up and moved on.  The company I chose to replace them, Regamallorca, were based (as the name suggests) in Mallorca, became Recar (and recar.org), provided car hire pretty much anywhere in Spain, but vanished several years ago.  More recently I have dealt with Sixt (one very good experience; one rotten), and Goldcar (https://www.goldcar.es/en/).  My favoured choice at present is Fetajo Rentacar (https://fetajorentacar.com/) who only operate locally to the area, but offer very good deals and service.  (I receive no benefit for offering this recommendation.)

The region

The Costa del Sol (which as might be obvious translates literally to "the Sun coast") lies to the west of Málaga and east of Gibraltar.


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Page created: December 30, 2002.  Last updated October 04, 2020.
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