We're sitting on top of the world

We're in our hotel room within the castle walls at Marvao. The castle is perched high on a rocky outcrop high in the mountains that borders Spain. The altitude would be less than 2000 metres... trifling by South American standards... but it is one of the highest towns in Portugal. It's a fact of history that 12th century military technology was based on having a stronghold in the area most difficult to reach. Another tactic was to have town streets inside the castle as narrow and crooked as possible.

Now, let's look at modern economics. To attract the tourists, you want to keep the castle as authentic as possible. Don't straighten or widen any streets... keep street signage to a minimum. And as for choosing the best site for a hotel, of course that would be in the middle of the castle as close as possible to the castle keep.

The point of your bearing the load of such knowledge is for me to gain your sympathy for the driving stress Joye and I endure each day. Testing circumstances have resulted in a 'love-hate' relationship developing with our GPS navigation system. We have called this system 'Peggy'... she speaks very nicely to us and we reply just as courteously. That's the love part. On the express way and major roads we interact in a manner that borders on the 'unhealthy '. It isn't natural to share such tenderness and kindness with a machine. It is unnatural for a machine to anticipate so knowingly, the needs of a human. But there you have it.

Now we come to the' hate 'part. I put the following unfortunate circumstance entirely at the feet of Peggy. Near the end of each day, she has maliciously and wontedly attempted to cause car accidents. She takes delight in giving misleading directions to send us down the wrong road... so that she can say "recalculating' in her superior manner... gee I hate that! Circumstances are made no better by our tour organiser selecting hotels in smaller castle villages located in the middle of mountaintop towns.

Take this afternoon as an example. We had just completed a lovely stroll through an important castle... a centre that had withstood the might of the Moors... and had been instrumental in building an army that eventually forced the Moors southward. Our next stop was Marveu where we would stay for the night. There was a perfectly acceptable path using major roads and little confusion to get us to Marvao. Did Peggy choose this path? Oh no! She found another path that saved us one kilometre in distance but added 15 minutes of time... taking us through every barn yard of every subsistence farmer in the district. In one little village, Joye had to get out of the car and push the rear view mirrors closed so that we could fit between the farm buildings.

When we finally reach Marvao, Peggy says she knows how to drive to the location of the hotel high up in the castle close to the castle keep. We don't trust her. We park at the castle walls and walk up through the ancient site. There is the Jewish housing near the castle wall... another medieval military tactic... place your most disposable citizens in direct line of fire to slow down the advancing army. We scrambled up mountain goat type tracks to reach the castle keep... but no sign of our hotel was to be seen.

We went back to the car and for want of any better alternative, chose to trust Peggy. She drove us up streets that were near vertical... where only a cigarette paper separated each side of car from the buildings. Then when she had us in a position where we had no alternatives, she started giving silly instructions." Turn Right... Turn Right" she yelled out... when to follow her instruction would have meant certain death through a 500 metre fall into the valley below.

Clearly, we survived... no thanks to Peggy. We had to break every road rule in the book and execute precision driving. The place is fantastic. It is only Peggy that is putting a dampener on proceedings. My Immediate reaction is to keep her switched off for the day whole day tomorrow. She needs to be reminded who is boss. It's Joye... and Peggy shouldn't forget it!

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