Take a left at the pineapple

On Wednesday my Scottish au pair friend Beth and I ventured to Buitrago del Lozoya to find the closest natural water feature in the greater Madrid area. Beth discovered the river by typing "water near Madrid" into Google and found information on yahoo answers. It said there was a river about an hour and a half North of the city... swimming in the river was not exactly encouraged but the local government did not care, however they did advise avoiding run ins with the Gaurdia Civil. As temperatures crept into the hundreds Beth and I decided to take our chances. We asked around town for directions to get down to the river to swim. People were not very helpful and usually directed us to the town pool. One man was very nice and did give us very specific directions to the river. He said to go strait down this road and then take a left at the pineapple (Beth heard "handstand" so clearly we both need to work on our Spanish a little more). We eventually snuck through someones backyard and traversed our way down to the river. We got to swim under a 14th century castle. When we got back to shore we found that we must have dropped our bags and lunches somewhere near an ant hill. I was mostly disappointed that they had got into my bacon-queso flavored bugles (my new favorite Spanish food). The ant infestation had somewhat spoiled our picnic plans so we headed back into town for some sangria. As we were leaving it started to hail mento sized chunks of ice. The temperatures dropped to 50 degrees and within moments we were soaking wet and freezing. We found refuge under a bus shelter. And no worries neither of us were seriously injured by the hail, though there were several that hit me in the eye. On the way home it was coming down so hard all the cars had to pull to the side of the road because you could not see through the windshield. After a full day of swimming, ants, and highly unusual precipitation we returned to an unbearably hot Madrid.