Buggy ride in the Marbella mountains

This week I was out for a fantastic new experience.  A day out on a buggy ride in the mountains above Marbella. It was so much fun. Behind Marbella you find a huge nature park called Sierra de La Nieves and it is absolutely breath-taking.  My friend owns several fast buggies (1000 cc) that he rents out for track rides. We started behind Nueva Andalucía in La Quinta and from there you can just drive forever amongst wild animals and totally unspoiled nature. We stopped for lunch at the beautiful hidden away Cerro de Hijar Hotel  and from there we continued down past Istan village.

We also made a stop at the famous over 1000 year old chestnut tree; Castaño Santo . The tree is 15 metres thick around the trunk and the roots go over 22 metres deep.

All in all an amazing day filled with nature, history and lots of fast fun crazy driving. I can really recommend you to give it a try!

Maiti Nepal at the Swedish Church

This past weekend our first fund raising event for Maiti Nepal took place. We were invited to join the Swedish Church in both Fuengirola and Marbella for their Sunday service. It was such a beautiful day filled with many fantastic and genuine people.

We started at 11 am in Fuengirola, the main home for the Swedish church on the Costa del Sol. Even though this Sunday was the important skiing race, Vasaloppet on TV, live from Mora in Sweden, the church was almost full. The service went on for about one hour in which we gave an introduction of what Maiti Nepal stands for and how they help in the fight against human trafficking.  We also enjoyed beautiful live music and the priest gave a nice ceremony. We had a fantastic response after the service with questions and interest. It felt very rewarding and the collection from the day was more than double of that on a normal Sunday. Thank you all so much for the support!

From there we raced down to Restaurante El Gamonal in La Quinta for the Marbella service, together with priest Michael and his wife Lena who plays the piano and has an amazing voice. In Marbella there will be a church ceremony held every 14 days. The number of visitors were higher than expected so we had to get extra chairs brought out for everyone to have a seat. Again a great service with lovely response and we had the pleasure of listening to my friend Peet Rothwell ( www.peetasbuble.com ) singing two songs from Michael Bublé. Especially the song “I wanna go home” gave a beautiful message to the audience. The wish of all the young women and children that are held as sex slaves somewhere out there, is to be able to go home. Together we can help make that dream come true for some of them .

Donations can be made on: www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/marianne-steneholm

 

My burglary experiences

That moment we all fear, when you are awakened by a strange noise in the middle of the night. The noise of someone trying to force enter your home. That is exactly what happened to me a few nights ago.

At 4 am I suddenly wake up from a strange noise, metal against metal tapping noise. A bit drowsy,  it took me a few seconds to realise the sound was coming from my balcony. I jump off the bed and rush into the living room, still half naked in the dark. On the outside of my sliding balcony doors I see the contours of a person hunched over, trying to open my lock with a tool. ,You never know how you will react until you are put on the spot like I was that night.  As my week had been very emotional due to Davidson being ill ,  I went absolutely berserk.  I just screamed from the bottom of my lungs and started running towards the window waving my arms up and down. The burglar looked up straight at me with his face covered in a balaclava. Judging from the surprised look on his eyes, he probably thought I would run straight through the window haha. As I reached for my key to open the door, the burglar realized I was coming out there. He suddenly turned around and escaped by jumping down to the garden below me. I continued screaming as I saw him disappear across the communal gardens below. Once he was out of site I called the police 092. They were very quick to come and checked the perimeters of the urbanization.

Break ins happen all over the world and the burglars get bolder and bolder. I chased a burglar out of  a previous home about 8 years ago too. Same scenario but I had left the safety lock open so the access was much easier. However Davidson was well in those days and thankfully he alerted me! We work so hard to make a living so to get some lazy people intimidating you in your own home at night makes me go furious. I will not feel scared in my home. Following morning we put in additional locks and made other safety improvements. Some people may think it´s not a good subject to blog about, but at the end of the day, who doesn’t know that burglaries happen?

 

 

 

 

Snow in Marbella

After the recent rain flooding here, I really thought I had seen it all haha…well, wroooong! Last night at about 8pm,  a snow flake suddenly pops up on my dash board and the thermometer goes down to 3,5 degrees Celsius. For being Marbella, it was freezing! As I got home it had started snowing over La Concha mountain and all Malaga harbour and beach was covered in snow by midnight. This morning like every week day, my alarm rang at 6.15 and as I went to the gym it was pitch black but driving back home the sunrise gave me a big surprise as you can see on these photos and the video. Beautiful but definitely not our regular January weather! Luckily by Saturday the sun is back again 🙂 and all keen skiers will have a great time in Sierra Nevada !!