"Do you know about compost toilets?" asked Henrietta Hunt, just before she showed me to my yurt. No, I had to admit, I didn't.
"Well," says Henrietta. "They work best if you don't pee in them." Right. So where exactly ...? She gestured towards the cork and olive trees scattered around the nine acres of Spanish sierra countryside she shares with her husband Ed. "Anywhere, really."
I am telling you this because if you can't handle a bit of al fresco peeing, you are not going to enjoy the Abubilla Yurt Hotel.
Ditto the nervous motorist: getting there involves kilometers of hairpin mountain roads and a long boneshaking farm track more suited to a four-wheel drive than a hire car.
For the intrepid traveler, however, it offers an escape into rural Andalucia; a back-to-nature holiday in the unspoilt Grazalema mountains. While only two hours north of the Mediterranean coast, it is a world away from everything we associate with package holidays in Spain.
Abubilla consists of just two guest yurts (a circular tent, still common among the nomadic tribes of central Asia). Each has its generous patch of private garden with tree-shaded seating and mountain views (the Grazalemas in one direction, the distant Serrania de Ronda in the other). And though yurts are not the best-looking tents (a dome of pale yak-roped canvas sprinkled with tree droppings), they are among the finest in five-star camping.
Indeed, our yurt, the Afghani option (the other is native Mongolian), proved larger than the Ronda hotel room we slept in the night before. Roughly 4.5m in diameter, it is made of wands of willow, which form latticed walls, with slender roof beams supporting a bent-wood crown. It has steps up to a double door, through which we could see the mountains from the comfort of our double bed, and a proper wooden floor. There is a window cut into canvas, a domed ceiling lined with red wool trimmed with tapestry, sheepskin rugs, wicker chairs, ethnic furniture and textiles.
The yurt's own compost loo (where a handful of sawdust does the job of a conventional flush) sits behind a muslin curtain in a small detached shed, which also houses a little bathroom with a gas-heated shower.
Abubilla (which means hoopoe, a type of bird common to this area) began as the eco home of Ed Hunt, who had camped in a yurt on his Andalucian land for three years, before meeting -- and marrying -- designer Henrietta. Together they built an alternative family home (three living yurts, four-month-old baby Florence, three dogs, two cats) alongside the holiday venture that supports them.
They opened the hotel in May this year, and admit to a few teething problems. They apologized, for example, for the rumbling generator which, due to a new solar panel being detained by customs, was a necessary byproduct of refrigerated drinks and pumped water.
They were sorry, too, that the pool (small and shallow but swimmable) was a bit "slippery." Built by an Australian barman, it had leaked like a sieve, they explained; thus, a slippery coating of waterproof paint had to be installed as a temporary measure. They are also still waiting for young vines and bougainvillea to climb the pergola where the guests eat breakfast. But these things will have developed or grown by the time a third, family-sized yurt arrives next year; and nobody is complaining.
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