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Ernest Hemingway knew how to have a good time. Especially in Spain. In Death in the Afternoon he describes Ronda, a small town in the southern province of Andalusia, as the perfect place for a honeymoon, “or if you ever bolt with anyone." I wasn’t on my honeymoon, and I certainly wasn’t bolting with anyone, but I can vouch that Ronda is perfect anyway.

Approaching from the valley below, you see the town shimmering high in the distance, an ancient white village clinging like a cloud puff to a slender mountain ridge in the Serranía de Ronda. This, in itself, isn’t unusual. Andalusia is loaded with ancient white villages clinging like cloud puffs to slender mountain ridges. What distinguishes Ronda is that the ridge to which it clings is split down the middle, cleaved clean and sheer as if by a thunderbolt. Homes and patios clamp limpet-like to the edge of the abyss, a vertical crevasse 60 feet wide and 400 feet deep. Like every visitor to Ronda, the first thing I did when I got to town was stand on the old stone Puente Nuevo bridge and peer over the edge, squinting into the updraft. It was so dramatic that I almost felt like jumping in, just to see what it felt like.

Known as El Tajo — Spanish for “the cut” or “slash” — the gorge has a history all its own. In the Middle Ages the Moors cut 233 steps into the rock face, allowing a chain of slaves to retrieve water from the river below. Later, in the 18th century, the renowned Ronda bullfighter Pedro Romero (immortalised in a portrait by Goya), reputedly hurled his wife into the gorge after discovering her in bed with another man, an incident that inspired Prosper Mérimée to write Carmen, the novella on which Bizet’s opera is based. During the Spanish Civil War, some 500 fascists met a similar fate when they were mobbed by the townspeople and thrown into the depths.

Today the locals have given up on the throwing-people-into-the-gorge caper: that would be far too energetic. Like most Andalusians they have perfected the art of doing very little, but always with a great sense of purpose. Sitting in taverns sipping wine is a perfectly respectable way to pass the day here; indeed, many Spaniards devote their entire lives to it. I considered joining them, but decided to first spend some time checking out the sights, starting with Ronda’s famous bullring. Built in 1785, this is one of Spain’s oldest and prettiest rings, with its cloister-like galleries and tiled roof. It also comes with an excellent little museum, a veritable trove of bullfighting lore and esoterica, such as the fact that that Dali and Picasso both cut their teeth painting bullfight posters. Hanging on the museum wall is the ossified skull of an uru, a now extinct breed of giant Iberian bison whose head alone weighed 50 kilos.

But Ronda lends itself best to aimless wandering. It’s small enough that even someone as directionally impaired as myself could meander at will, safe in the knowledge that I couldn’t get lost; I just had to keep an eye out for cliffs. There were narrow, echoing alleys, ancient gnarled doors, old rotting church towers that were once Arab minarets. At points I found the gorge narrow enough to lob a ball across; I could see into the kitchens of the houses across the way. And everywhere I went there were views that hit me like a slap in the face; big broad eyefuls of the valley below, the land fanning out in a quilt of olive groves and orange orchards.

Though I’d planned to stay just two days in Ronda, I ended up staying four. I was on holiday, after all. And as the Spanish know, learning to do nothing takes time.

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