Costa De La Luz fronts the Atlantic Ocean in a more laid back fashion than the resorts of Costa Del Sol. The coastal landscape is flatter and scattered with low-rise towns and villages that lie lazily along the beaches; no noisy mountainous apartment blocks here. There is a hippy ambience in places where the surfers have moved in and beach front businesses, mostly closed as this is low season, promise languorous lunches and lively evenings in summer time.
The sand here is soft and golden. The inland landscape undulates gently unlike the craggy backdrop of Costa Del Sol. The hills are encrusted, not with snow, but with Andalucia’s traditional white towns, and broccoli-like pine woods provide shady cover.
We came here after a night’s stay in old Cádiz. What a lovely old town! Seville, grand and polished as she is, displays her touristy credentials expensively, whereas a wander around the sea wall and the streets of Cádiz felt more authentic somehow. It’s an old sea-faring town with its Moorish heritage evident. Its geography is intriguing, being out on a spit of land and fortified from the sea and invasion. We hadn’t intended to, but we parked up for the night near the port and in the evening went back into the old town for a meal and a chance to people watch.
We have been most amused by the way Spain (except Seville, like most big cities, I guess) runs its day. It’s December, and dark until about 8.30 in the morning (I say ‘about’ as we’ve given up looking at clocks, falling in step with the rhythm of the day instead). Spain starts to wake up as the sun rises. The nights are generally quiet and it’s rare to hear a dog bark, unlike our experience of Italy where dogs and mopeds are insomniac....in June at any rate. Spain seems to go about its business through the morning, until around 1.00 when everyone stops for lunch. Bars are unshuttered, chairs and tables spill out onto cobbled streets and plazas, the air fills with animated Spanish chattering and with smells that make your saliva prickle under the tongue. Then, at around 4.00 pm, all goes quiet again. Doors close and the street furniture is tidied away. At around 6.00 pm, when it’s dark, the town flowers fully into a blooming wonderland of bars, cafes, restaurants, and brightly lit little shops that weren’t visible during the afternoon, and everything spills its enticements into the now crowded chattery streets and alleyways.
That was our experience of a Christmassy Cádiz, at any rate. That night we ate fried fish and pizza, watching the Christmas bustle, bought some sweet treats for our Christmas cache and then at 9.00 pm everything suddenly went quiet again. Later, back at the van, we got ready for a night’s sleep hoping that the port conformed to Spanish sleepy-time rules, which fortunately it did. But.....we hadn’t taken account of the nightclub that suddenly burst open alongside our car park and ambling carousers serenaded the night with cackling revelries. Well, it IS Christmas, so what could we expect?
We headed south from Cádiz, looking for a proper campsite to pitch up in for Christmas. An area near Conil de la Frontera promised a few ACSI sites so we made a booking, called in at a Mercadona supermarket (I love Mercadona!) to stock up on some more Christmas tit-bits and made for the site. Nice.
Pinar San Jose offered us all of the necessary facilities for 19 Euros a night underneath some strange Spanish pine trees that, as I said before, look like sticks of broccoli. The sleepy village of Zahora is one of three along the coast of Trafalgar in an area called Los Canos De Meca. The beach is peaceful and beautiful so it’s hard to imagine the sea battle that Nelson fought out in the bay there. The mainly dirt streets of Zahora are confusing to navigate, in spite of our little map, so inevitably, each time we walked to the beach we got lost coming back by what was each time a longer route. Fiendishly clever, these Spaniards.
Washing done, our Christmas lights draped in the trees and in the van, we made ready for Christmas. We were curious about a note in the window of another British van asking for Christmas lunch bookings. Dawn, the ‘lady in the van’, told us that it’s a tradition amongst the winter site residents to have a communal Christmas lunch in the restaurant. She invited us to join in, so we agreed and we also accepted an invitation to join in with the ‘settlers’ for afternoon drinks and nibbles on Christmas Eve. It was a delightful, sunny, camp-chaired gathering outside the van of another British couple, Joy and Andy.
Afternoon ran into evening as the wine flowed generously, and we all sang along to Phil King’s guitar. This guy has written books on his experiences of travelling around Europe as a retiree with a caravan. He and his (fifth!) wife, Hazel, upped sticks, rented out their house and headed into the relatively unknown without an agenda, as so many of the older generation have done and are still doing. I count myself, now, as one of them, of course. European Union has made it so easy, but with Brexit looming, many are wondering how they can sustain this easy, bohemian lifestyle.
Tarted up a bit for Christmas lunch we joined the throng in the restaurant around a huge table set with all of the Christmas novelties and enjoyed lively conversation, jollification and a Spanish offering of Christmas fare (several courses of fish followed by tasty sweet treats). I sat next to a Swiss couple and conversed for ages in spite of my having no Swiss-German and she having no English or French. We drew numbers and diagrams on the paper table cloth to communicate information about places to see, our families, our travels and even our countries’ different pension arrangements. Admittedly her husband, who spoke some English, was consulted when we got stuck.
It always fascinates me how well people can communicate in spite of language differences. Gareth has only English but seems to do well enough with hand gestures. Our “Gracias”, “Buenos Dias” and “Hola” and “No hablas espagnole” get us by sufficiently....so far, anyway. We have both, however, resolved to make more of an effort to learn Spanish. I have to admit, again, that mother was right; my reluctant study of Latin along with my old-fashioned education in French, have really helped in my interpretation of both Italian and Spanish - in the written form, at least. I am stuck when it comes to understanding the spoken word though. Mind you, modern technology is brilliant! Our Google-Translate app is a life-saver! Without it the Christmas pudding I succeeded in making in our thermal cooker would have contained a large helping of salt instead of flour.
We had intended leaving the campsite on Boxing Day, but Diana, a lady who lives in a big old fifth wheel rig, had invited everyone for nibbles and mince pies on Boxing Day. The promise of mince pies did it for Gareth so we stayed and once again enjoyed the easy acceptance of us into this community of ‘snow birds’. Eventually we said our goodbyes and the disappointment expressed about our leaving was warm and genuine. We ourselves began to wonder why we were going. Where were we going anyway? We had no agenda, really, but the site did harbour a sinister threat and it was the deciding factor for our departure.
High up in the pine trees we were all camped beneath were some gossamer covered balls of something that we learned are the nests of a killer caterpillar. They are becoming a pest all over Europe, we were told. They are quite large with poisonous hairs that cause toxic reactions and swelling and respiratory problems on contact. We heard some gruesome tales of rare but nevertheless scary mishaps; dogs being particularly vulnerable. The trees in the area had apparently been treated but the creatures remain toxic even when dead so if they are lying around on the woodland floor they can still be lethal. When they hatch from the ‘nest’ they are ‘processional’ - numbers of them walking along nose to tail, and news had gone out that they are hatching earlier than usual. The settled snow birds weren’t especially concerned, but we weren’t sad to leave the threat of poisonous infestations behind, that’s for sure!
Next blog to follow very shortly, folks, but I could go on and on here, so that’s it for now.
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