Sun and Surf in Spain

It seemed a glib statement: "We're going to get a mad beach house, for peanuts, overlooking a point break in a remote part of Spain". I tried to temper my expectations as we approached the Atlantic coast. The rank overdevelopment on the Med side suggested that a tiny apartment nestled amongst a forest of high rises might be a more realistic goal.


Post surf - Bloke, Beer, View,
Private Reef Break. Stylin'.

However, the research paid off.  This part of Spain seems to have escaped the worst ravages of the developers, and retains a sleepy charm not unlike the south coast of NSW. A bit of a drive around looking at the "for rent" signs and bingo: Cheap, white-painted, beach front nirvana in near-deserted Los Canos de Meca, in a cul de sac a few doors down from the National Park. This joint would have the Sydney real estate agents oozing superlatives faster than you could say "underquoted auction expectation". Realistically, about 80% of the town is empty holiday rentals, so we had our pick.



An Aussie Senhora soaks up some Spanish winter sun with good book



It's mostly deserted except for a few itinerant surfers, locals and travellers, but nothing you could call a crowd. At night the light from the lonely Cape Trafalgar lighthouse (think Lord Nelson's Battle) flicks past the windows every six seconds, from about 1 km away. The restaurants are mostly boarded up for the winter, apart from one casual joint that fires up on weekends. There is a single cafe/bar down the road and a couple more if we drive to the cape, which is protected and hence a bit of a weekend family and beginner surfer spot. If there were tumbleweeds in Spain they would be blowing down the main street.

The cruisy beach scene round the cape at El Palmar

The weather has been fantastic. While there has been the odd Atlantic storm crashing on the rocks below our house, (and they can be impressive) mostly it's board shorts and tee shirts. Africa is a scant 40 KM away: sunny windless days are not uncommon and we can see Tangier on a good day.



For the surfers: Not in vain have I dragged that cursed, heavy and seemingly superfluous board bag through half the airport terminals in Europe, not to mention all over the placid Med, often in the face of scathing belittlement from those I hold dearest.  Finally it makes sense - there actually is a reef break right out the front. On weekends it can get crowded though - sometimes as many as five surfers are out there.


Finishing a session at the private reef. Note the non-crowd.



The North Atlantic brews up enormous storms in December through to February that leaves most of Portugal, Spain and France maxed out and unsurfable. Down here though the Algarve peninsula moderates the worst of it, but the long period groundswells still wrap right in. So while it is flat here most of the year, right now it is consistently cranking with ground swells originating from Perfect Storms in Novia Scotia and environs. While we face dead south, to the west of Cabo Trafalgar we have El Palmar, which faces more westerly and gets a bit more swell on the small days. So there's always options and it's usually offshore somewhere. The outer reefs around the cape mean that even when there's 4 m swells smashing in out the front we can find a spot for the kids to get a wave. Best of all, unlike further up the coast, the water temperature is a balmy 16 degrees: the kid's Sydney wetties serve them just fine. My new 4:3 is toasty and a lot less "michelin man" than the forebear I used in wintry Victoria many years ago; albeit that the new front zip design is like escaping from a straight jacket every day.   



Playing "smashes" in the dumpers at Cabo Trafalgar



Spanish cuisine has been good. Tapas is a great way to eat and we have been pleasantly suprised with what we have been dished up in some of the little nondescript bars. Restaurants don't open for dinner until 9pm though, so it's usually a lunch experience for us.  Nothing yet beats the high end Tapas we have enjoyed in Oz, in this area it's more of a cruisy relaxed style of dining. There is one exception though:  Pig. This is taken very seriously. Jamon Iberico (Iberian ham, like proscuitto) is justifiably world famous: Easso will charge you $30 for just a few dissolve-on-the-tongue slices down at Rockpool. Here even the tired, chain supermarkets offer some heavyweight stuff in this department and can charge big money for the real deal. Nonetheless I bought an entire kilo of pork sirloin for eur 7 which seemed at odds with the usual worship of the flesh of that beast -strangely, nothing else was available. The planned slow cook would have been a criminal use of such a prime cut so I made solomillos for the skillet instead ... Queso Curado (Cured cheese) is also a specialty. 

The jamon display in an otherwise dingy and nondescript
Coles-type supermarket in a smallish town.

Cathe's mother Moira has just flown in and joined us. Everyone is excited to have someone else to talk to and hopefully her presence will moderate the worst of the intra-family stoushing. 

But our 3 sleepy weeks are nearly up. Time to get back in the car and do the tourist thing: Here come the Griswalds. We'll try and keep Grandma off the roof though. We're heading north through Spain and then a south-western France stint beckons with the associated lure of French food and wine before we wrap it with 5 days in Paris and a last hurrah on the boat.

Adios amigos.  

Barcelona and onward by Cathe

For the last while, which may be weeks or months, depending on the slippage and consistency of time and how its experienced – or retained – I have had my dad nestled in close to me. Its not a morbid thing. He got a decent life as he lived to 84.

Modernista door, Barelona

We visited the Museo de Miro today. Miro lived till 90, from 1893 to 1983, which seemed a refinement in numbers amongst all the other facts that made up or stepped his life output in chronological seams. Doodling that became fluid, descriptive, symbolic, balletic. Experimentation and the perpetual, relentless effort to pursue and create. Materials that aroused curiosity and eagerness – where was the trepidation? Just get on and do. Sholto had an audio guide which he diligently and absorbedly listened to until the 132 minute was reached and he was lurched into boredom.

Rare Saintly Children in La Sagrada Familia

The visiting exhibition was of English artists from WW2 to the 60’s – people like Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon. It was a good selection of works, though my attention was stolen by a group of Barcelonian women on a private tour – all post 60, all swathed in fur coats, expensive baubles and artfully styled volume heightened hair. A dozen individuals clustered in a tight pack. Furs in Ocelot, Leopard, Siberian fox and all to the knee or mid calf, like 50’s movie stars. Sort of like looking at a moving Annie Leibovitz cover for Vanity Fair. A few of them stepped over the floor line demarcating the too close to the artwork barrier setting off the alarm but the guard stoically resisted the temptation to offer a caution.

 

Gaudi Modernista style

Barcelona is really a gracious city. The modernist buildings and streets of the 1800s are the grace we move through. It enhances the people too, or perhaps they are in empatico with this gracious architecture. I soak up the details: a man in a wool bottle green coat, brown trilby hat smoking a pipe, reading a book, legs crossed, completely absorbed. Two women smoking thin cigarettes, sangria bottle, outdoor table, faces turned to the sun. Turning a corner unexpectedly to stop suddenly at the beauty of a Gaudi apartment building glinting in the evening light. Tapas bars and restaurants with legs of ham hung from the ceiling somehow looking inviting when they should be repellent in their withered creepy skins.


The coolness of January unfortunately gave us all a bout of the winter flu, and our forays into the streets became shorter with each passing day. Our favourite haunt was a local bakery café which we had to visit several times in order to work through the selection of pastries.



Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia

After a week enjoying the sights we cut a 2 month deal on a hire car for the rest of our mainland stint. Two nights were spent in Valencia, and we visited the sci fi buildings of the Cuidad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), which show what Darling Harbour could have been like if our town planners had a bit more chutzpah. Can they lift their game with Bangaroo? It seems not. From here we spent a forgettable night in one of the huge number of forgettable Spanish med holiday resort towns. Hundreds of Kilometres of Gold Coast basically. Time to head inland.




Parc Natural Sierra de Grazalema

Skirting the Sierra Nevada we came to a great little mountain village in the Parc Natural Sierra de Grazalema. We decided to stay 3 nights so we could do some hiking. There’s something about a great bushwalk that puts all of us in great spirits. All the walks require permits and a finite number are available each day, so it being the weekend, we were lucky to secure two lengthy hikes. The first hike took us along a gorge famous for some rare griffon vultures but as it was on a long boring road we quickly worked out a more adventurous path would be to duck onto a goat track and orienteer our own way. Steve reveled in taking bearings from his hand held GPS, Finbar relished in applying these coordinates to the map, Sholto was our hunter mage and I found the track down once we realized we were lost. Just kidding – we were just slightly left of the mark. Our last and longest hike took us through the pinsapar (woodland) of rare Spanish Fir, over a sierra where snow and ice were fresh, and into the village of Benhamahoma, where our much anticipated long Sunday grazing lunch was sadly lost amongst mountains of chips.



Rugged Orienteers heading for a long lunch