15-17 October - Coastal Walks

Monday dawned fine and clear. We thought we'd walk along the seafront, then lunch, and grab some groceries for meals. The coast is a mixed bag. It consists of a vast row of apartments, hotels and shops and restaurants of every description. The expat community really makes itself felt here, with much signage in English, and many restaurants clearly aiming at the British (we suspect overwhelmingly English) market. No trouble finding somewhere to get fish and chips, a curry or a Guinness. We walked several kilometres up the coast and back without finding a place for lunch that tempted us more than a tiny little bar we'd seen as we started off, so back there we went.

Some dreadful sights along our walk. Most of the people we saw were English couples in their 60s and 70s, mostly terribly unfit and overweight. It's sad that in this pleasant and sunny environment they are not prepared to get out and keep themselves in some sort of shape. There's no way we could consider buying here. If there are people like us who want to do more than eat, drink and bronze, they are not obvious.

Back at our little tapas bar, for the grand sum of 2 euros each we got a beer and a plate of tapas. My tapas was ortiguillas, introduced as fried seaweed. It tasted utterly delicious, totally like a tender piece of paua. Looking it up afterwards on Google, it turned out to be fried snakelocks anemones! Unfortunately not what the owner thought, as it was a vegan cafe, and we are sure anemones count as animals. Having satisfied our appetites we did a good shop at the local Mercadona supermarket and headed back home.

Now that's a croissant!

For the Tuesday, we wanted to finally get a good meal out, so thought we'd go the 5km to the port town of Garrucha to the north. A good move. We looked no further than the second place we saw and had an excellent menu del dia. Entree, salad, plates of chipirones and boquerones (fried anchovies), dessert, a bottle of wine all included, and we were most happy (11E). Another quick shop to get some forgotten extras and back home.

Wednesday was the first day we really felt in good shape again after our colds, and we celebrated with a 10 kilometre walk along  the nice La Mena Macenas coastal trail to the south. Quite a different coast to the Costa Brava, with very old tired hills coming down to meet the sea. The rock here is very folded and shattered, with quite steep hills popping up from the plains. A highlight was what I first took to be a little lizard on some rocks, but on closer inspection turned out to be a sweet little green chameleon.

A little green friend

There's still a lot of evidence of the 2008 financial crisis, with a number of huge coastal developments completely abandoned at various stages of construction.

Along the coast

 

Macenas Fort

We wrapped up our walk with a repeat of the little tapas bar, including the delicious but vegan-illegitimate ortiguillas.

We are enjoying the meals we are making ourselves. Lots of fresh peppers and tomatoes, some chorizo sausage, ham, Spanish and French cheeses, local bread, olives and pickles.

The weather has been mostly sunny, but it seems to cloud over in the afternoons, sometimes with a bit of rain. Karen has got into the pool every day to swim and aquajog, but I'm finding it a bit nippy. The weather report is for a lot more sun next week so I plan to make better use of it then. Other than that, we are very much enjoying having a quiet time here, with plenty of reading and relaxing. We noted a few interesting sights when we were in the pueblo this morning. The police station is in the main square, and after climbing into a police car, the police-woman in the passenger seat immediately checked her hair in the wing mirror, and spent some time smoothing it so it looked good for her excursion. At about the same time, a council worker chugged along in his rubbish collection putt-putt, jauntily smoking a cigar and checking his cellphone. Life is so different here from NZ or Aus. Not necessarily better or worse, but different.