24 - 26th October - Mojacar to Elche

Our last two days at Mojacar were very relaxing. We walked down to the coast, along it, then back to the pueblo on Wednesday. Most of Thursday was given over to cleaning the house, washing down the car and other odd jobs. A last swim in the pool, coffee on the top public terrace in the pueblo where there is a magnificent panoramic view, and a much more satisfactory attempt at evening tapas at the bar just around from our place. For the latter, we ate some dinner at home, then wandered down at 8pm, when the kitchen at the bar was cranking up for tapas. The server thought it was a great joke that this time we made it in time for some cooked tapas and not just cheese and chorizo. So, with a beer for John, coffee for me, and four delicious plates of tapas, the grand sum of 10E was handed over. It is so cheap to live here. A cup of rich flavoursome coffee costs just 1E (NZ$1.70). We very much enjoyed our evening at the bar, surrounded by locals munching on tapas, no doubt before they went home and cooked dinner. By contrast, we went home and went to bed.

We have had a lovely time in Mojacar. We hope our friends the owners reciprocate and use our apartment in Ceret sometime. It took them 9 years to get to NZ (which they absolutely loved), after we stayed at this house in 2009 but Ceret is a little closer for second time around. Diego, a local Spaniard who looks after their house in Mojacar, arrived at 9am on Friday, so we handed over the keys, said farewell (in French - which we conversed in with him during the 2 weeks when we saw him) and turned the car in the direction northwards. So, we are finally starting on our trip home to NZ. 

Our plan for Friday was to drive the 2 hours north to Elche. Searching on the net for somewhere to stay, John discovered that Elche is a World Heritage Site, renowned for its prolific palm trees. We had wanted to visit it in 2009, but there were impossible roadworks at the time and we gave it away. It was settled by the Phoenicians in the 5th century BC. The urban area of Elche contains nearly 100ha of mainly date palms, numbering 70,000+ trees, though there are over 200,000 palms in the wider area. Obviously they're not over 2000 years old, but many are up to 300 years. The city is very proud of its palm heritage and there are many parks such as the Huerta del Cura within the historic area that contain some wonderful palm gardens. A number of the trees are particularly noted for their unique characteristics, e.g. 5 or 7 branches emanating at perhaps 2m height out of one trunk.

Five trunks at half-height

Seven trunks and over 200 years old

We arrived in Elche about 12.30pm, and checked into our Ibis Hotel accommodation for that evening. We'd stayed in the Ibis Budget Hotel in Barcelona on the way down and found it really good value, with a pretty decent breakfast. We set off walking the 3km from the hotel into the historic centre of Elche, marvelling very early on at the amazing palm gardens we were continually passing. The guy at the tourist office told us that the panorama from a nearby tower was worth checking out, but it closed at 3pm. We hot-footed it there, and the 170 steps up, to see a wonderful view over the city, complete with multiple palm gardens as far as the eye could see, plus ancient Moorish buildings.

View of one of the palm gardens from atop the tower

By 2:30pm we declared it was time for lunch, and thought we'd got it right for finding a Spanish menu of the day. Wrong again. Too late! We found a couple of restaurants that looked just the ticket, but they were full. Darn. Found another, with the menu for 3 courses at the typical 11E, so promptly sat down. It's just as well we weren't in a hurry. We chatted with two couples on a neighbouring table - they were French, from Brittany and near the Belgian border, and spend 6 months of each year in Spain. Meanwhile, we were all very slowly served our meal. We were served warm white and cold red wine! Why? The entrees were basic but fine, however the mains, when they finally arrived, were a little suspect. My hake looked on the light side of cooked. John's meat was cooked but in a very commercial Bisto-style sauce. At 3:50pm we decided we better shake a leg if we were going to wander through all the palm gardens on the 'list to see' from the tourist office. We stumbled across a medieval market (still closed for lunchtime at 4pm) very soon after.

Medieval market - we would  have loved to take one of these home with us

Pig on a spit

It was very nice walking through a few of these gardens, each of which held some quite remarkable examples of palms, with because of their size, shape or multiple branching. However, it was the cacti at one of the gardens that really gave the wow factor. Neither of us had ever seen giant cacti trees like we saw that day, nor such an array of huge and varied cacti plants. They were quite jaw-dropping and we spent a bit of time just gawping at them. Friendly neighbourhood ducks were also very photo worthy. 

Gorgeous duck

Huge cacti

Cacti trees

These must be incredible when in flower

All in all we very much enjoyed the few hours wandering from tree to tree, though towards 6pm, feeling very foot weary after 11km on the trot, and my tummy was feeling very unhappy post-lunch, we had to hotfoot it back to the hotel. I rapidly sent lunch on its way and spent an hour with my feet up before we trotted next door to the hypermarket and bought a tiny pizza, cheese, some drinking yogurt and bananas for dinner.