Playa Los Alemanes….and more, much more….

 

April 9th-April 15th 2022

Between three map apps we sometimes still don’t know where we are going. Getting in and out of Sevilla was a piece of cake though…but staying there was the icing on the cake with a cherry on top. The monuments of Seville will leave one speechless. The City of 3000 year old history in a few days.

And 170 km of cycle paths….need I say more?

Ok, but now here we are…..on a new path… heading north into the mountains and away from the coast on our way to Ronda.

But before we turned we hit a few deep sandy paths -in fact- we struggled almost 4 hours along which had looked so fine on the map…remote…Ocean on the right…some beaches (hence the title)…… the sand got deeper and deeper. 

But here in Europe one is never far away from some little town with a bakery, so, no reason to take this kind of struggle too seriously. We “leap frogged” along: the two of us pushing one bike at a time passing one bike and then running back to get the other. It did  get really old after about two hours. We laughed about our ignorance falling over each other, but somewhere in there we both got really quiet just working and sweating and hoping there will be no more (even small) uphills and be done already with this nonsense. Next phase was blaming someone: why didn’t anybody warn us about this treacherous route?

Well, anyways, we made it through and out of the park (Bolonia). I carry an insulated bag with two frozen water bottles inside to keep food and us cool. (At the campgrounds we asked the owners -or whoever -to store the full bottles in a freezer over night…works like a charm) What I meant to say is: we eat really well!….a picnic in the sand! As long as the food is good- and it was! The bread is delicious, we had soft boiled eggs, ham and cream cheese, avocado and even chocolate. We saved the mango for breakfast next morning.

Some other parts along the coast were difficult in a different way: We rode past some beautiful ghostly mansions which have been taken over by storks

In 62 years of my life I have never seen so many storks - almost every pole, chimney….factory thingy…here a little clip of storks 

in trees so you can hear their courtship-beak- snapping (Klapperstorch) sounds which they also use when pissed off. (I hope the recipient knows the difference)

And the story behind the abandoned mansions and churches:

Major hydraulic projects have a long tradition in Spain. 

This project has highlighted the tensions underlying decision-making processes which pitch hegemonic policy makers against the rest of the stakeholders, as well as the lack of integrative and adaptive perspectives, institutional transparency and effective participation of all stakeholders in hydraulic policies.

All public major construction projects should be based on a comprehensive and wide-ranging knowledge of the territorial context, as the environmental and socioeconomic impact of these works goes well beyond their immediate area of influence.

(From MDPI website, dredging of the Guadalquivir, Spain). (Maybe I don’t understand every word here, but - I think -what they are saying -is in short- that small family run farms had to give way to this project and at the end corporations took over)

So many of these antique farm houses are empty and what used to be little communities are now ruins and there is a strong idea of how life had been buzzing here at one time not too long ago. We first zipped happily through this area while the sun was shining innocently on the skeletons of a forgotten time. But the huge corporate corn fields on the left 

….colorful pesticide containers speckled like wild flowers on the right 

we weren’t able to ignore. Though the road was beautiful and remote, there was “a ghost in the closet”. Knowledge of something that isn’t right ruins the sunshine …..I hate that feeling!

And then there was Tarifa! Aside from being the most northern tip of Europe, I dreamed of Africa….

So close….

…where the Atlantic Ocean crashes into the Mediterranean 

where the Levante (east wind) usually meets the Poniente (west wind). Not much sandblasting for us that day…just calm and beautiful.

The statue of Jesus is looking over to the other continent….

and here we are so close one can see the houses in Morocco on a clear day. It’s just 14km. The name Tarifa is actually taken from the Berber warrior Tarif ibn  Malik, the first of the Moors, who created a bridgehead here in 710 before conquering most of Spain. The area was under Muslim control until 1292 when Christian king Sancho the 4th finally conquered the city. The Moorish heritage is still very much present.

Alongside the many Moorish buildings Castillo de Santa Catalina perches on a hill

overlooking the southern point, looks out of place. It served as a quarantine station during the plague epidemic and later converted into a gunpowder store before being nearly destroyed during the War of Independence in 1811.

The town is buzzing …..

but we buzzed right through it.

With a stop at a bakery, of course..

The Levante spared us the usual struggle, so we took advantage to ride on to Algeciras from where we turned north into the mountains.