Monday 19 October - Travel to Mojacar

Dani and Ana had left by the time we got up, and we took our time getting sorted, doing book work and packing up. I headed off to find the car, some 20 minutes away. Had a few moments concern when it wasn't in the street I had made a mental note of, but soon spotted the distinctive red number plate just off the noted street. Had a real hassle getting back to our house. The GPS tried to send me up some streets which were not really streets at all, and one which must have been changed to one-way since the GPS map was done. I went round and round, before deciding to ignore it and get well south of the main road our street came off, so the GPS could have a clean run. Success! Did pass through the prostitutes corner at one point, to have a number of them head purposefully towards me. Presumably most cars which go though that corner are not just half-lost tourists, but men with other requirements.

 

Nice to be back on the road again heading south. We wanted to stop at the Palmeral of Elche, the largest palm plantation in Europe and possibly the world. It looked like it would be interesting, but as we got close there were loads of major roadworks and deviations which meant we completely circumscribed it, but some distance away. It didn't look possible to get in to see it, not that we really knew what we were looking for, so we gave it all away and went to a huge Carrefour supermarket instead. We were just going to have a coffee break, but ended up spending an hour and a half doing a full shop for our next fortnight stay-put. The giant Carrefours have everything. We were tempted to buy another netbook at an absurd 199€ (400 NZD) but it wasn't any better than what we have, so gave it away.

 

Found our way easily into Mojacar, stopped at the petrol station as suggested and rang our host's odd-job man Diego, using French as he can't speak English, and we can't speak Spanish. I couldn't remember the word for petrol station, and Diego didn't understand essence which I believe is the word for petrol, but we got it sorted out and he turned up in 5 minutes. We followed him up to the house, and got a few basic instructions. We found a nice note, qnd a bottle each of red, white and olive oil on the table for us. It is a lovely place, full of all sorts of interesting objects and art, much of it African. We feel very much at home here as the house has a lot of the flavour f our own. The pool was smaller than we had expected, but the views nicer. Also, the pool was lovely and warm, so we stripped off and jumped in as soon as we had dragged out gear inside.

 

We texted Sandy and Lynette, who had arrived here a day or two previously, and they came up for a drink with Jo Dryden, Lynette's cousin who has lived here for 25 years. Off to bed for a comfy night's sleep in a room with a lovely views.