Tuesday 20 October - Mojacar

[Photos: Our Exchange home, Dinner with Jo Dryden]

 

Up gently this morning, then into town to collect Sandy & Lynette from Jo’s shop Gatsby on Mojacar beach. We found that the English Learning Centre down at Mojacar Beach has free wi-fi, so we caught up on sending and receiving emails. The weather was OK, though not clear and hot, so on getting back to our house, we set up a table near the pool and lunched on our normal fare of bread, cheeses and so on. We think the owner here is a medical man of some type, and we wonder if he is a dermatologist, as there is just the one pool lounger (maybe he is anti sunbathing?). The furniture is nice and casual, and an eclectic mix of old Spanish, African and some Indonesian we think, plus some more modern items. It is all very well-equipped, and we fell very comfortable here.

 

We had the afternoon off, doing very little other than catch up on free time. Looking across at the village, it is clear that there is very little left of the original village – most of what we see would be no older than 50 years, and much is pretty recent. It very much has the white Spanish hilltown look, but the reality is a bit different. We were surprised at the countryside about here. There are lots of random buildings – commercial or large tourist developments - in the middle of nowhere. We suspect somebody had slipped somebody else some graft to enable them to build where they shouldn’t be. It is not unpleasant, just a bit scruffy. Had a good look around the grounds here. The fire that went through Mojacar some months ago must have been very scary. It surrounded this house on three sides, burning and singing a lot of trees. Poor Diego has got his work cut out for the next few months making good the damage, replanting, tidying up and sorting out the mess. There has been a huge amount of planting done around the house, and many large terraces, unfortunately many affected by the fire.

 

Jo had invited us up to her house for dinner, so we drove down to the beach, stopping off at her shop to follow her up there. She had gone to quite a bit of trouble with chicken and pork on the barbecue, and we had a very nice dinner before the four of us began to fall asleep at about 10:30.