Friday 30 October - Drive to Frigiliana

[Photos: Pepe & Ana from Mojacar, Cabo de Gata views and buildings]

We managed to get ourselves all packed and organised, the washing on, the dishes all done and the house clean by 10am, when Pepe and Ana turned up. Enjoyed half an hour telling them about what we had done, discussing NZ a little as they intend to visit early next year, and just chatting. It turns out that they not only do house exchanges, but host Couchsurfers like we do. Quite a joke. They appear to be quite similar to us. Finally away close to 11am, with offers of accommodation for our last two European nights in Madrid, and an invitation to return any time we like to Mojacar. It was such a nice spot, we might well do so at some time.

Heading south we had decided to follow the coast as much as possible, and found the route most attractive and enjoyable. From Carboneras south it was all new territory for us. We dipped down into a number of small towns on the coast starting with Agua Amarga. This is a lovely little town, with some superb low level houses overlooking it, and quite strangely, the beach full of French people. Everyone on the beach that we could hear was French. Then to Las Negras, where we had a coffee. Some gorgeous new big houses surrounding the town, it had a very different feel to Mojacar, being much more upmarket, and probably more Spanish.

Back to the main road (Las Negras was a bit of a detour) and then inland cutting across the Cabo de Gata peninsula. Stopped at one lovely viewpoint, among red volcanic rock, with excellent views up and down the coast. At the most inland point, the landscape was very dry and barren, with many old tumbledown buildings. The final stop was San Jose, quite a large town around a lovely horseshoe bay with a harbour. Yet again we had trouble finding something for lunch, as there are very few pasticeria compared to France or Italy. We finally found one and got 6 turnovers with fillings of tomato, spinach and meat, which we ate sitting up overlooking the bay. It was onto the motorways from there, with an unbelievable number of greenhouses from Almeria right through to our destination, Frigiliana.

The GPS did its job well, though we were stymied by the expected roadworks near our exchange still being very much a work in progress, so we had to park a few metres away and lug our gear down. The exchange house is pretty good, but the pool that goes with it is something else again! It is massive – five metres wide, and sixteen or seventeen long, complete with a twice a week pool guy. It has 4 underwater lights, and an optic fibre ring light that changes colour every few seconds. We chose a room downstairs looking out onto the pool, and settled in, feeling we had made another good choice of exchange home.