Today was a day for using the hire car to explore the nearby towns, and explore we did! We began with a self catering big breakfast and though it was too cold to eat on the terrace we sat in our upstairs lounge room and let the sun stream through the windows to warm us.
The I pad and it's sat nav was invaluable as we cross crossed the landscape. Our first stop was the picture perfect white town of Vejer de frontera. This was the place that inspired us to travel to the south of Spain as we had planned to do a cookery lesson with Annie B. Unfortunately our visit coincided with her going on holiday. We parked the car at the bottom of the mountain and using a map from the tourist bureau, wound our way up the mountain and through the village. A number of beautiful views across the surrounding valleys seemed to offer themselves up to us from the various ramparts as we climbed higher.
Our first stop was the castle at the top of the hill. The Moor built Castle was constructed during the 9th and 10th century and gave a rich sense of life must have been like all those years ago as even the modern homes within the walls formed a chaotic tumble. The Town Walls that surrounded the oldest part of Vejer and were built during the 10th and 12th century by the Moors as part of its defence to protect the town against the Christian reconquest of the region. A young man had set himself up as an unofficial guide to the fortress and we gave him a donation for his enterprise.
As we left the castle, the Sunday church service was finishing and the plaza filled with families leaving the service and making their way down the hill to Sunday flea market set up in one of the squares. This was a proper church rather than a tourist magnet but it was still very beautiful. I was mesmerised by the sun coming in through some simple modern panes of coloured glass and lighting up the walls of one of the private chapels.
The sun was strong and with every house painted white the reflected glare was blinding. The window boxes of poinsettia we has seen further north, gave way along the coastal towns to red geraniums that seemed to almost throb in the bright sunlight. Once we had worked our way back down the hill we thought we has earned a coffee and cake at a cafe at the bottom. On the ubiquitous telly there was a program about two guys riding bikes through an African national park. They looked pretty good with their swerves and jumps when out of the blue a large cat must have seen the guy at the front and thought "lunch". She launched herself right on to his shoulders with amazing accuracy and thanks to rider two's go pro, we saw the most amazing tackle! All around Vejer we saw cyclists pedalling their hearts out either along the sweeping hills or in the heartbreaking climbs. We both thought that Perry would love to ride around here.
From here we drove on to the outskirts of Veger to get a view of the old town from the opposite hill with its modern residential development. The area has maintained its old style windmills and one area with three of these had been made into a park. Lots of families had taken their kids up there to play and to catch up with neighbours. The windmills were open to the public and I climbed to the top of one. The south east coast of Spain catches some very strong winds and as a result! the government has installed hundreds, if not thousands of modern windmills to generate power. As well there were huge numbers of sun tracking solar cells. The Spaniards are streets ahead of us in alternative energies.
From here we drove on to Los Canos De Meca. With the wild winds and rugged coastline, this had become a surfing and hippy enclave. We drove the cliff top road to a point where we could walk out on to the cliff and get a view along the magnificently beautiful coastline. There were a few hardy hippy types messing about in the back of their surfer vans but no one was in the sea. It was great seeing names like Quicksilver, Roxy and O' Neill in the local surf shops.
It was a short drive south east to a seaside town called Barbate de Franco. This had the biggest beach I had ever seen. The sand was about 200 metres from water to road and spanned about four kilometres across the bay. Barbate was a town of some 20.000 people on the Costa de la Luz, 40km north of Tarifa. It was called Barbate de Franco because the ex-dictator spent many summers there. The town grew around the fishing industry which went back to Roman times. There was an almost continuous sweep of seafront restaurants around the curve of the bay and lots of families out doing their Sunday walk or going out for lunch.
Johnny just wanted a ham baguette but either they were selling cakes or seafood, so seafood it was. The owner of the restaurant we stopped at was as wide as he was tall. He was a sort of conductor of the show, deciding where people should sit and what they should eat. After a lot of discussion we had decided on fried sardines and fried squid. Well he just tossed that aside and said we should have something else. We tried to tell him we didn't want a big meal but it was his way or nothing. In the end we agreed to his "grande " suggestion but as the whole animated conversation was being conducted in Spanish and gestures we had no idea what we would end up with. It was a long wait for the food to appear but it was great. It was a whole grilled calamari and green beans with potatoes and olive oil. We tucked in and of course there was beer with lunch but we were both worried about how we might manage a dinner in three hours.
As it happened the big lunch was a godsend. We didn't want another restaurant meal and planned to get some cheese and ham, some bread and olives. By the time we got back to Conil, all the shops were shut. We went to four supermarkets and all were closed ( because it was Sunday). Dinner was made up of everything we had by way of leftovers from our previous shopping. We has champers, chips, fruit salad, yoghurt and for dessert biscuits and coffee. Actually it was perfect!
It was great staying in, cranking up the heat and working out where we would go on Tuesday and where we would stay. Tomorrow on Monday morning we have to be up and out of the house by 7.30 as we have a 40km drive to Tarifa to catch a massive twin hulled ferry to Morocco for the day. We drove down to the coast today to find out where we had to go and where we could park the car. From the seafront we could actually see The African coastline! What a buzz! Our guide Ahmed will meet us on the dock tomorrow.
