17/2003 - Costa Plastica to Cuevas de Almanzora
18th March 2004
Hola Queridos Amigos!
Here we are again, a little dejected at leaving Orgiva, but heading to Roquetas de Mar to meet up with the relaxed and holidaying Mo and Jim. There's just one Camping at Roquetas - a very busy one with many over-wintering northern Europeans. However, we did manage to squeeze (literally) onto one of a few available pitches, with several German men assisting Dave. This involved much arm-waving to ensure avoidance of inconveniently placed trees (with a back-swing like ours and an over-cab bulge such as we've got, you can't be too careful with the old branches - as our one or two minor dent-ettes testify!).
Jeni says, through tightly clenched teeth, that there's quite a lot of role-stereotyping in the caravanning world (less, it must be said, among more progressive Camping Car-istes), so presumably that was why there was sudden surge of helpful men - didn't trust the woman to give proper directions, huh?! She'd love to confound them by being the one to be manoeuvring VeeJay onto the pitch, but she does confess that her spatial awareness isn't as good as Dave's. Open road is fine, but shoehorning into tight spaces? Well, could be embarrassing! (The severely squashed primroses on the edge of our former neighbour's territory in Eastbourne are legacies of Jeni's not quite getting it right, putting VeeJay up on the drive!) We sometimes think it would be rather fun to attach one of those children's suction-on steering wheels onto the dashboard in front of the passenger seat so that it's not obvious the Lorry's a right hand drive and, when Jeni is the Navigation Queen (as happens more often these days), no-one would know she wasn't really driving, maps perched on the steering wheel!
The Camping at Roquetas couldn't really have been a greater contrast to our mountain idyll in the Alpujarras (sorry to keep going on about our bit of Paradise!). Territorial? We should co-co! Most of the pitches were entirely screened by solid walls of 5 or 5.5 foot high windbreaks and people would scurry through an opening, fastening it up behind them as soon as they were out. Bizarre! Everyone was very friendly in the communal areas, and we dusted down our best 'Guten Morgen', 'Guten Abend' and Guten Tag' for use at appropriate moments, but we were somewhat fazed by this obsessional protection of 'private' space. Wonder what visiting Spaniards made of that! Anyroadup, this stay was just - as 'twere - a one-night stand, so we remained bemused but not deeply troubled.
Next morning we'd arranged to meet Mo and Jim at 11 o'clock a particular place on the sea-front where they knew we'd be able to park the Lorry. We didn't exactly know where we were, having made up our own directions to the Camping as roadworks entirely negated the ones in our Caravan Club directory. We encountered a slight delay leaving the site due to forgetting that our electrical connection would have to be released from the locked electricity box by a member of staff. We hadn't quite factored in the three hour trek across the huge site from our pitch to reception, the understaffed receptionist grappling with a queue of seemingly snappy campers (and we're not talking natty dressers here when we say 'snappy'!) and then the wait for the guy on the moped to reach us with the relevant bunch of keys. Never mind, quick txt msg to Mo and Jim to say we were running a bit behind schedule as a result of the above, but should only be 10 or so minutes late. Fine.
We then spent the next 30 minutes driving through, round, betwixt and between, almost into, an endless expanse of plastic greenhouses - yes, folks, Camping Keep-Out was picturesquely sited in the middle of the sea of plastic! (We must have found the only un-plasticated route in the previous night, since we didn't have an inkling of its situation.) Once we emerged, triumphant, into civilisation, wound our way round some tiny streets in a residential area that appeared to house lots of the greenhouse workers, only to turn a corner and plunge back into the narrow strips of road between the plastic-houses. You may be wondering why we didn't just stop and turn round. Not with a great truck of vegetables thundering up behind, another one hurtling towards us and the only turn-offs being occasional tracks down between the vast plastic structures, oh no! Jeni started having fantasies about a re-write of the novel 'Bonfire of the Vanities' based in getting lost in Plasticultura territory [also a Major Motion Movie for those of you who didn't read the book!].
A few more kilometres of this and for a second time we emerged into the world. Yes, there was still a world out there, it wasn't that we'd died and gone to hell. This time it was all a bit more hopeful and we could sense we were nearer the sea. So just a few loops round, crossing Anthrax Avenue twice and three times past the industrial laundry (which under other circumstances might have given our Laundry Lad, Dave, a bit of a thrill), up a big palm-tree lined road (though we feared we were supposed to be going down it the other way, but what the heck, it wasn't lined with plastic) and eventually found a big hotel we could stop near and frantically phone Mo and Jim for further directions.
Up to this point you'll not be aware that Mo was desperately trying to conserve her phone battery, running perilously low due to forgetting to bring the charger and severely drained by the number of emergency txt msgs and calls. In addition, they had already raced up and down the prom at least three times due to earlier phone calls from which they surmised we might emerge at a different place on the prom. You can tell that we were all deeply committed to this lunch get-together, otherwise we'd have given up ages before! Finally, the four-times-larger-than-life gorilla on the seafront proved to be the best possible landmark, with VeeJay friendly parking close by. This only involved the by now exhausted Jim and Mo in one more double circuit of the prom (up to meet us, back to take us to their hotel for lunch), and it's to their everlasting credit that they stuck with it and still treated us to a meal. Oh, and they somehow found the stamina to walk us back to the van later on!
We're not sure how much they appreciated our duet, specially written for them, sung on our eventual meeting. Loosely based on 'Windy City', from 'Oklahoma!' (yes, folks, it's 'Songs from the Shows' time!) it ran tunefully (?) along the lines of 'We just got lost in the Plastic City, but the Plastic City ain't very pretty ... ' . Funny, they didn't ask for an encore!
But we did have a very convivial lunch, some warm sunshine and then a farewell photo-shoot with VeeJay (featuring, bizarrely, Dave demonstrating to Jim the simplicity of removing the toilet cassette - now there's one for both family albums!). Mo and Jim were telling us that they've been holidaying in Roquetas for some years now, having found that it's suitably accessible, and how much they have seen it develop in size especially over the past few years. Like so many Spanish resorts of course. It does have an attractive strollable/rollable promenade, though, which is getting longer and longer as the development spreads along the shoreline.
Waving goodbye late in the afternoon, the Rolling of the Fruitbats continued up the coast, leaving Mo and Jim to blat down the prom yet one more time back to their hotel (where we suspect they both slept solidly for the next 48 hours to recover from the 'leisurely lunch' we all thought we'd arranged!). Whilst we did a relatively short hop up the N340 to Cuevas de Almanzora.
This route took us past and into some strange, moon-like landscape. Suddenly the road dives and curves into what is to all intents and purposes the canyons, ridges, dried-up riverbeds and peaks of the American mid-west 'badlands', all arid scrub and rock of a dozen different colours. We weren't the first to liken it to the back-drop of Western movies, though - dozens of spaghetti (paella?!) Westerns were made here in the 1960s and 1970s, and parts of films like 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'A Fistful of Dollars' were set here. There's even a legacy to the movies, three wild west type towns that now make up Mini-Hollywood. It's easy to see why they used the area in the films - we kept expecteing a crowd of whoopin', shootin' cowboys to come ridin' over the nayxt hiyll.
It being late in the day (well, early in the evening by this stage) we didn't do the detour for the excursion to Mini Hollywood - perhaps that's one for when we've exhausted the more Spanish aspects of our travels?! We did, however, lament the absence of an on-board geologist to tell us more about the curious landscape and rock formations. Indeed, we have on numerous occasions regretted the lack of a geologist in Team Fruitbat as we've wondered about the astonishing range of colours in many of the hills and mountains, and pondered on the variety of minerals that must exist. Any suggestions for our reading list for the equivalent of the Ladybird Guide to Spanish Geology would be much appreciated!
The absence of geological expertise was regrettable once more as we approached Cuevas de Almanzora, about 7km north of our good friend Vera of previous encounter. This is a small town which, like several other areas in Spain, has houses carved into the hills. These are not prehistoric cave-dwellings (although there are often those to be found in the vicinity as well), but real homes for ordinary folk. Some of them are very simple on the outside, with just a door and maybe a window set into the rock and a chimney protruding from the front somewhere, although we are told many have all mod cons inside. Others look externally more sophisticated with whitewashed fronts, sprouting the usual chimney and a TV aerial, a door and maybe several windows. Guadix, on the mountain road through from Granada to Almeria is famed for its large cave district where several thousand people still live. As you may remember, Jeni was reading Gerald Brenan's 'South from Granada' and, having seen the cave houses of Cuevas de Almanzora, was interested in his descriptions of the ones in Guadix in the 1920s and 1930s.
He says the rock is an 'alluvial formation of soft argillaceous sandstone. Once spoken of as loess, its most useful property is that it can be cut like cheese. Three-roomed or four-roomed caves, complete with chimneys, alcoves and cupboards, may be hollowed out of it. There are some that have two storeys, while at Benalua there is said to be one that has three. After being dug out, they are whitewashed inside, wired for electric light, and floored with tiles, and, as their temperature remains almost constant throughout the year, they offer the advantage of being warm in winter and cool in summer.'
Dave remarked that it would be kind of handy to live in such a dwelling - expecting another baby? Relatives coming to stay? Need to take in lodgers to make ends meet? Simply carve out another room or three!
So from there we found our Camping, a few kilometres towards the sea, and selected an ideal pitch. Unfortunately a Caravaniste had perpetrated that most foul of acts - parking their car on a hitherto vacant plot. Never mind, everyone said to us, that's Eric and Ann's car - everyone knows them, they'll be around on the site somewhere. So half a dozen helpful Brits fan out across the Camping in search of Eric and Ann. Jeni discovers the friends they are due to be going out with that evening, performing some of the communication (how's this for multi-lingual?!) in British Sign Language (or Jeni's rather rusty version of same!). But no, Eric and Ann weren't due to meet them for another three quarters of an hour or so. Another couple in a Camping Car invite us in for a cup of tea while the so-far fruitless searching continues.
Eventually Eric and Ann emerge through their awning, from their very caravan, some half hour later, alarmed to find that they'd almost been reported as Missing Persons. 'We were just having a nap after our showers', they protested, to much ribaldry, nudging and winking from other Brits on the site who knew them ! They quickly moved the offending car, amidst profuse apologies. It'll take them a while to live that one down.
Excuse us for now, we've just had some inspiration for a Best Selling Bonkbuster based in Continental Campings, which we feel needs our attention - will it be Bills and Moon ('Winter Warmers', 'Caravan of Lerv'?) or Black Lace ('On-Site Sauce'? 'A Pitch for Passion'?) - ?
Until next time, you lovely lot, we send love and hugs and a dose of sunshine,
Dave y Jeni
Xx