Almeria Day 4

Today we went to Cabo de Gata, a national park in Almeria. It has beautiful white sand and pebble beaches, subdesert mountains, saltbeds, neolithic cave paintings, old muslim cisterns, and several small communities.

While exploring saltbeds, we stumbled upon an old vacant church that had what I thought were catacombs and Mike thought were places for fishermen to store stuff. I'll post the video when we get home. You be the judge. I asked someone about the light bulbs mounted on the outside and they said it was from a filmset. They wired the church for a scene and left the setup behind. This park and Almeria in general have been in several films including: Patton, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Star Wars, and a ton of Spaghetti Westerns.
Later we hiked along the cliffs and saw the lava deposits that make these beautiful white rocks. We played by the beach and found sea glass and white lava rocks. The sea was calm and clear and looked like diamonds sparkling. We were surrounded by swimmers in snorkel gear floating on the surface and looking at the coral beds. I was jealous.

The hills were a hard yellow red rock with tufts of desert lavender, dusty green scrub, and golden curly scrub. No distinct shapes. It reminded me of one of my friend Shawn's paintings. I took a few pictures for him.

Mike drove on some perilous, hillside one lane, two way, curvy as a snail road. Kudos to Mike for not throwing up, not even a little. He had to drive it again to get us home. My hero. For dinner we walked to a beach side restaurant that sold local fish. We got a huge plate of fried tiny fish including anchovies, sardines, and mullet. It was good but the service was frigid and spare.
After dinner we went to the beach by the car to collect sea glass and relax (cause were so stressed). The pebble beach felt like heaven under my feet and around my ankles. It must have rocked a million pressure points at once. I could feel it up my neck.

Then we went to the black sand beach by the church. The whole the was CRYSTAL clear. I swear it looked like a jello mold representation of a beach more than the real thing. We didn't have any ocean gear and it was impossible to walk or swim without goggles and flippers cause the rocks we so huge and they towered and cannoned dangerously. So we were clinging to the shore floating when I made friends with this lady from Madrid whose daughter studied in Fargo for 4 months and liked it better than England or Ireland. She liked our buffalo.

Wow, she was cool. She and her hubby were great. When they figured out that we didn't have beach stuff they offered us theirs. Mike and I floated out past the drop off (only a little cause my common sense borders on phobia) and saw angel fish and stuff.

I could stay here forever. This is amazing.

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