Meeting Bloggers In The Desert

This was our parking spot in San Jose.  As you can see there was plenty of space, however there are no facilities for water or waste so we couldn't stay too long!

We left San Jose on Thursday after taking one last walk down to the beach ...

Our destination was Cabo De Gata camping which was only a few ks away.

Our main reason for going there was to meet up with Peter and Margaret ex NB Kelly Louise who now have a motorhome and who are wintering in Cabo De Gata.  You can check out their blog here

We parked up close to their motorhome, which also happens to be a Rapido ...

The site is very popular with poms escaping the UK winter as in their caravans and motorhomes.  There are also chalets that seem to be owned by poms.  I noticed that one is for sale at £15,000 ...

As you can see the site isn't crowded like some of the other sites we stopped at up the coast ...

The pool was lovely, albeit bloody freezing ...

I was warming Elaine up ...

(El here ... he is a ratbag when I am trying to get in cold water ... it brings out the child in him!  I had only managed to get into waist height when he decided to give me a freezing cold, wet hug and then tried to 'help' me in the rest of the way!!)

The site itself is right on the edge of the desert and is quite isolated, which obviously the residents here love as they come here every year and have been doing so for a number of years. 

This is the view outside the camp site gates ...

We did find a project home!!! It even had some furniture ...

(We had a walk around and found signs that someone was actually living in it ... sad.)

Me and Sammie.. He desperately wanted to get back to the van at this point, he doesn't do heat well...

The desert selfie ...

Back at base we found Peter and Margaret, who had a quick pose for us ...

We had a lovely dinner out last night in the site restaurant and finished up in the van for a few drinks.  We didn't get to bed til midnight (again!).   It's been so brilliant catching up with Peter and Margaret again, hopefully we will catch up again with them soon.

We waved them off this morning, they were off to the local market on their u beaut  scooter.

We will be leaving shortly for Mojacar via the coast road and thence, on our arrival to Mojacar, to the Emerald Isle ... for the big game!!

C'MON YOU WALLABIES

Do You Know The Way To San Jose??

We left the Cactus campsite at Motril on Tuesday morning and headed up the magical coast road towards Cabo de Gata National Park ...

We stopped off at Lidl for some much needed supplies - at last!  As you can see the carpark was deserted and there seemed to be only one person working in the large store ... 

We decided to check out Roquetas De Mar, which is south of Almeria.  We were in the middle of the Almeria greenhouse area, which has the largest concentration of greenhouses in the world and supplies over half of Europe's fruit and veg.  They are not glass greenhouses but, in fact, plastic shades.  The area is absolutely massive, the greenhouses go right from the sea to the base of the mountains ...

This satellite pic shows just how many there are ...

It seems that most Spanish find the conditions too unbearable to work in so they are mostly staffed by African and Eastern European 'expats'.

It is an absolute eysore, but a huge money making venture for Almeria ...

It's like driving through Soweto ...

We made our way to the seafront and it was rather more pleasant.  After lunch we had a walk around the harbour and beach area.

This lovely yacht had recently sunk in the harbour ...

A rather ironic name ...

The beach was lovely and dog friendly.  It was very quiet, as are most places at at this time of year ...

We were going to stay overnight in the port area but some of the expats looked a bit dodgy.  They were probably fine but sometimes your gut feeling just says move on......which we did.

After driving for a while we still hadn't found anywhere to stop and we were slightly concerned as there was not too much daylight left!  So, we decided to keep on driving to San Jose as it's in the national park and we thought we remembered it from last year.  We seemed to remember it being a nice spot and also being motorhome friendly.

Once again it was a stunning drive along the coast road rather than the main highway ... 

By the time we reached San Jose the moon was coming up and we couldn't find a motorhome (to park up with) anywhere ...

Also, we had remembered the wrong place - it wasn't the place we thought it was at all!  We drove around some very narrow streets (with El getting more and more worried the narrower it got!) ...until we came to a wide road along the river bed.  Out came the laptop and a quick search for motorhome friendly parking site resulted in a spot about  200 metres from where we were parked....result!   El was well happy with that as, today, she was the one getting tetchy!

We found about 5 motorhomes parked up on a large bit of waste ground very close to the centre of the village.  If it hadn't been dark we probably would have spotted them.

As we were rather knackered we had a nice night in eating pasta and drinking red wine whilst watching four episodes of  WPC 56 (which we found on a couple of DVDs in the last caravan park).  It was a rather good night (yes, we are easily pleased!).

This morning we were up early to brilliant sunshine and warmth.

We went for a walk around San Jose, which is just lovely ...

We sat down by the harbour, where the water was crystal clear ...

We fed the fish with some bread that Elaine had bought with her to feed any starving birds she spotted ...

As you can imagine, being a national park, there are a lot of fish about as fishing is banned along the shore line ...

It really is a lovely settlement.   I will have to check the real estate prices later, although I'm guessing it won't be cheap!

We will go back into the town tonight when it will hopefully come alive!

Not such a perfect day!

In fact, it was so imperfect that I (Elaine) am doing the blog tonight!  

Him indoors is too tired and emotional, plus he is making his specialty for dinner ... beans on toast!

So, we left our car park spot in Mojacar this morning with our destination being Orgiva.  Don't ask me why but I have wanted to go there since last year and often looked at photos of the place wistfully, so this trip we said we would go and take a look.  I had ideas of it being a bit of an alternative kind of place (bit like Byron Bay in Aus) but up in the hills.  I knew there were hippies up there as I had seen pictures of them, so I figured it must be a 'groovy' kind of place to check out ... man!

It was raining when we left but we thought it might clear during the day.  The Tom Tom reckoned the trip up the mountains would take about 2 hours 40 mins, which didn't seem too bad.  We didn't have any brekkie before we left because we are a bit low in the food department and thought we would find an Aldi or a Lidl along the way that we could pop into and grab some bits to eat.  We have seen hundreds of Aldis and Lidls on the way through France and Spain so we didn't think today would be any different.  (We find the Carrefours and the Mercadonnas just too big, plus a fair bit more exy). 

So, here is the rain we encountered as we set off ...

And then it got heavier and heavier ... 

As we started to climb up, the road got very windy.  The view would have been spectacular ... 

The dry river beds started springing to life ... 

And then some more ... 

This is a waterfall of mud ... 

There was water cascading down every rock and across the road, taking debris and rocks with it.  It was getting very scary as the road was really windy and narrow at parts.   Luckily we didn't meet too many cars coming the other way!

It was the blind bends that were particularly terrifying ...

As we climbed higher, I took this shot looking down at the now very wet river bed.  It was flowing aplenty ...

We had been driving for ages at this point and I was getting worried.  The road was mega bendy and narrow so I checked in with the driver, saying that maybe we should turn back with the weather and all.  The Tom Tom was showing that there were still many, many kms of bendy roads to go.  Paul said he was OK and that we would carry on.  He said at least its not foggy this time!

And then ... 

Not only was it still peeing down, we entered the clouds !!!  It was awful.  There was probably a sheer drop on the side of this road, so it was a good job we couldn't see it!

I was trying to look at the maps app on the phone but we didn't have any phone or data signal, at all!  I was trying not to imagine us breaking down in these mountains ... with no phone signal ... and no-one around ... in the rain ... and the fog ...

We carried on and after many hours (many more than Madam Tom Tom reckoned) we got close to Orgiva and the sun was appearing.  I took this pic as it showed a rainbow right across it!  It had to be a good sign, right? 

We found our destination, which was a campsite in Orgiva.  (We hadn't really looked at how high up in the mountains Orgiva was ... we climbed up to 1476 feet, apparently!!  Paul breathed a sigh of relief to have stopped.  We realised that we were both starving at that point ... we hadn't managed to find our chosen supermarket on the way - not a one!!!  The reception at the site was shut but there was a sign to say that you should go and find your spot and come back and check in later.  So we had a walk about ... there were hippies in the campsite - many hippes of all shapes and sizes and nationalities!  Many of the pitches were afloat though and the pool in the place was a grotty shade of green.  

Paul declared that he didn't like it .. the hippies were too feral looking, the pitches were too wet, he was starving and he suspected the campsite was a long way out of the centre of Orgiva.  So, I concurred and we got back in the van and carried on. 

We passed through the centre of Orgiva which was pretty dull looking to say the least.  Not a hippy shop in sight, just another Spanish hilltop town.  Oh what a disappointment :(

We decided to pull over in a truck stop so that we could eat something!!  I found a big tin of sardines,  some ryvitas and a floppy cucumber, so we tucked into that.  I noticed outside there was a wild dog walking around, rummaging in the rubbish bags for food.  Poor, poor thing.  He wandered off but then I noticed another one ... so, I scooped up what was left of the sardines and put some ryvitas in it and topped it off with a few dog biscuits and took it up to the dog.  He was skinny as hell and very nervous so I just left it for him by the side.  He tucked into it.  

In the meantime, Paul had gotten onto autoroute trying to find a place for us to go.  We found that Madam Tom Tom had taken us on the route from hell to get to Orgiva and there was a much simpler route we could have taken - and much more direct!!!!  He found a couple of wild camping spots just outside Motril, so we set off again.  As we left, I saw the dog limp across the road with the sardine tin (it was a big, flat tin - not a sharp edged one) and a pile of ryvitas in its mouth ... very odd.  So, so sad a situation for these poor dogs.  We saw a lot of  'wild' dogs today wandering around the mountain roads - I hate it.

Anyway, back to our journey - we continued down the mountains toward Motril and the sun was shining once again ...

We passed this amazing view along the way.  Paul didn't see it though ... he was concentrating on the bends! 

A lovely lake / reservoir in the distance ... 

Paul was so happy to get on this straight, dry road!!! 

Lovely lake / reservoir - it was such a lovely colour ...

Coming down from Motril.  The landscape around here is completely dominated by greenhouses of all shapes and sizes - and which extend right to the coast! 

We failed to find our wild camping spots (sometimes the autoroute lies) and Paul was getting a little tetchy after driving for about 5 hours!!!  So we found a campside outside Motril - called Camping Don Cactus!!  It was a little hard to find, it being secreted among the greehouses.  It is not a bad place, if not a little odd!  

We bought some bread and cheese from the little supermarket on site and had a bit of a snack on that before taking the dogs out for a walk.  The beach is pebbly and messy outside the campsite (even though the website says it is sandy!).  It was completely deserted, apart from a couple of dogs, but there were signs that it has been busy as the board walks are all piled up. 

Bombo and I having a stroll ...

Paul playing with taking pics into the setting sun - very effective ...

And then zooming into a boat moored offshore ...

And then zooming into the rising moon !!  It was a big one tonight ...

We headed back to the van for some food and to have our showers ... ooh, we are so clean tonight!

This is a snapshot of our approximate route today up to Orgiva ...

Bloody Tom Tom taking us that way ... 

This is our location tonight ... 

After our big day today, we will hopefully find some enchanting spot tomorrow.  The boy is happy now he has had his dinner and a beer and is relaxing in fine style!  Normal blogging service will be resumed tomorrow!

Toodloo ... El x