Day 11: Puerto de Mazarron to Aguilas

February 17, 2024

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It's not that we have a preconception about the landscapes we will be passing through on this coast, but every day the spectacular things we see are somehow surprising. That was certainly the case today, as we were among bare mountains and by the blue Mediterranean.

A white village against a bare mountain.

The bare mountains readily reveal their geology, with fantastic shapes and colours. Here below is an eroded cliff that is a local landmark.

There is an arch beside the pillar to the right.

We passed some spectacular seaside houses, and travelled down a pleasant street. Ok, we can understand this kind of place.

But almost instantly the track took us into what was to be a really spectacular, slightly scary, remote Mediterranean coastal scene. The first sign that this was going to be remote was a sign declaring the beaches along here as designated for nudists. Well, at about 10 degrees C just then, there did not seem to be much chance of running into anybody. Worth looking, though.

The next thing was that our track indicated we should descend a small cliff to carry on. The shot below is zoomed, but taken from atop the cliff. If you look carefully, you can see a white "X" on the side. I saw it, and declared that we were screwed. But Dodie descended, since "route barree" does not scare her!

EV 8 would not want us to descend on a whim.

Here you see Dodie going around the barrier. To be fair the sign is ambiguous, either saying the road is closed, period, or it is closed in rain or floods, due to risk of landslides. Anyway, it's not closed to us if there is a way around!

Just checking, if this really was a Yellow Legged Gull.

It turns out that we had indeed stumbled into a special place, the Sierra de la Moreras. It's a place of sheltered coves with beaches (watch for those nudists) and a lot of up and down on the dirt path. If any cyclists reading this and following in our tracks want to avoid this, highway 332 does bypass it to the North.

Follow us through this fantastic landscape in the next dozen photos. There is not much to say, except that we were experiencing awe through the combination of sea and desert land, with enough cliff like stuff to have to stay alert!

Although we did encounter a couple of dog walkers or runners, we did feel as if we had stepped into a private and bizarre new world. That is, until we encountered all the RVs stacked up on the other side. There were in fact dozens of them. Almost all were from Germany, with one from Poland, and maybe one from Luxembourg.

One of the campers was sort of unique, and I pulled out my camera to snap a shot of it. Just at that second I hit an extra rough spot in the road, and with only one hand on the bar, went flying.

I did not mention it yesterday, but a hurricane like blast of wind threw me in the ditch then, so I am feeling a bit beat up from a second tumble. Below we see Dodie treating the torn leg with healing water. Unfortunately I also ripped my cycling gloves, but I am glad my rain parka was untouched.

We did have some luck just after that with spotting a couple of birds. The Crested Lark is one Dodie had been seeing, but now we got some kind of photo.

Here is something else quite amazing to us, an entire hedge of Geranium.

A major feature of the next area we passed into was the number of greenhouses, and the way they looked. Huge amounts of ground were under cover, with dusty houses that you could not see into at all. They were made partly from cover cloth and partly poly, but the wind blown sand made it all opaque. We did eventually see that the crop was tomatoes, and when we did get a rare glimpse inside, the fruit did look amazingly good.

In some cases there was just row cover, but mostly it was the greenhouses.

The landscape is really covered with this.

Here by the way is also an orchard. Contrary to what I had thought yesterday when I suggested these as plum trees, these are definitely almond. I was able to pick some of last year's nuts from these trees.

Here is a sign describing the tomato farm we happen to be passing through. It says the area is 83 hectares (205 acres) under cover. Our interest in the sign was not just for this information, though. It seems that a colony of bees had set up shop in the actual wood of the sign. They were coming and going, and looked like this:

We were surprised to look down from the ridge we were traversing to see a corral apparently filled with sheep.

As we watched, the shepherd let them out of the pen, and with one dog, set off for somewhere.

The animals followed him like ... sheep.

We were curious to see where they might be going.

Surprisingly they came right up to where we were, by the greenhouses.

They stopped traffic in both directions.

Though this Dutch camper tried to sneak through.

We left the sheep and took another turn, though this ended up being the wrong way!

Here are some other sheep, in a yard hewn from purple Kryptonite. Couldn't be good for them!

We now set off climbing again, through a spectacular, dry landscape. This time the sea was lacking, since we had climbed far above it.

Our road had no shoulder, but also no traffic.

Somebody had managed to crash and die here. See the ripped license plate.

High on a crag, this cactus looked like a bird. We will shoot anything that looks like a bird!

Ok, here is a real bird:

Here is the ID for it. It was built by the Moors in the 12th century, but later served as a lookout against their possible return.

We had departed from EV 8, which seemed to want to wiggle and climb in the Cabo Cope Regional Park. Now to get to our destination at Aguilas we had to hop onto a 100 kph autoroute, which we followed for about 10 km, straight to town. There was a good shoulder, but it required concentration to stay on the shoulder and not fall into the ditch that was to our right. Signs said "emergency stopping only" , and Dodie declared an emergency when she thought she saw a hawk on a wire. Unfortunately this turned out to be a Wood Pigeon.

High speed, into Aguilas. We had run our batteries way down again in the hills, so we were glad this was all descending.

Over the kms to Aguilas, it was amazing how the land was covered in white greenhouse. I don't have a shot of this, because I really was concentrating on staying on target in the shoulder. But we did manage a photo of this unusual field of cactus:

Aguilas , in the distance, looked like miniature white blocks.

I had been looking forward to our place outside of Aguilas, because it was listed as a triple room, with breakfast included, and a restaurant on site. But "triple room" does not mean something big, only that there is an extra bed stuffed in, taking up space. The restaurant was closed, and the place was more like a BnB, with our key in a lock box. This we discovered only after checking recent emails, when we could find no way in. We phoned the contact number too, about the wifi code, and the breakfast, but could not hear or mostly understand the Spanish speaking lady. We got it mostly sorted out, but can not put "Maxcaly Playa" down as the joyous experience we were anticipating. We also note that since we booked at 114 euros some time ago, the price has now become 42 euros. Now that we see the place, the 42 euro figure is definitely more the proper one, but we are stuck with the original deal.

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 483 km (300 miles)

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