To Almería

March 24, 2024

Before getting to today, I want to back up and get closure on that lodging issue back in Agua Amarga - the one where our host was a no show so we decided to scrap the booking and find a hotel on our own.

Soon after we checked in to our new hotel I initiated a conversation with Booking’s customer service. Not long afterwards, we started getting phone calls and messages from our jilted host. We didn’t care to speak to him, so once I’d identify who it was we just started to ignore them. Eventually though I took the call, and after listening to him complain that he hadn’t been able to get in touch with me with instructions i started telling him we’d made other plans. He cut me off and put me on hold suddenly to take another call, and never returned.

In the meantime, Booking came through for us. I think they must have read through the messages between us and our host and then called him (maybe why he cut us off), but the short story is that they agree that we were justified in finding another place. They asked for details of our new booking (dates and cost), saying if the new lodging was more expensive they’d pick up the difference up to a reasonable limit. And they promised a full refund of what had already been paid.

The next day we received a lengthy, apologetic letter from Booking that among other things said that they’d had a stern conversation with our host about his unreasonable behavior.

We can’t ask for anything better than that!

Today’s ride

The wind is still wailing outside this morning, the same relentless wind from the northeast that’s blown us down the road for four days straight now. It’s sure a good thing we’ve been going west and not east these last four days!

Blowing strong enough to collapse one of our balcony chairs. I was thinking we might see a sunrise this morning, but it’s solidly gray again.

Our ride west starts out by backtracking northeast the way we came in yesterday - which, unfortunately for today’s conditions, is back to the northeast for a couple of miles - and slightly uphill as we climb away from the sea and almost directly into the wind. These first few miles are by far the hardest part of the day. We walk a good portion of the climb away from town until we finally bend the curve and start working our way westward again. An hour into the ride we’ve covered barely five miles.

In severe wind conditions like today’s, even a 2% grade is too much. It was safer to walk than risk being blown in front of a car.

Nearing the end of this initial climb, and finally the road has bent enough so that we’re back in the saddle again.

Once we round the bend and turn west our work for the day is essentially done as the wind is our ally again. Look at that weird, forbidding sky though! It’s a dry day, but you can barely see the outline of the Sierra Nevada range ahead.

Our improved progress stalls when our navigator steers us onto a short, unpaved bit just to get some variety in the day. The other half of the team is not amused.

Back on the pavement again, we sail west past the western end of the vast natural park. It’s striking how well established the agave has gotten here - a virtual forest.

East of San Vincente and the airport we look left and see a huge, sprawling market. As we approach it we’ll pass through an unbroken stream of traffic - cars and vans, and folks on foot walking to and from the market - until we leave it behind.

The final miles of the ride are an unexpected pleasure as we pick up an excellent bike path that carries us all the way to Almería’s seaside promenade. An excellent introduction to the city, where in a surprise turn of events we’ll be staying four nights.

Video sound track: Dragonfly, by Yasmin Williams

We arrive in Almería at 1:30, and head straight for the Italian restaurant along the seaside promenade that Rachael picked out for us. Unfortunately we see that it’s dark when we arrived, possibly not even open for the season yet. There are plenty of waterfront restaurants to choose from though so we just keep biking and keeping our eyes out.

It’s not long until we come to another Italian place with a great looking menu. They’re open and nearly all of the tables are vacant so I start locking up the bikes while Rachael goes inside to secure a table for us. She returns a minute later though with the surprising news that they’re booked solid.

So we keep looking, and a quarter mile later come to another appealing, nearly empty restaurant. This time I just wait with the bikes while Rachael checks it out, and before long she returns with the glum news that they’re complete also. This is a problem that really hadn’t occurred to us.

Finally though the third time is a charm and we score a table; and for the next hour we enjoy our meal looking at Almería’s surprisingly appealing waterfront, and feeling very good about our recent decision to stay here for the next eight nights.

Eight nights? What’s that about, you’re probably wondering. It’s about the weather, that’s what. After enduring these last four or five days of relentless tailwinds, all that changes starting this evening. Sometime over the next 24 hours the pattern will change, and after a few hours of listless winds they’ll settle into another howler, this one blowing from the west. If anything, these winds looke even more daunting than the ones we’ve seen so far, with a couple of the days ahead warning of gusts up to 50 or even 60 mph.

Oh, and there’ll be rain too. If you’re traveling by bike, the ride from here all the way to Malaga looks to be a week or more of non-stop misery.

If you’ve been following along for awhile, you’ve surely picked up by now that Team Anderson doesn’t really suffer much misery. Well put up with it in small doses if pressed to it, but we really tilt more to the fair weather cyclist end of the scale.

And to protect ourselves in this bias, we tend to look well ahead to see what’s coming. We’ve known for several days that this drastic change in the weather pattern was coming, which is why we cut short our stay in San Jose - we wanted to ride into Almería on the last good day rather than into a 30 mph headwind. And it’s why we’re stopping in Almería rather than continuing on to Aquadulce as the original plan had been. we want to plant ourselves in a place with something to do for several days and with good transportation connections so we can get back on schedule at some point.

And looking ahead, there’s nothing about biking west along the coast from here that looks attractive to us, so we’ve cancelled those bookings and scrapped that part of the tour. Who needs to see Motril, Nerja and Malaga again, anyway? Been there, done that.

Looking around elsewhere though, it turns out that nearly everywhere else in southern Spain looks pretty crappy for the next week plus also. Looking north across the Sierra Nevadas to Granada, there’s rain and winds in the forecast for the next eight days. In fact, looking around we can only find one spot where it looks dry, if windy: right here in Almería. Might as well stay here and wait for improvements, thinks the team. We’ve booked ourselves eight nights worth of lodging here - four at the AC Marriot Hotel, and the next four at an apartment a few blocks away from it.

And after that, the hope is that we’ll catch the bus to Granada, bike west to Antequera, and be back on our original schedule soon after. But we’ll see. Were flexible and open-minded.

First though we have to find our hotel, which is a little more challenging than expected. It’s very busy - the streets are full of pedestrians, the narrow alleys are crammed with diners - and the navigation is confusing. At one point I leave Rachael with the bikes and walk down one of these dining alleys, thinking we really don’t want to squeeze our bikes through here unless it’s the only option.

Eventually we find it though, facing Plaza Flores - right across the plaza from Hotel Nuevo Torreluz, where the Grampies stayed. Finally, we come to a place the Grampies didn’t get to first!

And it’s a very nice place that looks like it will be fine for the next four days. We’re well received, and while the desk agent processes our passports his colleague escorts us with our bikes to the garage. Its an unusual setup, one I only recall seeing a few times before: the garage is in the basement, but there’s no ramp down to it - instead there’s an elevator, large enough to drive a car into.

After we’re checked in the agent asks whether we’re aware of the processions, and hands us a pamphlet with the schedules for all of the processions scheduled for Semana Santa, Holy Week. And, strange to say, this is the first time it finally occurs to us that we’ve arrived on Palm Sunday. We’ve been so focused on the weather that we lost sight of this other important consideration. No wonder we had trouble scoring a table for lunch!

While Rachael’s at the nearby supermarket I try to make sense of the pamphlet in Spanish we’ve been handed. It takes me awhile to get it, but when I do I’m startled to realize there are processions scheduled nearly daily for the whole week, starting with four of them today.

This is the first we’ve realized that Almeria is an important hotspot on the Semana Santa circuit. It’s not Seville, but it looks significant enough that we’ll get to witness more and better processions and festivities than we’d imagined.

We’ve already missed the first procession of the day, the Borriquita, but there are still three more ahead. Each starts and ends from a different spot, but their routes all converge on the same core area - down the Paseo de Almería and then on to the cathedral. This is only blocks from our hotel, so we’re in an excellent location.

As soon as Rachael returns I hustle us out the door and we head toward the Paseo de Almería. We’ve only gone one or two blocks though when we come to the Plaza de San Pedro and see a procession slowly advancing right in front of us. This must be the Estrella procession, the first of the three afternoon/evening events. They’re just rounding the corner and slowly moving down the street and away from us when we arrive.

Goodness. This thing must weigh a ton! I wonder how many bearers are underpinning it. One reference I found said that most pasos weight well over a ton and have between two and four dozen bearers beneath it.

So all we see and hear from here is the tail end of it, but we know it’s bound for the cathedral so we join the crowds and work our way there hoping to get ahead of it. And we do. It’s not difficult, because the procession moves very slowly.

Look at those feet. Again, I wonder how many burly guys are under there, slowly shuffling this monster down the street all afternoon. Its exhausting to think about.

This is the same Paso (the large, float like platform that supports a scene from the Passion) that we saw from behind earlier.

Another paso in the same procession, this one of Mary.

We stand around by the cathedral for about a half hour, watching the penitents and other participants stream inside. We’re trying to decide how long to stand and watch when it starts raining, helping us decide to head for the nearest gelateria instead. We collect our cones, step outside and stand beneath an overhang watching the crowds and trying to figure out if there’s more show to come. Eventually though when a break comes in the rain we decide it’s time to head back to the room.

Bound for the cathedral: women in the traditional black lace mantilla mourning attire.

We both think we’ve had our experience for the day until I hear the loud, rhythmic beating of drums from our room. It must be the final procession of the day, and near enough so that we can hear it in our room. So I put on my shoes and dash out again, alone this time, and head toward the noise. It takes me back to San Pedro Plaza again, which as it happens is the origination point for this procession. I stand there watching and listening to the large band of musicians - there must be a hundred of them, snaking through the crowd and then doubling back on itself, playing what sounds like a sonorous lamentation. When I look in the doorway of the church I can see activity developing - hooded nazarinos cross back and forth, it looks like an immense float is inside - but they never come out. It takes me awhile to realize I’m missing the show, and they’ve come out the side entrance of the church and are proceeding away from me, around the corner and out of sight.

The Church of San Pedro, built originally in 1494 on the site of a former mosque. Destroyed in an earthquake in 1790, it was rebuilt in the neoclassical style in 1796.

From the number of participants and the size of the crowds, the Santa Cena must be the most important procession of the day.

So once again I find myself scrambling to find a viewpoint for the procession that’s just disappeared. It’s not as easy this time though, because the crowds are much larger and the folks are densely packed along both sides of the route. The best I can come up with is a spot in the next tier back where I can get a few shots by extending the phone as far above my head as I can reach.

One of probably a hundred nazarinos in this procession. The capriotes (tall, pointed hoods with eye-holes) were designed so the faithful could repent in anonymity, without being recognised as self-confessed sinners.

At first glance I mistook these long rods as walking staffs, and sometimes they look like they’re used that way - for example, see the earlier photo above. But they’re actually candles, lit only at night.

An immense scene, depicting Santa Cena, the Lord’s Supper.

It’s really an immense procession. The crowds are huge, but so is the number of participants.

Heart

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Today's ride: 27 miles (43 km)
Total: 391 miles (629 km)

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Jen RahnHello you two!

Hope your time in Almeria goes well.
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8 months ago

Bob KoreisDo you have restaurant reservations for Sunday?
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8 months ago

Karen PoretTo Bob KoreisYes, for Easter Sunday dinner..Let’s hope!
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8 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Jen RahnHey yourself! It might be a pretty slow time here - it looks very windy nearly every day that we’ll be here - but everywhere else in the region looks much worse. As it turns out, on the edge of a desert is a pretty good spot to be in foul weather.
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8 months ago

Rachael AndersonTo Jen RahnI really love Almeria. It has so many great biking paths and they are filled with happy people including young kids out with their parents on bicycles! I could definitely spend part of a winter here because it’s warmer than most places.
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8 months ago