We are currently house-sitting a little apartment and a cat in Aguadulce, in southern Spain. It’s a nice long house-sit (two months) so there's plenty of time to settle in and really get to know the area. Aguadulce is primarily a tourist town that relies on its long and wide beaches and calm clear Mediterranean water to attract vast summer crowds from northern Europe, the United Kingdom, and Russia.
None of that is happening here now, in beginning of the winter, though.
Winters in the Mediterranean are known to be cold and wet, but you would hardly know it here in Aguadulce. Southern Spain, along with the southern tips of Italy and Greece and a few Mediterranean Islands, is way south of the general European Mediterranean coast. and southern Spain is also especially close to Northern Africa. This means that the days here are endlessly sunny and warm – in the month that we have been here we've had just two days with rain of any note, and the daily maximum temperatures have slowly fallen from the low twenties (centigrade) to the mid-to-high 'teens. Although we did do a little sunbaking on the beach early on, and I even managed a short swim in the fast-cooling Mediterranean Sea, we are mainly here to explore the culture and to go walking, so this is a perfect climate for us.
A large number of the tourist oriented businesses are closed for the season. There are still plenty of hospitality businesses open, though - mostly the genuinely Spanish ones that appeal to the local people, which suits us just fine. As usual, we've selected a few favourite eateries; one of them is Stilo Campo, a cervecería (bar) in the back streets here. They do delicious and interestingly-presented food - here's a chicken skewer:
Aguadulce is on the eastern end of a large plain, the Campo de Dalias, which fans out into the Mediterranean Sea from the Sierra de Gádor mountain range. The town is squeezed in where the mountain range meets the sea and cuts off the end of the plain in a line of cliffs. The cliffs run to the nearby ancient city of Almería, which you can see in the distance in this picture:
The harbour, Puerto Aguadulce, at the eastern-most end of the town, is under these cliffs:
The harbour is full of clear blue-green Mediterranean water, which must be very temping in the hot summer weather!
The mountains make a spectacular backdrop, with the hills Cerro de las Bolinas and Loma de la Cueva del Burro (the hill of the donkey cave) looming over the town.
The hills and cliffs face the south-west, and therefore face the setting winter sun, which lights up their ochre colouring to an orange glow in the late afternoon.
Aguadulce is a great place to settle for a couple of months to sit out part of the European winter!
Tags
If you enjoyed this blog post, you can find related posts under these headings:
Previous post:
< Previous post
Next post:
future post >
Share this The Journey and the Destination post using your favourite social media:
Would you like to add something, or ask a question? Add a comment below (you can leave the 'Website' field blank):