1985 (2) – Spain

We found fancy envelopes and lovely postage stamps in Spain.

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

By March we'd been in Gibraltar for over five months.  When the weather improved, we decided to make the break (got out the ax and chopped off the roots we'd grown), and sailed out of Gibraltar on March 24th.  We had been told repeatedly (to the point I was sick to death of hearing it), that the Mediterranean provided two kinds of sailing conditions - either a flat calm or a full gale.  We were pleasantly surprised when we had a lovely day sail in gentle breezes for our twenty-mile jaunt to the harbor of Estepona.  It was a nice way to start off "the season."  

Estepona postcard

We spent three nights in Estepona.  On our last morning, when we were getting ready to leave, I wanted to mail some postcards, but couldn’t get any stamps.  I met an older British woman in the grocery, and asked if she would mail them for me.  (You can always depend on women like her – they must have been the backbone of the British Empire.)  She asked me where we were headed.  When I told her Almerimar, she took me by the shoulders and declared, “God help you!  The wind blows like crazy, and there’s absolutely nothing to do there!”  With that pronouncement, she sailed out through the door.

You can see Almerimar on the southeast coast of Spain.

We were pleased we’d had a look, on our road trip, at the upcoming marinas.  We knew ahead of time there wasn't going to be much of interest to us along the Costa del Sol.  So we picked Almerimar Marina (about 150 miles east of Gibraltar), in the province of Almeria, as our next "mail stop," and made tracks in that direction.  Leaving Estepona, we had day sails (I use the term loosely as there was no wind and we motored all the way), of about 30 miles each.  With a favorable current, that meant around five hours of traveling.  We stopped two days each in Fuengirola, Torre del Mar, and Puerto de Motril before arriving at Almerimar.

While we arrived in Almerimar in a calm, it wasn't long before the wind was howling.  (Yes, I remembered what the British lady had told me.)  The occasional day when it did stop was a very welcome respite.  And there really was almost nothing to do there.  The nearest village was four miles away, and the nearest city, Almeria, about thirty miles distant.  But the isolation of Almerimar was one of our chief reasons for selecting it.  We wanted a safe place to leave Tropic Moon while we did some touring inland through Spain.  

Internet Photo.  These days, Almerimar is a golf resort.
You can see the marina in the background.

We had stopped our mail from home weeks before we left Gibraltar.  From the time in Gibraltar when I called my mother to restart our mail with the new Almerimar address, till we actually arrived there, was another three weeks.  Mounds of mail had accumulated in the marina office.  When we went to collect the mail, Paco, one of the men who handled the desk, cried out, "You are here!  I begin to wonder who the Moon is!" 

A near-empty marina, when we were at Almerimar.

The next morning, when I was on the dock, a man came up to me on a motor scooter.  He asked if we'd gotten our mail.  I told him we’d picked it up the night before.  We got to talking.  Frank (British), and his wife, Marie Anne (Dutch), were traveling on a catamaran, and came from Holland by way of the French canal system.  They were both physiotherapists, and were taking a couple years off.  They planned to set up a new practice in Wales.  They’d been working in Holland for nine years.  Frank and Marie Anne had visited Granada (our prime target), but were planning to drive up to Toledo in a borrowed car.  In typical "open boat" fashion - though we'd only met five minutes before - Frank asked if we'd like to go along.  It was too good an offer to pass up; a few days later the four of us left for Toledo.

Not a great photo, but can you spot the windmills on the hills?

We not only visited the ancient walled city of Toledo, but also Madrid, Spain's bustling, cosmopolitan capital, as well as the old Moorish stronghold, the Alhambra, at Granada.  We toured castles, cathedrals, fortresses, museums, palaces, age-old factories, and beautiful gardens.  But what really captured our imaginations, far more than buildings and fountains, were the history, legend and romanticism of Spain.  On our drive to Toledo, we passed through the province of La Mancha, the legendary setting of Don Quixote who, on his horse Ronzinante, and with his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, had done battle with the windmills of this area.  We were watching for windmills, and saw very few at first, causing Marie Anne to comment that Don Quixote must have been more successful in his quest than she had been led to believe.  But then we approached a hill with a ruined castle on the peak, and two rows of unvanquished windmills marching proudly down either side. 

Internet Photo.  Windmills, and castle, in La Mancha

The scenery in the mountains was beautiful, and very appealing in its agricultural simplicity and vibrant colors.  From a distance, the hills appeared to be the work of a meticulous seamstress specializing in patchwork quilts.  We gazed on a tapestry of fields done in golden browns, deep reds and lime greens, under a blue sky stitched with puffy white clouds.  Included were hundreds of olive trees, painstakingly added in forest green French knots, on a background of rich red ocher cloth.