Andalucid

Andalucid Lite(r)

No solid food, no booze, no caffeine.  No TV.  No makeup.  I didn't even brush my hair once.  I just got back from a week's yoga detox retreat at lovely Kaliyoga near Orgiva, and I can't remember the last time I was so happy.

That's not to say it wasn't challenging.  Last time I was at Kaliyoga, in 2005, I did the yummy yoga retreat for people who eat - three delicious, healthy, colourful Al-Andalus meals to look forward to every day. Then, anticipation helped me flow through morning and evening yoga like a young gazelle.

But last week, mealtimes were more like the Japanese shock-TV series 'Endurance'. 

First there was a glass of gluey glop, fibre and suchlike, into which we mixed a few drops of cider vinegar in a vain attempt to make it edible. I can't really talk about it yet. Next, a cup of barley grass water, which looks and tastes like it sounds. The third course, a delightful linseed smoothie made from....linseed.  Our reward was a freshly pulverized fruit and veg juice, a different blend every meal, dancing with garlic, ginger, bright green and citrus flavours.   

In the evening, we gathered around the big table on the terrace for our vegetable gruel, literally the stock from a big vat of cooked organic veg.  With a sprinkle of paprika, a squeeze of lemon and dollops of olive oil, it was a feast.  Still, I think I was the first of the group to break - by the third day I was hallucinating, identifying exciting wisps of escaped vegetable in my soup bowl. On the last afternoon, we were served a salad with alfalfa sprouts, freshly picked organic leaves, carrots and lots else - it was like tasting everything for the first time in my life.

In between meal ordeals, we cleansed our colons, had morning coffee (enemas), and sessions with various therapists - a homeopath, a nutritionist, a kinesiologist, acupuncturist and others. The schedule is cleverly designed so that you are always just on your way to or from an appointment, massage or yoga, like a White Rabbit in sports gear.  I know I didn't have time for any cravings.  In fact I was relieved to be in a food-free zone, not having to make the closely reasoned choices that usually lead me, with flawless logic, to the bag of Maltesers or Doritos.

What I loved about Kaliyoga was the laid-back, houseparty feeling, the lovely staff and most of all, Rosie and Jonathon Miles, who put so much time and behind-the-scenes effort into creating a relaxed atmosphere where I could sit and chat, read, write, sleep, do yoga and just reflect on my life. 

Rosie and Jonathon, who run the detox weeks in spring and autumn, say the process is life-changing.  I have to agree:  I lost 8lbs and kicked caffeine, wheat, sugar - most things really - all in one go.  A week later, I've managed to stay off the junk food, eating more green leaves than ten White Rabbits.  This is mostly thanks to Fred, who devised a weightless, wheatless, meatless menu that kept me on the path of rightjuiceness until normal eating could be resumed.

I think there are still a couple of spaces left on the next yoga detox retreat, which runs from 11th to 18th of May, so check out the Kaliyoga website and come on down!

Orgivanised Chaos

"Orgiva's not even Spanish, just an alien place."

"It's full of hippies."

"It's dirty and lacks grace."

And these are just the comments I have heard this week about the capital of Las Alpujarras. Plenty of people think Orgiva is as seedy and crumbling as a stale pipas de girasol loaf from Galindo's - and they don't all live in Lanjarón either. 

On grumpy days, I can see what they mean.  The endless obras, construction works that never seem to decrease the number of buildings needing work; a plentiful supply of potholes but non-existent parking; the run of cafes opposite the church - plastic chair parking lots serving the Orgiva special, a tostada con tomate where the tomate is apparently scraped off the polystyrene bread just before serving.  Stray people and stray dogs busy heading nowhere. Even the little piper wraith opposite Galindo's, with her formless fluting.  Some days I just want to get in, get the shopping and get back to Lanjarón's more sleepy certainties.

But if I don't take the winding road to Orgiva for a week or so, I start missing just that clash of people and energies that drives me mad at other times.  Here's a 'top-of-mind list of things I love about Orgiva:

Café Galindo's terrace (see pic above) on a mild spring or autumn morning.  Who's sipping their café con leche under the big green canopy today?  I might stop to sip and read the latest hair-raising issue of The Olive Press.  And to buy one of Galindo's serious, substantial loaves of wholemeal, oatmeal, five grain or sunflower-seed bread. (The earlier stale loaf allusion was just a figure of speech).

Camac Wholefood Store - To me, Camac is the perfect 'village store' run by the perfect proprietors.  'Organic, international, wholefood and soulfood' is how they describe the contents of their pleasant shop.  I love exchanging weather news and local gossip with Steve and Audrey while buying the all important chocolate peanuts and raisins, Steve's yummy homemade jams and pickles, emerald basil and coriander nodding happily in their pots, Indian and Thai ingredients to transform local chicken or veg...I sometimes go in even when I don't want anything.  Camac is part of the Orgiva experience.

Baraka - Perched just above the Plaza Alpujarra, serving wonderful drippy chicken or falafel shawarma wraps and blended carrot/apple/orange juice, with a thoughtfully-supplied shower in the women's loos so you can clean up afterwards (semi-joke).   And just a waddle away is Café Willendorf.  Excellent coffee in tall thin mugs, squishy sofas (if you get there first), palatial loos.   Dire food but never mind, because for great food there's...

...Cafe Libertad.  Sally and her team of smiling maidens have ditched the original, rather clinical décor and given the room a lightly girly makeover.  No pink ostrich feathers, but soft seating in jewel-coloured velvet now surrounds a big low table at the back, with warm brown cane seating around tables draped with softly shaded cloths.  And the menu - brunchy, lunchy, crunchy, a great balance of healthy and self-indulgent savoury and sweet things.  Fred took a photo of me trying to look dignified as I plunge into the All Day Breakfast Tart, light pastry around a wobbly egg custard filled with bacon, sausage and tomato.  There's a veggie version too.  Unless you are very hungry, get one to share!

Art shows put together at two days' notice.  "They told me the space (the old ayuntamiento next to the Plaza) was available.  I told them I didn't have anything to show just now.  Next day, they printed a poster announcing the exhibition," says a slightly bemused but happy Jayne Morley.  She worked early and late to put up the show, also featuring wildlife photographer Gig Binder, and Fred.   Jayne, a theatre actress turned photographer, is busy putting together aRThOUSe Orgiva, a range of residential courses in photography, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, writing,  and voice. (Website under construction, like everything else in Orgiva, but getting there).  I love that in Orgiva, you don't have to be rich or connected to some stuffy European establishment to get things like this started.  Good luck Jayne and I hope to report on aRThOUSe's first season soon.

Christmas shopping at Nomadas.  If you haven't been into the sunny mini-emporium above Bar Cañada (opposite Dia supermarket) lately, it's been transformed.  Maria has done away with a lot of the ethnic fabrics, soft furnishings and clothes, replacing them with gifts, decorations and household stuff.  I am going there to do some Christmas shopping next week - the products and prices are a joy, and they wrap your gifts in bright pink Nomadas paper stamped with gold.

The little piper.  Bright-eyed and wild-haired as a Portuguese water dog, this elfin street performer almost lives on the high kerb opposite Galindo's, in the shade of the yellow pillarbox. Her unpunctuated piping is one of the characteristic sounds of Orgiva.  When she is not there, I step around her space.

So if you see me lurking in a shop doorway with a scowl, just ignore me.  But if I've found a shady seat at Galindo's and Antonio has just brought my coffee, then put your shopping down, take a seat and tell me what drives you nuts or lights up your day in Orgiva!

 

Honey, it's good for you!

I'm surrounded by stalls selling sweet, sticky, fragrant edible things, and a smooth Spanish voice is whispering that they're good for my health and I should eat as many different types as possible.  Am I dreaming?  I dip a cracker into the earthenware bowl in front of me.  Thicker and darker than molasses, with a burnt sugar edge, the flavour of miel de madroños is too intense to be anything but real.  (I can't find a translation for this fruit, any ideas from this lovely photo)?

I'm tasting my way around the Feria de Miel Andaluza, the Andalucian Honey Fair, opening today for its seventh year in Lanjarón.  Dare I say that the building opposite the town's famous Balneario is buzzing?  Young, old and in-between, visitors are congealing contentedly around the thirty or so stalls selling everything from clear amber to chestnut brown honey, as well as soap, hand cream, candles, and even wines containing the magic ingredient.

The honey from Granada has its very own D.O. (Denominacion de Origen) quality mark to protect its purity, a status it shares with only one other Spanish region.  At the stall of local specialist Al-Andalus Delicatessen there are honeys made from chestnut, rosemary, thyme, lavender, orange blossom and even avocado.   A little further down the hall, Apicultura Jeronimo has cuddly beeswax cow candles, plus the oddest-looking chicken version and even Santa candles if you want to make an early start on your festive buying.

Apicor from Cordoba, where I tasted the mysterious miel de madroños, is a honey heavyweight.  The dignified elderly gentleman behind the counter lists the medicinal properties of each honey with the gravitas of a surgeon:  Cantueso (French Lavender - please correct me if you know better) honey is good for colic, flatulence and indigestion. It has powerful antiseptic properties too, so you can wash wounds with it.  Perfect for the greedy guts who has tripped over on the way back from the restaurant.  Romero, or rosemary honey, is good for the kidneys; Azahar, or orange blossom, helps with insomnia.  I try another speciality honey, miel de meloja, flavoured with pieces of pumpkin or squash.  It's a world away from the squeezy bottles of anonymous honey, 'Product of Several Countries' that line most supermarket shelves.  Apicor also sells big, chestnut-brown bars of pure beeswax, for furniture restoration and the like. 

A particularly enthusiastic bunch of visitors is gathered around La Bodega de Maria, based in Laroles.  Her family recipe produces  a  flowery, dark red 'honey wine' that she says is unique.  An elderly man standing next to me says he's been taking a medicinal glass of it every day for thirty years, and has hardly ever suffered colds or sore throats as a result.  If he's a 'plant', he's very convincing.

Other local/natural products are also on sale here.  I bought soaps with extract of caviar (they had a version with extract of snail-shells too), and there were plenty of local naughty treats: Exquisitos Mulhacenes, charmingly named after Spain's highest mountain, are golden brown meringue 'peaks'.  There are the deceptively pure white rounds of queso de almendras, or almond cheese, which must pack the world's greatest amount of calories into the smallest area, and hefty sausages of pan de higo, the dried fig sweet that thinks it's a giant chorizo. One smart tap from a pan de higo could fell a mule.

Spend a delicious hour or so absorbing this important Andalucian cultural mainstay - it's your patriotic duty!  The Fair is open all through the holiday weekend, from 11.00 am to 8.00 pm. And if you still feel hungry when you get out, several local restaurants are doing special honey dishes.  Try classic berenjeñas con miel (aubergine slices fried in honey) or costillas con miel, (honey-glazed spare ribs) at Volante (opposite the petrol station at the Orgiva end of town), or  lomo al estilo Luisiana con miel (Louisiana fried pork with honey) at Casita de Papel, the last restaurant at the Granada end of town.   For more information, you can call: (+34) 958 77 11 96/31, or email: apinevada@terra.es.

¡Buen provecho!

PS: Ever wondered what it takes to make the Spanish dream job work?  I spoke to Jonathon and Rosie Miles at Kaliyoga retreat to find out.  Their story is on the Guardian Abroad website.

Pedigree Chumbo

With their reputation for being hard to handle, and those all-over spiked collars, they're the pit bull terriers of the Andalucian fruit basket.  But just like that other maligned breed, the best of them are soft and sweet under their bristling exteriors.

We're talking higos chumbos; nopales in South America, tunas in Mexico, Indian figs, handiyyas in Morocco, Xian ren zhang in China, mission cactus or figues de barbarie.  There are dozens of names for the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, the opuntia ficus-indica.

Here in Andalucia, the sudden appearance of wiry old campesinos transformed into mountain goats with buckets signals the beginning of the chumbo harvest, and summer drifting into autumn.  The other day I watched an expert fill a bucket with the bright orange fruits, 'fishing' them off their knobbly mother plant with long-handled tongs.  Others wear rubber or leather gloves for hand-to-fruit confrontations.  "You can roll the fruits on the ground to get rid of the hairs," a chumbo-wife told me.  Other suggestions, (thank you Todd of Alcaudete on Andalucia.com) include  waving them around in an open flame, or shaking them in a bag of hot coals.  Or you could just open a tin of peaches. Don't do what I am doing in the picture here, staged for photographic purposes only.

Some say the red fruits are superior to the yellow and orange varieties; others keep them for feeding organically-reared pigs.  Either way, Todd recommends eating or preserving the fruits soon after harvesting, as they tend to start fermenting quickly. They are delicious as both a fruit and a vegetable, featuring in salads, jellies and jams, cookies and syrups, especially in American Southwestern and Mexican cuisine.   But don't go mad.  'Caroig' of Cabo de Gata, also on the Andalucia.com forum, warns: "I've also heard them referred to as 'sh-- eaters,'" advising that too many of the fibrous fruits can lead to severe constipation.

Sacred to the Aztecs, the Spanish brought the plant back with them when they returned from conquistadoring in the New World. Opuntia was historically grown in Spain to cultivate the cochinilla beetle, source of the heavenly red colouring.  Today it thrives in many Mediterranean countries including Spain, Italy and North Africa, as well as arid regions of the United States - in fact it can take over and needs careful managing if it is not to become a nuisance.

There are still chumbos to be had in our local campo.  So for a little while longer, next time you see a Spanish senior citizen clinging precariously to a steep terrace and waving wildly with a white stick, offer to hold his bucket.  He just might peel you a juicy chumbo, and soon you too will be hooked.

See A Man About a Hog

It had everything.  The tense wait as the deadline ticked past.  A car teetering on the edge of a sheer drop.  And then the stars - a shapely heroine with legs to kill for, and a passionate Spaniard who's a bit handy with a knife. 

We're talking jamon, and the launch of Lindsay and Orla Ostervig's first Intercambio Cultural at their home, La Joya, just outside Lanjarón.  Our hambassador for the evening was Gustavo Rubio, dapper proprietor of top local tapas bar and jamoneria Arca de Noé.  Well, the animals might go in two by two, but they get to check out in much smaller parcels.  We were about to find out how and why as Rubio took us back in time.  Our interpreter Eva, owner of the teetering car, took up the tail in English.

Back in 1950, he said, Lanjarón's economy, such as it was, depended almost entirely on agriculture.  So whether the family home was in the town or in the surrounding campo, almost everyone kept a mule, horse, goat or what Eva charmingly dubbed "porks," and not just for company.  No, the patter of tiny hooves was like the clink of bright coins - the more, the merrier.  The porks recycled the family's leftovers, as well as a yummy porridge of maize and wheat husks on their way to porcine obesity. 

When the pigs' weight topped 140 kilos, and the season was right (between November and March) they were 'sacrificed' as the Spanish put it, at the matanza.  This was once a big family occasion, where willing hands would start preparing morcilla, chorizo, longaniza, salchichas and salchichon, every piggy product they could extract, even making soap from the inedible portions of the pig's fat.  The delicious results were stored for family meals.  Sometimes creditors were even paid in pig.  However, if you were really poor, you would sell your ham, under cover of night to avoid the shame. 

Domestic abattoirs (mataderos) and even Lanjarón's own matadero have now succumbed to EU regulations making small scale killing both unprofitable and illegal, and larger-scale slaughtering methods have mostly taken over.  However, in the selection, salting and drying of ham, expertise still makes all the difference.

Just as well then that Gustavo's eye for a lovely leg is no less keen than, say, Mick Jagger's.  He travels up into the High Alpujarras, to Trevélez, Spain's highest town, and selects his jamón serrano (mountain air-cured ham) from the Landrace breed traditional in this area. "I only sell embras (females) or castrated males," twinkles Gustavo, asserting that only the fat in these hams is in the proper proportion and distribution.  The hams are carefully drained, salted and dried, and can hang in the mounain air for up to two years before they are ready to buy.

Back at Arca de Noé, beamed and wallpapered with glistening jamones, Rubio sells just two types of serrano ham, a whole piece 'Centro de Jamon Gran Reserva' or al corte, paper thin slices, retailing at €9.50 per kilo.  Before you buy at 'the Ark' order a chilled golden fino or a rioja.  Your drinks will arrive with Gustavo's finest ham, glowing garnet on its cushion of white bread and you'll be participating in one of the Alpujarra's finest food rituals.

Four Go Alfresco at Puente Palo

After weeks of moody weather, last Sunday dawned breezy, the sky vibrant blue.  We weren't working, no invites to lunch had been given or received, our Jeep was back on the road.  There was only one response to this spooky serendipity: we had to go on a picnic.

We quickly sought inspiration from one of our favourite food writers.  In her classic collection "Summer Food", Elizabeth David* daringly suggests skipping the foie gras and lobster in aspic in favour of robust peasant food like olives, anchovies, salami/chorizo and cheese, the kind of thing you can find in such abundance at our very own deli in town, Arca de Noe. 

Because we are essentially lazy, our picnic was humble.  Fred roasted chicken pieces with garlic, herbs and chunks of lemon.  We bought coleslaw and pasta salad (sorry Elizabeth), and mini-bottles of Cune Rioja.  There was a tub of cherries, and there may well have been some crisps and chocolate. 

The cool box packed, it was time to load the perfect picnic props into the back of the car.  "Come on guys, we're going on an adventure!" I said in my best happy-voice to Lola, our needy ex-abandoned spaniel/sheep cross.  (She has a big square butt and stick legs).  As all Lola's previous car journeys have ended in cold metal brandished by men in white coats, she immediately flung herself to the ground in a fine show of civil disobedience.  She was lifted into the Jeep, whimpering softly.  And our 12-year old Bearded Collie, Macduff, also had to be hand-winched from tarmac to tailgate, like Henry VIII in his later years. With the dogs staring out of the rear window in hopeless resignation, we were off for our fun day.

We took the left turn just out of Lanjarón towards Caballo Blanco, the riding/trekking centre I blogged about earlier this year.  We stayed on the track, climbing high above Lanjarón and Orgiva, passing signs to Cañar, driving for over an hour towards the picnic park at Puente Palo.  Thanks to the recent rain, the hillsides are bursting with wildflowers; golden broom and poppies, fat stalks of lavender and wild thyme. 

We parked in the meadow next to the picnic site, a good distance from the only other car there.  The dogs did some obligatory racing through the grass before flopping in individual areas of car shade.  We used the bonnet of the car as a picnic table.  There was no sound except birdsong, breeze whispering through grass, the rustle of the crisp packet...

A little later we drove on and found a parking spot near a grove of pines.  Fred took a nap, while I crowded into the back with Duffs and Lola.  For half an hour we were all at peace, just listening to the birdsong and watching sunlight sifted through pine branches.

We hardly ever do this stuff, yet in the past we have spent much more to be much less happy. 

This leads me neatly to an Andalucid Appeal - for your ideas and stories.  Our friends Ben and Marina, who run the excellent language learning site Notes in Spanish, are compiling a book called 500 Things to Do in Spain (Before You Die).  Entries are coming in fast, but there's still a window of time and room for your life-enhancing Spanish experience.  If you have a minute, do click on the Comments link at the bottom of this post and share your ideas with us.  We'll pass them on to Ben and Marina and if selected, you'll get your name in print in this wide-circulation book.    

Meanwhile, we're already browsing through "Summer Cooking" for next week's ideas. Here we are: "A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, two ribs of lamb, one piece of collared calf's head...."

*Historical footnote:  One of my first writing jobs was to edit a book by Ms. David's nephew, architectural kitchen designer Johnny Grey.  We took him to Chez Gerard in Charlotte Street for steak frites.  At the end of the meal he lifted his dinner plate in both hands and licked it clean.

Montilla: The Other Sherry

How do you know summer has arrived?   
One day last week, Fred and I stopped for tapas outside lovely Art Nouveau Café Futbol in Granada. I downed some boquerones, raised my frosted glass of straw-gold fino and wiggled toenails painted hot pink (my toenails; Fred prefers a frosted or neutral shade).  Suddenly, it was official: the langorous Andalucian summer had arrived. Blue skies and barbecues, long fragrant evenings stretching into tomorrow, eating outdoors until the early hours...

Olives, cheese, jamon serrano, calamares, gazpacho - sherry and its lesser-known cousin Montilla are a perfect complement to the robust flavours of Andalucian tapas.  It's that modest Montilla I want to introduce to you today.

The Montilla-Moriles wine region is 16 kilometres south of Cordoba. As you drive through the Sierra de Montilla, a tapestry of vines reaches to the horizon, soaking up around 2,500 hours of sunshine a year, with temperatures often climbing to 45ºC.  Ultra sweet Pedro Ximenez grapes thrive here in the chalky, sandy soil and the heat ensures a naturally high sugar/alcohol content, so unlike sherry it doesn't need to be fortified.  As a result, say Montilla fans, you won't get a hangover (although I'm sure you could prove them wrong if you were really dedicated).

Both sherry and Montilla are aged using the criaderas y soleras system, in which older wines are carefully blended at various stages with younger wines, in a process unique to southern Spain.  However, sherry is made mainly from Palomino grapes.  Montilla is almost entirely the product of the Pedro Ximénez grape, with just ten percent coming from Moscatel, Baladí-Verdejo and Torrontés varieties. 

We visited the Alvear bodega in Montilla, one of the oldest in Spain, on a glass-bright day in the legendary cold winter of 2005, to see how soil, grape and sun are distilled into 'liquid Andalucia'.

Montilla's story begins each year with the grape harvest at the beginning of September.  Grapes destined to become light, white wines and finos are picked first; others are left a little longer to sweeten on the vine, then dried on straw mats in the sun for a week or so.  These raisins will eventually become the rich, dark dessert wines for which the Pedro Ximénez grape is justly famous.

After harvesting and drying, both types of grape travel to the lagares, or presses, yielding a fine grape juice or 'must' which is fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats. Fermentation continues in traditional tinajas, huge earthenware vats stored in cool dark rooms.

When fermentation is complete, some of the wine will be bottled without ageing and sold as vinos jovenes afrutados, young fruity wines that are mostly sold locally.  The following January, the remaining wine is classified for ageing as fino or oloroso, and begins its stately progress through the criadera y solera ageing system.  And while different Montillas might all grow up in the fragrant cathedral of the bodega, the resulting wines have distinctively different destinies.

Tomorrow, find out which wines will go on to greatness and why...

 

Cabo de Gata: Plastic and Pottery Route

Ever since Fred took his grandson to a rock concert in Las Negras three years ago, he's wanted to go back to what The Independent calls 'the Spanish Mediterranean's last truly wild shore.'  So last Friday found us heading west towards Almeria and Cabo de Gata on the N340/E15. Beyond Castell de Ferro, the landscape is increasingly under the spell of plastic invernaderos,the giant greenhouses where exotic fruit and flowers are grown year-round for export to northern Europe.  64,000 acres of shimmering polythene stretch beneath the Sierra de Gador to Almeria and beyond.  Other things that flourish under this fertile canopy: bounteous €-harvests (for a few); exploited Moroccan labourers and the shanty towns that house them, gambling, race riots...

The plastic subsides gradually as you enter the Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata/Nijar, and the surrounding hills go from green to scrubby to plain unshaven.  Once your eye and mind adjust to the emptiness, there's an austere beauty about the semi-desert drive, yet it's a relief to detour up the A100 to the small white town of Nijar.  The town is famous for its rag textiles and rugs, called jarapas (you'll also see them in our Alpujarran towns), and even more for its rustic glazed pottery, carrying on a Moorish tradition.

We bought dark blue dinner plates with daffodil yellow trim, and breakfast bowls, plates and mugs with charmingly clumsy dark blue motifs squiggled on off-white glaze.  Less than €100 for all of this.  Nevertheless, Fred herded me out before I could do any more damage, and we had lunch at La Glorieta, in the pretty plaza near the church. There's a nostalgic old-fashioned ambience in this old part of Nijar, and I vote it the best place to stop, shop and eat en route to the area's coastal resorts.

Of these, El Cabo de Gata is probably best known.  At this time of year, on a cool windy morning, Fred and I have the long beach all to ourselves to hunt for pebbles and shells.

At nearby Las Salinas, they been extracting salt since the Phoenicians pioneered the process.  The parish church stares out across the water like a weatherbeaten fisherman, marooned on an island of muddy grass. It is the most unadorned church I have ever seen in Spain. 

This whole area is one of Spain's most important wetlands for migrant birds, most striking of all the flamingoes who stop over from Africa in spring and summer.

At Los Escullos, we walk over volcanic rocks that look like petrified pancakes, some sections shaded a pale pistachio green, others soft lilac.  You can break sections of the lacy rock as easily as chalk.

Our eventual destination is not popular San José, but its cute little sister a little way up the coast, Agua Amarga.  And that's the subject of my next post.... 

 

Cabo de Gata II: Resorts

Say you are going to Cabo de Gata and most people will advise you to stay in San José.  But an article in The Independent last year inspired us to venture about an hour further along the coast, to tiny Agua Amarga. (Come off the A7-E15 to N341 at Venta del Pobre, then take the ALP712 into the village).

If Torremolinos is Blackpool, then Agua Amarga is Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.   The village itself is predominantly holiday apartments and some handsome adobe villas behind glossy-leaved hedges, but all on a modest scale, the kind of place families come back to year after year.  There are two little shops, selling more varieties of flip-flop than I have ever seen, and Hawaiian-print surf and swim gear in sizes I never say 'Aloha' to any more.

Our hotel, the French-owned Hotel Family, is set back from the southern end of the small beach.  It's been run by the same family for three generations.  Set in well-kept grounds with lots of mature exotic trees, the hotel reflects this continuity in its slightly old-fashioned decor, the discreet welcome of hosts Michele and Rene, the rooms furnished with local craft textiles and pottery.  It's like staying with a kindly maiden aunt.

Alastair Sawday includes Hotel Family in his Guide of special places to stay in Spain.  Breakfast in the sunny dining room includes fresh fruit salad, fluffy omelettes and sweet sponge cake.  Dinner was a little overpriced at €21, but well-intentioned.  We would definitely go back when it's a little warmer! 

At the other end of the beach, La Playa's broad terrace was a great place to huddle over coffee supplied by friendly staff.  At dinner, the restaurant menu was full of surprises, including an unusual carpaccio: translucent green strips of marinated courgette on a bed of salad, pine nuts and raisins in balsamic and wine sauce.  

As for San José, it was probably our fault for being there this chilly April weekend, but it had all the charm of a British sunbather in January.  Lots of jolly pizzerias and seafood places were still shut, and the few shopkeepers selling vaguely ethnic sequinned loincloths or whatever had an end of August jaded look to them.  I'm sure it's much more fun frying there in high season and we must try it sometime. 

What's your favourite summer beach resort?  Share with a comment - I'd love to hear from you!

Cádiz Carnaval

The first week of Spain's wildest carnaval is full-on revel.  The streets of the picturesquely peeling capital are jammed with parade floats followed by families dressed as pink pigs or prawns; mini-Infantas mingle with drag queens and anyone who has jammed on a dayglo wig gets to join in.  Since neither our persons nor our belongings are insured to such high risks, we arrived for the less frenetic second weekend of the fiesta at the end of February.

 

What's Cádiz like?  Short answer: think Liverpool.  A once mighty port city that fell on hard times with the demise of its shipbuilding industry, Cádiz is now reinventing itself with considerable success as both city break and beach resort.  Like Liverpudlians, the gaditanos are known for their liberal views and lippy good humour.  Carnaval celebrates these qualities with a Drag Queen's Parade, and in the scurrilous lyrics belted out by bands of wandering minstrels in comparsa or chiringota groups.

All the visual and aural noise competes with another big Cádiz tradition, seafood, and specifically fried finny things.  Enough frying oil here to have launched Christopher Columbus's galleons on another epic voyage. Hot fat was certainly involved in our wonderful lunch at El Faro, the city's most popular seafood restaurant. Full house, great roar and clatter of holiday families at every table.

"Go on, share the red sea scorpion paté with me," said Fred.  I regarded it the way you'd look at a choc-dipped sago grub in Papua New Guinea, then remembered my journalistic obligations and filled a whole tine of my fork with the stuff.  It turned out to be salmon paté's milder cousin, whereupon I devoured it without mercy. Turns out it's actually sea urchin, which normally is right up there with the sago grub in my comfort food pantheon.

Perhaps strangest of all though was what we didn't see: in a weekend where huge crowds spilled into the streets from hundreds of bars and booze stalls, not one ugly scene, not a single note of a football chant, just the usual happy muddle of tots, teens, grown-ups and grown-olds getting on with enjoying themselves.  ¡Viva Carnaval!

For the full story, look out for our lavishly illustrated feature on Cádiz in UK's Spanish Magazine later this year, and in our very own Olive Press in August.  Lots of Carnaval pics can be found on Fred's ever-growing Flickr site. (My thrice-blessed blog guru, Mike Coulter at Digital Agency, has helped me fix the limited access problem and you can see ALL Fred's great new work now).