Kite Surfers

November 2, 2009

Dark clouds are moving across the sky this morning. As we ate breakfast on the terrace we decided they were headed for the Costa de la Luz, our destination for this evening. We ask the owner, Suzanna, if she has heard any adverse weather reports from the area and she tells us that if the wind is coming from the west, the weather will be fine over on the Costa de la Luz and in Tarifa. If it's from the East then the wind will be hellish. We ignore the obvious, that the wind is definitely coming from the east, and press on regardless. We experienced these strong winds three years ago - small wonder that the tourist industry hasn't flourished there. We are grateful for that.




After visiting the castle again, this time to look at the Latin inscriptions in the Arab gate, and make what I felt was a rather depressing visit to the cemetery opposite the castle (the photos of people who died young are heart-breaking), we set off to Zahara de los Atunes.



We pulled over at the side of the road outside Jimena to take a last look, wondering if next time we came this beautiful wide vista would be ruined by a proposed airport.



Driving into some light rain near Gibraltar and wondering if we had made the right decision to head west, our worries were calmed by a most jaw-droppingly perfectly clear view from high across the Straits down on to Morocco - each town along the north African coast highlighted by shafts of sun, and seemingly within touching distance, a view spreading across maybe a 100 miles or so. Our photos had to be taken from the car as we found no places to pull over. Very frustrating, but even so ...



The views got better and better. We passed Tarifa and drove on along the coast road to the beach at Punta de la Pena.

There are several access points along this stretch of the coastline, each path leading to beautiful white beaches through the pine tree plantations left and right. These were clearly designed to hold back the incursion of the sand.



As we walked onto the broad, white sands the clouds started to thicken. We watched kite surfers being lifted up at high speed by the strong buffeting winds, their kites brightly lit by sunbeams and all set against a dark sky - a real treat. I ran around excited like a mad dog on the beach, taking scores of photos with my Canon G10. My wife moved at a more leisurely pace, mainly because she still uses a film camera. Or maybe because she is simply not a mad dog.



We cooled down too quickly as the wind blew hard onto us, but as we sat shivering, eating our sandwiches, the sky opened from the west, the sun shone through and within half an hour we were in warm sunshine, watching the whole show now against a blue sky. Great, and even better, we'll go back in a day or so.




Click here for my Flickr photos of Andalusia