Zahara de los Atunes and an interesting waiter

November 2, 2009

We drove the largely empty carretera nacional 340 north up from the beaches on the Costa de la Luz towards Zahara de los Atunes. Wind farms are built alongside the road at regular intervals, and even from within the car we could sense the force generated as the massive white blades rose and fell in synchronised rhythm.



It was hypnotic. Sometimes as we headed up gentle inclines in the road the top of a massive wind turbine would suddenly appear straight in our faces as the road fed us at blade level straight into its arms. A strangely calm and attractive way to depart this world.



We checked into the massive, virtually empty and slightly pretentious Hotel Gran Sol on the beach at Zahara de los Atunes, opposite the ruin of a duke's former palace.



We'd seen this hotel before, and had thought it looked interesting because it had a filme triste, out-of-season, black-and-white apsect. And it still was. But not in an entirely positive way. The architect had not really thought through the human perspective thoroughly enough. Although it was decked out in gold fittings and expensive marble, it still lacked warmth. And to get to our sea-front room almost directly above the check-in on the third floor required that we go up and down stairs, along endless corridors where the blinds were pulled down to protect something from too much direct sunlight, into adjacent buildings, back up, back down - and the lift accessed a different floor of a different building. Just don't bring a lot of luggage and don't expect the chaps at the check-in desk to help. They are too busy being solemn, in keeping with what the owners I assume think should be the appropriate atmosphere. Also, it helps if you don't keep sticking your car keys in the door locks of potential room candidates and then claiming the bloody key doesn't work. Doh.

The Hotel Gran Sol has been constructed as close to the beach as a building could be and still remain standing a week later. Hence the magnificent view from our room over the massive, white wide sand beach. The hotel is a very expansive, ochre-painted structure just three floors in height. I would estimate that at most there were four or five rooms occupied on this day, presumably because it was out of season. But I have the feeling it's like this in high season, too.

The town itself was shuttered up due to the public holiday yesterday, All Saints. But a couple of shops were open, including a baker's and a sweet shop, plus several cafes and restaurants where the coffee machines had annoyingly been turned off for cleaning in the early evening. I made my way to the baker's to buy water and and found that by watching carefully where I trod I could avoid the big piles of dog dirt that were helpfully silhouetted by the bright street lamps. Some of the biggest heaps were outside a closed restaurant called Ramon Y PiPi or similar. Ramon Y KaKa would be more apt.

We walk from restaurant to restaurant down the street that leads to the beach and make our selection based mainly on gut feeling, although the choice wasn't that tough as there are just three still open. We sat down under a transparent awning out front, and within seconds are befriended by a big black cat called Huevillo ("little egg" - go figure) that is owned by the restaurant - and you can tell he's not a stray. He's very healthy with a sheen to his coat, but now he knows he's found a soft touch in me. As soon as the waiter is gone I'm going to give Huevillo a slice of salmon. But responsibly I ask my wife to check with the cat's owner first. She says she doesn't intend to ask him anything of the sort. My wife will happily interrogate the waiter about the history of the palace of the Duke of Sidona Medonia opposite (now a ruin, once used by pirates) but won't simply ask him if it's ok for me to feed the cat. Other people's priorities, eh?

Well, blow me down! We chose our fish - lenguade and pargo - here at the restaurant, Casa Grande in Zahara (freshly caught fish and weighed in kilos) and the waiter brings us an estimate of the cost: 47 euros for the fish alone! Too embarrassed to ask him to take it off the grill now. Lucky our room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean cost relative peanuts.



The waiter is intensely knowledgeable about the food he serves, always a good sign, but has this habit of turning his head away after speaking, as if he doesn't want to talk about ruined palaces. Then he turns back and fires off a ton of information, much of it quite surprising - like, for example, the fact that although the castle is a ruin, he lives in a cave in the wall and has 10 to 12 cats living on his terrace. And that he was born in the ruin! Beat that for a surprising bit of information, eh? This restaurant is therefore highly recommended for entertainment value also, and I shall submit a note to the Cat God that on judgment day this man must be spared death by claw.

However, the upshot is, annoyingly, that I am not allowed to feed the cat (I called him Huevos by mistake) as he will get fed 'til he bursts on fish leftovers after the restaurant closes.



It is now growing darker. At one point the waiter hears a noise across the street coming from near the gate of the ruin, and freezes, his face turned towards the gate, listening intently, eyed squinted, head cocked slightly. Then he hurries over towards the gate and is swallowed by the dark. We imagine some fisticuffs are about to take place but when he next appears he is pushing a trailer on wheels, the kind that attaches to a car.

Later he is suddenly gone from our table, where he has been waiting almost too close to the table, intent on anticipating our every whim (isn't that annoying?), and we next see him pushing the trailer off down the street with a couple of cats following behind. That was the last we saw of him until about midnight when from our balcony on the third floor we noticed a silhouette of a man walking in the moonlight down the boardwalk across the sand towards the ocean. Of course, it is the waiter, and he reappeared just a few minutes later. Perhaps he magically swept his hand into the ocean and pulled out the fish for tomorrow night's customers. I would put nothing past him.

A good restaurant, great staff, great cats, all at a shocking price for cheapskates.

Diverging a little here: I'm not sure it's particularly easy to work out the rules about smoking in restaurants in Spain. The rules, we were told, are based on the square metre size of premises, but the locals seem happy to pretend blissful ignorance of them. And the owners don't seem too bothered. Cough! Cough! Curse!

We just got the bill for our meal: 82 euros. Let me repeat: 82 bloody euros. Surely the most expensive meal I've ever had. Bloody hell! We switch into justification mode to make us feel better ("well, a meal out in the UK cost 30 quid per person, so ..." and "We make our own lunch here, so ..."). However, that said, it was the best meal we had that trip.

We had timed things almost perfectly - after dinner we hurried to the beach down the boardwalk and onto the sand just as the sun set. The colours were rich - purple, reds and orange. It seemed just the right moment to photograph everyone in silhouette, and I naturally overdid it.

As it was late season there were perhaps just two or three other couples on the entire length of the beach as we looked out along a couple of miles of smooth sand in the late evening light. A truly beautiful sight, and a wonderful way to wind down the day.

When it became too dark to stay longer on the beach we went back to the near-deserted hotel. My wife sat on the balcony writing in her diary and I experimented with the camera. I used a mini tripod to stabilise the camera for a long exposure of the night beach scene. I was impressed with the Canon G10's low-light capabilities. The photo shows the stars shining clear against the blue-black night sky, the beach reflecting the light of the moon.



We fell asleep listening to the waves break on the shore. Another great day in paradise over. Except paradise charges a pretty penny for a bit of fish.

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Meagre breakfast in the marble cavern

November 3, 2009

Oh good - another hot, sunny day! Excellent. My wife had gone down to the swimming pool and I took a few photos of the beach scene from the balcony and focused in as best as possible on some fishermen on the beach who were looking naturally picturesque as they went about painting their wooden boat.



I went on as the advance scouting party, down to breakfast. To locate the dining room I walked through the maze of long, dark corridors of the deserted hotel, up, down round, left and right then everything in reverse and started again, repeated for floors which I am not even staying on, but all an essential part of the journey, due to some whimsy on the part of the architect. Maybe there was a world elevator shortage when they built this pastel-coloured cavern thirty years ago.

Eventually I came out into what was obviously not the breakfast room but perhaps a large guru admiration space. I base this judgment on the layout of tables and chairs in the middle of the room - a small table, and alongside it a single quality chair of leather, both set in the middle of the room with circles of lesser quality, harder chairs radiating outwards. Of course, there were no signs to quell my nosiness, and I began naturally to speculate on what the title of the event could have been. "Is transmogrification of the human soul ...." "Why does the human body decompose more rapidly when pummelled by a hammer than ...?"

The hotel is well cleaned and decorated, and I walked through now to the rather awkwardly empty breakfast room. I was in awe at the marble floors and staircases I had laboured along and down to get here. But why all the glamour when the end result, as I noted now with some dismay, is coffee pumped out of a self-service automatic dispenser, the croissants squeezed out of a cellophane bag and the orange juice from a carton? At the far end of the room a waiter arranged settings for lunch guests who would not come.



Why spend a fortune on tarting up a hotel to look like a palace in Dubai after the recession and not have a decent breakfast? "We'll spend hundreds of millions on the marble..." said the owners ..."and I'll go and buy the worst assembly-line croissants I can find, and some instant coffee and little sealed sachets of industrial jams..." said the assistant. I have a horrible suspicion it's mainly the British who stay here, because they'll put up with any nonsense as long as they don't embarrass themselves.

And my final note on this hotel that we will be leaving this morning: please put internet access in the rooms! This is 2009, for goodness sake. In sum: clean, soulless, vast, ever so slightly pretentious and pleasantly cheap. I'm off to buy milk somewhere in the local streets so that I can eat muesli in my room. Grump, grump, grump...




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Leaving the shuttered-up town

November 3, 2009

Not only did we discover the place in the wall of the ruin where the waiter lives, we found some of his cats and a dog or two. The casual story told to us yesterday evening in intermittent short sentences now took shape and came to life with every careful step we took across the courtyard of the old palace.



The waiter had lived his whole life in a couple of houses build within or as adjuncts to the walls of this old palace. He was as genuine a native-born Zaharan as it is possible to be, and that made our visit rather special, somehow.



I took photographs illustrating the bleakness of the off-season town. It reminded me of the off-season, slightly seedy towns in Albert Camus' La Peste or Najib Mahfuz' Miramar. That sense of self-sufficiency and isolation from the outside world, that there were so many stories waiting to be discovered in the rooms behind the shuttered windows and locked doors.



The closed-down town seemed like a circus that had packed up its colourful props and withdrawn into itself for the winter.



We had planned to drive off after buying some groceries, but our exit took a lot longer than should be necessary for such a small town. The road layout was a little complex, and we were trying to find the cute old bakery where we had bought some excellent wholemeal rolls last time we were here. We found it, but the assistant was a little curt, and that eroded some of its cuteness. Then we decided coffee was in order. And we then kept stopping to buy food that would be eaten or lost amidst the mess in the car. The town wasn't going to let us leave that easily.

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My petty side on show in Bolonia

November 3, 2009

Eventually we were on the road south to Bolonia. This beach is one of the best-kept secrets of the Andalusian coast - so well-hidden that it's even tough to find on Google Maps. So why Bolonia? Good sea swimming, wide beaches and ... a fabulous ancient Roman site excavated close to the water named Baelo Claudio, a town built around the industry of salting fish.

As time was pressing we went straight onto the beach. My wife swam, again, and I played around with my camera, again. I wonder still that such a beautiful beach is almost devoid of people. It is no windier than other locations on this south-west coast.



The backdrop to the beach is equally pretty - the craggy hills of the Sierra de la Plata and the lowlands forested with pines, and as an additional plus point the Roman site lies almost within a hand's reach of the sea.



We ate our sandwiches, and then headed off for coffee. The cafes are tucked away behind vegetation inside an enclosure set at right angles to the beach. This means that the small cafe buildings are not easily visible from the beach itself, and helps preserve the beauty of the sea front.

All this segues me smoothly into an episode of triviality, spite and childish behaviour on my part.

Before we took our places on the beach I had been keen to use the loo, so naturally went to one of the cafes. I asked politely, but the owner of the first one waved his no-no finger and said the Aseos were private. Mean git, I thought, I bet they would be available if we ate there. So I went to one further on and the lady there was ultra-nice, and "Aseos? - no problem." So I hatched a plan to get my own back: I would return later, and order coffee from her place, and drink it demonstrably with gusto outside at one of her tables, so that when the mean git glanced down the road he would see me. I would then give him a practised look that involved lots of eye-brow raising and pursed lips and communicate the message "Look at me not spending my three euros in your establishment, meany. Regretting it now?" And he would look all crest-fallen and learn a valuable lesson.

But the joke was on me. I chose the cafe where the lady had been so friendly, and we sat down on the metal chairs at the metal table, the sun gleaming off the surfaces and sparrows squawking around our feet. We ordered our coffee. Suddenly who do we see striding around inside the cafe but Mr Grumpy, ordering the waitress around. He owned all the cafes there! Sod it. And he got his own back double, by deliberately switching off the water supply when my wife went in to the Aseos to wash her hands. It was an evil conspiracy, the whole thing, and I deliberately said Adios to her but not him. Take that!



My plan of revenge foiled, and after our coffee we packed up our bags and began walking along the beach back to the car. I think Grumps was telling her to basically get the place closed up for the evening while we were still finishing off.

Oh well , some you win, some you lose - and most were never there in the first place...

We walked along the coast path back to the car. The path offers wonderful views over the beach to the African coast. As I looked out over the sea I was again astonished, and grateful, that this area has not attracted hoards of tourists and development.



We had now just less than one hour before dark to visit the Roman site, despite this having been our main goal for today.

The Roman factories at Baelo Claudia produced garum - a spicy mix of fish entrails, blood and heads - and packed it off to Rome by the shipload. As a result the site was enormously valued by the Romans, and the Emperor Claudius marked its significance by lending his name to the town.

Unfortunately a massive mausoleum-style rectangular museum and cultural centre has been built right next to the site since we were last there. I was pretty annoyed at how inappropriate the building was for the setting, but after my own wiser counsel prevailed I conceded that maybe a building was needed to house some of the many artefacts found. And, to be fair, inside is a very successfully implemented exhibition. But why design it like a marble-fronted warehouse? Null points for that architect. Looking back now at the photos I think I am being too unkind.




Last time we visited the site we were late and could only grab 30 minutes from the little old guard in his gatehouse. Now late again, we worried that a new regime would be in place, Stalinist in keeping with the new architectural design. But actually they were very flexible. And wonderfully non-officious.






We finished off our last full day by admiring the sun setting over the sea.




Click here for my Flickr photos of Andalusia