The Best start to the New Year was my son George coming out to visit for a week at Bellavista. I hadn't seen George for nearly a year, he has been travelling and working in Brisbane so I was so excited to see him!
We took him to Ronda and Marbella, Gib and Puerto Banus along with lots of meals out from Indian to Mexican. He is off travelling again shortly so we will meet again in 6 months! I will miss him.
A Ride in the Cable Car up to the Top Of The Rock
George and our Furry Friend
Our 5 week stay for Christmas and New Year at Bellavista had come to an end and with a New Year ahead we are ready and eager to move on to new places. We have had some great neighbours like Neil and Sue from Wellingborough and John and Denise from Devon and their beautiful Bernease Mountain dog, Bella.
We decided to give the Aires in Spain a go, they are free or low cost parking areas especially for Motorhomes, some are just car parks some are right on the waters edge like our next stop at Puerto Almerimar just West of Almeria. It is a beautiful location with a beach and a view of the Sierra Nevada snow capped mountains on one side and a very pretty Yachting marina on the otherside.
There are only 9 electric hookups and we were lucky to get the last one! The Aire is very popular with around 40-50 Motorhomes parked up mainly German French and English the Aire officially holds 20!
Our View from Bessie
There are plenty of bars selling drinks with very generous free Tapas which turned out to be our lunch most days. The budget over Christmas and New Year was blown so we need to get back on track and save some pennies somewhere, the Aires are a lot cheaper than Campsites so to find a good Aire with great views is a little gem and at €12.65 a night with Electric is great!
We met up again with our friends Ray and Val and Sky Rocket the dog for a few days, we always have fun with these two and stayed a total of 7 nights.
Almerimar region grow Melons, Tomatoes, Peppers Strawberries etc in the winter under huge polytunnels mainly for export around Europe. The landscape is full of them as far as the eye can see and because they can grow virtually anything in this
micro climate and they don't need the soil here they can grow anywhere even on the side of the hills! The farmers use a layer of manure then a deep layer of sand instead of soil water is then filtered by the sand. They don't use any chemicals on the plants just one insect to beat any bugs. I can't remember the name of it!
Almeria is also famous for around 300 film sets like The Good The Bad The Ugly and Game of Thrones as they have mountain backdrops dessert like terrain and green forests along with the coastline.
The Aires are interesting, there is always new people arriving from everywhere, I met an amazing couple in their late sixties from Melbourne Australia, they were on a 9 month tour of Europe and they were so inspiring. They flew to Germany to buy a Camper a smaller one to Bessie about 6m long Bessie is 7.8m and they have travelled the whole of Europe, I mean everywhere! they had a tent and a tandem bike which they would use to follow some of the rivers i.e. the Rhine Valley in Germany where the camper could not access and they would take their tent and bike off for about 3 months to follow the rivers! I could have listened to their stories all day, what an inspiring couple it made our Adventure seem very tame, but we are lucky enough to even be here so thats good enough for me.
Our last night at Almerimar we were woken by we thought someone shaking the Motorhome! Neil got up and had a look around outside about 4am but it wasn't until the morning and heard on the news there had been an Earthquake just off the coast of Malaga! The earth finally shook for us!
We arranged to meet Val and Ray and do a few days Wild Camping at a few beaches near Aguillas.
We found a garage nearby and for €1.50 you could fill water tanks drop your waste fill with diesel and gas, jet wash your motorhome and even hoover it out if you needed to. We haven't found another garage like this so far!
Next stop we decided we needed to be on a Campsite so we could do some washing. We opted for a site called Playa Mazzaron just north of Almeria and turned out to be our first mistake. All the sites are very full so this wasn't our first choice but the reviews were good. We arrived and they had one pitch left at the back of the site opposite the tennis courts, we just about got Bessie on the pitch which was surrounded by other peoples washing and underpants. There are a lot of long termers here that are dug in for the whole winter.
The site felt like an OAP german compound with most of the campers being over 70 and walking around in fluorescent dressing gowns! We decided to make do just to get the washing washed and dried. After finding the only hot feed washing machine on site that only did a 29 minute wash at €3.50 I wasn't too happy. In the morning we were woken by a hoard of Germans in some sort of excersise routine with sticks in the tennis courts opposite! The Wifi that we had paid €6 for 2 days didn't work so Neil complained at Reception and the receptionist accused Neil of lying!! so Neil ripped up the wifi ticket and threw it at him.
We drove to the north of Alicante having now done 3000 miles to an Aire called El Campello but it was full, everywhere is so busy with Motorhomers apparently more than last year that we have been struggling to get into coastal sites.
We headed back down to an Aire at Santa Pola where luckily there were a few spaces. The site isn't in the prettiest location but it was neat and tidy and run by a really nice German guy and the town centre was within walking distance. The cost was €13 a night with electric. We stayed for 3 nights before moving up the coast again.
We are now nearly 6 months into our trip, the time has flown by and we are still loving the Adventure and looking forward to the next 4/5 months and even more places to explore!
