The wild coast of Andalusia

The coast of Andalusia is dominated by the many resort build to support the demand for sun from the people of northern Europe. But just to the east of Almeria there is a stretch of beach which is surprisingly undeveloped. The area is called Cabo Cato and most of it is a national park.

When we get down to the coast the weather is a bit cloudy and very windy – so the sea is rough and not looking very inviting for people to go to the water. I guess the weather will be a lot warmer in August with more sun and most likely less wind compared to what we experienced – but it is hard to see this as a great destination for a beach holiday. We stop at a parking place where a few cars are park right next to an old fortress. There are a couple of restaurants here – but they all seem to be closed down for the season. There really isn’t anything here – so we are not sure what the people are doing – we assume they are out walking somewhere along the windy tracks in the national park.

We drive along some small roads along the beach through the national park which is pretty flat at the first bit until we reach a road going a bit up in some small mountains. We head along this road to take in the view of the rough mountains and the sea from the road. There is nothing along the road until we turn a corner – and then right where the road ends – there is a light house and a few buildings around it. Suddenly there are also a lot of people and cars at the parking lot. I guess everybody goes to the end of the road to have a look at the cliffs and the rough water below. There are some great views from here and a few houses which have a great view of the water below – but it doesn’t look like there is any beach nearby – so you got the houses for the view not the access to the beach.

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Since we have reached a dead end we have to double back along the road we came by. We turn away from the beach to take the inland road which will actually lead to something different than a dead end. As we drive along this road we drive through some salt flats which used to be the home to production of salt. Today the salty flat area is home to many migrating birds when it is time to fly to or from the winter holiday in Africa. This time of the year the salt flats are home to a large congregation of flamingoes. There are a lot of flamingoes – but they are pretty far away so they only show up as small white dots on my camera with possibly a few hints of pink. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any trail letting us go closer to the birds so we just have to settle with some blurry photos before we drive along the inland road going along some small roads sided by hundreds of shelters which produce much of the vegetables we will be eating in Denmark during the winter time and other times of the year.