Notes from Almuñécar

All travel problems were resolved by Wednesday, Feb. 14 when Albert's lost luggage was finally delivered, after numerous frustrations that even drove Albert, who at his best is a calm and collected problem solver, to distraction.
We spent the next few days getting to know our house, the hills and beach around it and the town of Almuñécar. For Albert this has meant learning how to drive on narrow, steep streets. One place we're all getting to know well is the Mercadona, the big local supermarket. It has taken quite a few trips there to provision our place for five people, but we're getting there.

Our house is on a steep slope that rises almost right out of the Mediterranean. The views from any angle are spectacular. I have never seen such a variety of trees, bushes, cactus and flowers as you get by sweeping your eyes up from the shoreline to the top of the surrounding hills. And it's dry here. The sun is hot, but there's usually a breeze off the sea and the temperature rises to about 17c during the day. We've walked in the hills a bit and down to the water. We shut the windows and put on heaters for a while in the evening.
I'm finally getting over one of the worst coughing colds I've ever had which hit me within hours of getting off the plane in Malaga. Caroline now has a cold but hers is more in her nose.
On Monday we drove into Almuñécar to walk around and visit the Parque Botánico el Majuelo which is small but contains a variety of trees from all over the world and a lot of pretty ugly sculptures done by Syrians who seem to have been part of some cultural exchange in 2006. But the most interesting area is where the ruins of a fish salting plant have been excavated. It was thriving from when the Carthaginians were here , about 300BC until well into the Roman period, around 400AD. They also produced a fish sauce called garum from fish entrails which was highly sought after, difficult as it may be to imagine.
On Tuesday we drove to Malaga to visit the Cathedral which was built on the sight of a mosque. We also spent quite a bit of time in the Museo Picasso which had an assortment of his works in many different media. It was difficult to get a handle on the organizing principle, but worth seeing. One of the best parts was a temporary exhibit about Federico Fellini. He spent years keeping a diary of his dreams under the guidance of a Jungian psychiatrist. He admired Picasso and dreamed of him about four times. His diary is a fantastic thing to see, it's huge, with writing and colour illustrations. The exhibit included a movie which showed parts of many of his movies that I'd seen and was happy to see again.




















The Cathedral in Malaga







The view from my balcony in Almuñécar