Morocco is a very interesting, but very foreign country!....

Our last update was a couple of weeks ago when we were in Almerimar. From there we moved on to Marina d'Este near Almunecar. We stopped at Marina d'Este because it was a convenient place from which to travel to Nerja where we had been told there were some fabulous caves. It can sometimes be a bit underwhelming when you make the effort to visit sights that have been recommended - but not in this case.....the caves were amazing!! I have posted some photos below, but they don't really do the caves justice, you can't really get any idea of their scale. They were huge and the stalactites and stalagmites were astounding. Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. 

Our next stop was Puerto de Velez and to be fair, it didn't have a great write up in our Pilot Book. In spite of this it still managed to disappoint us. It was a fishing port and definitely one of the grimmest marinas we have visited so far. It was plagued with seagulls, presumably because of the fish offal that was regularly being deposited in the water there. We left early the next morning for Benalmadena with quite a few seagull souvenirs on our previously pristine decks.

Seagulls flocking round in Puerto de Velez as the offal is ejected.....

Don't get a dark cover on your boat!

Benalmadena is quite a pretty spot, much nicer than Puerto de Velez. In fact it claims to be the Trip Advisor Marina of the Year - I presume this is because of the votes from the trippers who visit the bars and tourist shops around the marina because I don't think it can be based on the votes of the yacht owners who use the marina. 

Benalmadena was a pretty spot, but........

It certainly didn't get my vote. I had several criticisms of the place:
1. They had a non-standard plug socket for their shore power, but instead of providing an adaptor as other marinas with unusual connections do, it was necessary to take off our plug and wire in theirs. Not a huge issue perhaps, but irritating and unnecessary.
2. Their Wi-Fi was useless! A few places get it right but the wi-fi in most marinas is pretty poor, I can't understand why it is so difficult. Anyway in Benalmadena it was appalling.
3. The security was non-existent and this was my biggest issue. Generally there is a gate preventing access to the pontoons unless you have a keycard or the access code. Not here!! At 01:00 we were woken by the sound of people climbing onto Viridian. I presume they were trying to steal our bikes, which were stored on the aft deck. Fortunately they ran off without taking anything after we disturbed them but it tainted the marina for me. We left the next morning.

From there we went to Fuengirola which was a good place to visit the hilltop town of Mijas. Strangely, there were some interesting pieces of Salvador Dali artwork in the Picasso museum here.

Dali's iconic work, Swans reflecting Elephants

We next stopped in Estepona. 

I liked this mural in Estepona

I liked the old town in Estepona, which was splendidly decorated with flowers.

The highlight of this passage was that we were visited by some dolphins who came to play with the boat. This was a nice surprise because we hadn't seen any dolphins for a long time, I guess they may be a bit more common nearer to the Atlantic. 

We are now back in La Linea next to Gibraltar, which is where we are leaving Viridian whilst we return to the UK for Christmas. Since we are staying here for a while we decided to take a trip to Tangier, which is only a short distance across the Straits of Gibraltar. Well, it was a fascinating trip because although it is only a short distance geographically it is a huge distance culturally.

We booked a very reasonably priced hotel, the Dar Jameel, in the Medina. However actually finding it was slightly more complicated than we had expected - the old town was a maze of narrow streets filled with houses and little shops selling all the goods imaginable. 

Whilst we were searching for the hotel it was a bit of a hassle because we were continually accosted by locals who wanted to guide us; sell to us; or just wanted money, but when we eventually found the hotel we loved it.

We went exploring and found it was a very pretty city. 

The market was fascinating, the plethora of exotic fish, meats and vegetables was stunning. 

That evening we went out for a wander and discovered that crossing the road is a very different experience from Spain, where the drivers are very considerate to pedestrians. In Morocco zebra crossings were merely road decoration and you play a game of chicken with the car drivers, taking your life in your hands every time you tried to cross.

Alcohol is difficult, but not impossible to find. Since we had OD'd on mint tea during the day we searched for a bar serving alcohol and spent an enjoyable evening being fed an unending stream of free tapas whilst we drank.

I like free food with my beer.....

The strangest thing we found was the separation of men and women. The bars were full of groups of men, chatting; drinking mint tea, watching the football - whatever, but there were no women there at all! It seemed very peculiar......

Investigating the interior....

At the risk of receiving hate mail, I’m starting with information which may not be popular...... It’s now the middle of November and the daytime temperature here has been consistently in the mid 20s for the last few weeks - with blue skies and glorious sunshine.  We were expecting that there would be some rain as we are now officially in the Mediterraean winter, but perhaps it will come later.  The big difference though is in the evenings. We have now stopped eating dinner on deck because it begins to get quite chilly as soon as the sun starts setting and it is now dark about 6.30pm. We have started turning the heating on in the evenings and we actually watched a movie a couple of nights ago, snuggled up in our fleeces. We know it’s been much colder at home and so are very grateful for the climate we are experiencing.

It's a bit cloudy for our departure from Almerimar 

More usual weather!

We have been in Almerimar for about a week.  It is even quieter than when we were here in August and in a bid to get customers, the free tapas with a drink have become even more ridiculous.  Greg is working his way down the extensive free tapas list (nothing to do with the beer he tells me).

Some free tapas to accompany Greg's beer....

Another free tapas with my Coke....

As an aside the mooring costs in the marina are very reasonable.  It costs €16 per night (including water and electricity!) which is helping us to balance out some of the ‘ouches’ we experienced in the High Season. In addition we have been fixing our water filter without outside assistance!!!! This is a first for us; mechanical or electrical engineering not being either Greg or my strong points.  After many hours of sealing and re-sealing joints (and it was still leaking) we discovered it wasn’t the pipework or joints at all……in fact the filter cartridge had a hairline crack in it at the back which we couldn’t see. We only found out by blasting water through it on deck instead of trying to fix it in situ under the sink! To think we could have had two days lazing around instead just by buying a new filter cartridge! 

It hasn’t all been repairs though.....  We had a lovely day when our friend Alan Malarkey cycled on his proper racing bike from Almeria to Almerimar to meet us on Viridian and then treat us to lunch.  It was great to catch up and we were very impressed with Alan’s fluent Spanish.  We have decided we should make more effort than just knowing how to order beer and wine! 

It was great to meet up with Alan

We also went to Granada on the coach for the day, taking our Bromptons with us.  It was brilliant. However, we failed to do some important research before we went.  We assumed that it would be another glorious sunny day and in fact it was…not a cloud to be seen.  The difference is that Granada is high up in the Sierra Nevada and as we climbed the winding roads, the temperature display at the front of the coach showed the temperature dropping rapidly. I had been reading a book totally oblivious but when it got to 11C Greg pointed it out to me and we both started to get worried.  Then we saw a sign saying ‘This way to the pistes’ in Spanish and we also spotted snow!

Snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance

When we got off the coach everyone was wearing puffajackets and scarves.  Greg was in his open toed sandals and I was wearing three quarter length trousers. Luckily, we had a sweat top with us because we had to cycle in the dark at 6am to get to the bus station before we set off. They weren’t enough though and Greg’s feet were freezing by the time we had cycled and found the Alhambra Palace.  We did make a decision though to stop off in February on our way back to Valencia and to try to ski in the Sierra Nevada for a few days.  We brought our ski kit with us so let’s hope the snow is good by then.

Granada is a beautiful city.  You can’t really explore it properly in one day so that’s another reason for us to go back.  We went to the Alhambra which we should have booked in advance because it was packed out and there were no tickets left unless you booked on-line….so we stood in the queue and booked on-line and lo and behold we got in.  Seems mad to me…if there are tickets left on their online web site why can’t they just sell them to you?  Anyway it was well worth going - as you can see from the photos the palace was amazing!  

People living on their boats are much less transient in the winter and it is easier to meet up with people and get to know them better. Last night we were invited for drinks and tonight we are hosting dinner on board Viridian.  It’s great to get to know other people because everyone has tips and different experiences to pass on.  We are currently trying to find people with recent experience of sailing in Morocco.  Our North African pilot book is now 10 years out of date and we are planning to go there after Christmas, so it would be good to get a bit more information beforehand.

Tomorrow we are setting sail further south, hoping to visit the caves at Nerja and stop off at some of the places we missed on the way up this coast. 

There's been quite a bit of drama!

Well we finally managed to drag ourselves away from Valencia. If you saw our last blog you will know that we loved the city - and in fact we are now planning a mob-handed return there in March for Las Falles, their big fire festival. Anyway, since then we have slowly started to move south and we are currently in Cartagena. We are heading for Gibraltar because we plan to leave Viridian there whilst we return to the UK over Christmas. Although I don't like Gibraltar very much, it is cheap and convenient for flights and it has VERY cheap fuel.

Cartagena is actually not very far from Valencia, but although we haven't travelled a great distance we have experienced quite a bit of drama! I will tell you about this later.....

Our first stop after Valencia was Calpe, because there is a nice anchorage there (and anchoring is free so we like it very much) and Calpe is a nice town. When we arrived in Calpe we discovered our visit coincided with one of their annual festivals. Spain loves festivals - it seems that there is one pretty much every weekend. I didn't get all the details, but I gathered that this particular one was to commemorate the Moorish invasion and it was splendid! The town was rammed and the entertainment ran over several days - there were several parades; fireworks; and a re-enactament of the invasion with a battle on the beach. I thought their parade of floats was fabulous - in my opinion it made the Notting Hill Carnival look a bit amateurish....

We would have stayed in Calpe longer but the wind direction changed to the southwest and it promised to be a bit uncomfortable on the anchorage there, so we moved to a very quiet and very protected bay where we could anchor a little further down the coast. Unfortunately whilst we there our generator failed (yet again.......this was getting very tedious) - so after an overnight stay we headed down to Alicante.

Our very secure and secluded anchorage

We had visited Alicante a few days earlier, taking the bus from Calpe to watch the start of the Volvo Ocean Race which was very exciting! I must confess I was a bit surprised to see so many spectator boats impinging on the race course - it looked like total bedlam out there and I understand that there were very nearly a couple of collisions. Race management should have been better, you really shouldn't have to worry about crashing in the first few minutes of a Round The World race - its pretty much the equivalent of a dog running onto the football pitch at the start of the World Cup and stealing the ball!! 

It was mayhem out there!

Whilst we were in Alicante this time we visited the castle and found an amazing restaurant. The views from the castle were great, but one thing that really made me upset was the graffiti.....what kind of person thinks it is clever to put their tag on a building that is over 1200 years old? Very cross!!

Great views from Alicante castle

Keko and Laura need a good kicking..... 

....as do Justo and Elena!

Our trip to the castle was trumped by our visit to the restaurant L'Atelier where we had a great 4-course lunch for €13.50! If you are interested here is their Trip Advisor review.

From Alicante we went on to Torrevieja and it was during this passage that our first bit of drama occurred....

We were a couple of miles away from Torrevieja and getting prepared for the anchorage (my mouth was getting prepared for the first beer of the day) when we heard "Mayday, mayday, mayday" on the VHF. You could feel from the speaker's tone of voice that he was really distressed and he went on to say that his propellor shaft had just been ripped out his boat; that they were taking on water very rapidly; and that they were sinking! Cartagena Rescue Service responded and requested that any vessels in the vicinity provide assistance. Although a couple of other boats replied to say that they were about an hour away, we worked out from the position given that we were closest so we went up to maximum revs and altered course to go and find them; luckily we had loaded up with 200 litres of fuel in Alicante. As we were making our way there we pulled out our emergency pumps, but when we understood that the boat in trouble was an 80ft motor cruiser we realised our hand pumps simply weren't going to crack it.....Fortunately by the time we reached the motor boat they had managed to slow the ingress of water and their bilge pumps were enough to keep them afloat whilst we shadowed them back to Torrevieja in case of any further problems. They were very grateful. 

Conquest of 1966 making for Torrevieja - before they sink...

From Torrevieja we came down to Cartagena. We like the city, the marina there is very reasonably priced, and we know Juan-Pedro who is a brilliant engineer. He fixed our watermaker last time we visited and we were confident that he would be able to do a proper repair on our generator.

The catacombs in Cartagena

One of the beautiful buildings in the city centre

I love this statue.....

Cartagena's sculptures are everywhere....

It was here in Cartagena that we had our next bit of drama......

It was 02:30 and we were both in bed asleep when we were woken by someone shouting "Socorro!" loudly and constantly. It took a while for this to register (I now know this means "HELP"), but after a few moments we realised there was a problem out there so we scrambled to put on enough clothes for decency and had a look outside. What we found was about 10 metres down the pontoon there were a couple of people trying (and failing) to pull a body out of the water. If you have ever tried to lift a comatose body you will know that it is really difficult. It was pitch black so Jan grabbed our big torch whilst I rushed over to help and collectively we dragged the body on to the pontoon. I don't know how he had fallen into the water or how long he had been in there but he wasn't breathing. One of the other guys gave him some rescue breaths (rather him than me) whilst I started heart pumps. Well the First Aid course was worthwhile, because luckily after a couple of minutes or so (it seemed like a very long time) he spluttered a couple of times, spewed out some water then started breathing.....Long story short - police arrived some minutes later, closely followed by the ambulance and he was taken away. Hope he was OK....

10 reasons to visit Valencia

We have spent three weeks in Valencia so far, some of the time together and some of the time on our own whilst Greg or I returned to UK for a few days on very inexpensive flights.  As a result, we have done quite a lot of exploring and have concluded that, like Porto, this is one of those cities that is definitely worth a visit and hasn’t ever really been drawn to our attention before......so here are 10 reasons why you might consider a trip to sunny Valencia.

1. It’s a city with a great beach and inexpensive marina; so you get both a city break and a seaside break all rolled into one.  The city is less than a million people so it’s a perfect size for getting around.  The beach is long and wide with a great promenade with plenty of bars and restaurants. The marina is friendly and very cheap.

Valencia Marina

Flying over the beach in Valencia

2. The architecture is interesting.  It’s a great blend of the very old in the old town with its ornate towers, domes and balconies and then there is the futuristic science park, opera house and aquarium complex that takes your breath away.

Science Museum

3. There is good shopping here - all within good walking distance.  There are malls and still the high streets with lots of individual and interesting independent shops. 

4. The Central Market is amazing.  The displays are fantastic. It’s spacious, architecturally stunning and the array of produce is mesmerising.  There is also the Colon Market which is beautiful in a touristy Covent Garden kind of way but a bit expensive.

Central Market

5. The welcome for cyclists. Motorists are extremely courteous to cyclists at junctions and crossings and there are miles and miles of cycle paths all around the city enabling you to get around quickly and safely. As in most big cities you can pick up City bikes from one station and leave at another.  There are loads of bike hire shops as well. 

There are cycle tracks throughout the city

6. The green artery.  In1957 the city suffered some terrible floods so decided to divert the river around the city, leaving the river bed dry.  This was then planted with beautiful trees and shrubbery and the extensive land has been made into a wide range of outdoor activities for everyone to enjoy.  As always, the cycle paths thread through the winding course of the former river allowing you to hop in and out of the city at different points whilst breathing lungs full of fresh air and enjoying the peace. 

Bridges cross what was the river.....

Cycle paths are all along the old river bed

7. The restaurants are great.  Valencia is the home of paella and prides itself on its own version of paella with rabbit and snails. It is delicious. We have eaten in some lovely and inexpensive restaurants. We even spotted an open-air paella making competition at the Central Market which was very exciting!

Competitors in the paella competion

Valencian paella

8. There are loads of bars, in fact you can't walk more than about 25m without coming across one - and the nightlife is great if you are looking for a late one ..

9. Culture.  There is a great aquarium and loads of museums, churches and galleries to keep you busy if that is your interest.  The cathedral dominates the old town.

10. The city puts on lots of free activities which attract lots of people. We have experienced traditional dancing, outdoor orchestra and stages with bands for free.  We are particularly looking forward to the explosive Las Falles in March when we are planning to return to this absolutely fab city.