Cadiz October 26th

October 26^th

We had to be out of the campground by midday so we took it easy in the morning before heading off to the town of El Puerto de Santa Maria. Our camper-stop book indicated there was a free place we could stay for the night in the centre of town at the old bull ring, so I drove the truck over there and the other two biked. It wasn’t very far at all and Hilary had been very keen to get back on her bike after a few weeks without the opportunity. The tourist info about this place states that when approaching the town it doesn’t appear worth stopping but once you find your way into the main/old part of the city there is quite a lot there. I’m not sure where they got the spin doctors who wrote that, but once we had parked the truck at the bull ring, we got my bike down and all went for a ride. 

The city was filthy and dull. I’m sure made more dull by the grey weather, but there was no excuse for the filth. We had found the site of the previous night’s music/party…. There was rubbish everywhere. It was absolutely gross, paper, boxes, rubbish ankle deep for hundreds of metres along the riverside paths/road. In the town it was no better, more papers plus rubbish skips piled high with stinking rotting garbage and more stacked, thrown beside the skips so some corners were virtually impassable. It was so gross that we couldn’t stand more than a few minutes biking around before we decided it was time to “get out of Dodge.”  The sad thing is that there were some interesting historical buildings, including a marvellous castle and the bull ring but they hardly ever opened and nothing appeared to have been done about “selling” them. Diana said she would be embarrassed and ashamed if it were her city, I tend to agree.

We headed down to a clean part of the riverbank to have our lunch (in the back of the truck), I wasn’t sure we were allowed to park where we did, but as I told Hilary, I was feeling defiant by now, so we stopped and had our lunch. Just as we were finishing up a police car pulled up and told us in a string of Spanish that we weren’t allowed to be there, that it was pedestrian only (he used his hands/fingers for this) so I apologised profusely, pretending I hadn’t known, and we moved on, definitely time to get out of Dodge now!!!  The weather forecast wasn’t promising, storms predicted for later in the evening, so we weren’t sure what to do, I didn’t want to pay for another night at the camp-ground, Di didn’t want to stay at the bull ring, and we weren’t sure of what other options there were. We sat in a supermarket car-park and regrouped, deciding to try our luck in Cadiz, hoping there would be somewhere we could park for the night, knowing there wasn’t a camping ground there.

Cadiz is Spain’s oldest city, settled first by the Phoenicians in 700BC, is that right??. It is surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean, adjoined to the mainland by a narrow causeway which crosses salt marshes which are full of flamingos and other birds. There is also a bridge linking Puerto Real with the town but it is pretty much out on a limb. There is the new city to the south, which has high rise buildings, many hotels and office blocks, and then further up the peninsula the old town which has old city walls and wonderful old baroque and classical style buildings, including 128 “watch towers” of different styles which still exist (of the original 160) on the top of many buildings. These towers were for maintaining the smooth running of shipping/port/harbour  in the trading days when this was a very busy port with the Americas’ trade.  The Cathedral also casts a pretty picture, it is a huge stone building with two big towers/spires but also a gorgeous golden dome which is visible from many vantage points around the city.

We headed into the old town, well actually to be truthful, first we missed a turnoff and ended up on a causeway heading away from Cadiz again. It is a bit odd, but once you start going down this road you can’t go back until you get to the next town, about 8 kms away where you have to take the turn-off, head around the roundabout and go all the way back again! The saving grace was that it is a pretty drive and also it allowed us to spot a place where we could park the campervan for the night, on the beachfront.  We had had niceish weather for the morning, and it was still reasonably mild by mid-afternoon but getting rather blustery, and a storm was forecast according to a man Di spoke to at the tourist information in El Puerto. So we had a look around old Cadiz, as we made our way towards a tower which now housed a camera obscura. I don’t know if you’ve been to one before, I hadn’t but Di and Hilary did in Edinburgh. Basically it works like a huge periscope apparently, with light and lenses and mirrors playing the scene that is in the camera’s view out on a huge concave dish instead of on film or in digital format. So we were able to enjoy a 360 degree view of Cadiz in real time, watching people walking around in the streets, windsurfers and kite surfers flying along the waves, etc. Because the camera is mounted high on the tower it means the view is predominantly of the roof tops and skyline which gives a completely different perspective than that you get walking around at ground level which is quite cool, as it helps to show things in geographical relation to others. We were also able to enjoy a climb to the top of the tower and look out over the city from a terrace, it was incredibly windy though, so we didn’t linger once we had seen everything. 

A pretty church

Views from the camera obscura

 By the time we had finished our visit it was getting quite cold with the approaching storm and dark grey clouds, so we had a very quick look inside part of the cathedral (the free bit), a quick post-card stop, and then stopped for a warming coffee and tostada (toasted long bread roll, with a couple of choices of topping. We had butter and strawberry jam which was very tasty. Very fair price too, a nice coffee and large tostada for 1.80 euro which is about $3.20 NZ at the current exchange rate.

From here, we wound our way back to the campervan which had no rude messages, clamps, or tickets despite the fact that we had been parked in an “authorised parking only” spot for quite a few hours (I only noticed the sign as we approached the truck (I wondered why there had been such a convenient park for us!!!).  We negotiated our way back through the newer parts of Cadiz, following the beach-front which was pretty wild, but looked beautiful, and I could imagine would be very popular in the summer, to the parking lot we had spotted earlier. There was another campervan there (empty though), and a couple of cars and a motor scooter, so we parked up, facing the gorgeous sea and began settling in preparations. While dinner was being constructed Hilary went for a play in the sand dunes, beautiful almost white sand piled high with wind patterns on them, looking very Arabian desert like I thought. I went out to join her and take a few photos, but the wind was getting up and driving the sand into our faces and eyes, so we headed back to the truck with pink cheeks and running eyes. 

Playing in the dunes

By the time we had readied for bed the storm was well and truly upon us, I managed to go to sleep, but poor Di was up on the top bunk and thinking that we were about to be launched into orbit. I woke at 2.30 as the truck was swaying worryingly and I was a bit perplexed at the thought of the wind tipping us over. It became enough of a concern that after a wee bit more worrying I decided to move the truck over to beside the other campervan, and tuck in close enough to it that we were sheltered from the worst of the wind and rain. I took a couple of pictures through the dark, one which didn’t turn out at all of the sea churning and row upon row of waves crashing to shore. I counted 8 rows of breakers at one point, and the sea was basically white froth for many metres out from shore. The other photo which has come out to a degree was of some palm trees which were being battered in the wind. They were bending horrifically and the fronds flailing around in the wind. It reminded me of those videos you see of hurricanes or cyclones in the islands with palms almost bent double. Of course a still photo doesn’t show it, but it was an impressive display of mother nature and her forces at work. 

The noise and motion was enough to keep us all awake for quite a while, I wrote on the computer until nearly 5, Hilary and Di were both asleep again(downstairs where it didn’t rock so much) before that, but when we all woke at 8ish this morning we didn’t  feel particularly refreshed.