Andalusia

11 April.

We are continiung southwards in Andalusia. We tend to pick the green and lumpy areas from our maping program and we haven’t departed from that pattern, especially after a stint in the cities!

 

This is for Zef. 

 

  

 

This fox was on the road in a national park.  He was obviously begging, and he looks as though he does rather well at it!

 

The area is obviously an olive gowing area. We understand that this area grows about 10% of the world’s olives!  But look at the ground between the trees. It is completely denuded! We have seen from the groves we have passed that the ground is first sprayed with herbicide and then raked to clear it of all grass. I don’t know why they do this -perhaps to conserve water, or to protect against fire? But these olives are certainly not organic and they are certainly not environmentally friendly. And this picture goes on and on for hundreds of kilometres, all over southern Spain as far as we can see.

 

  

 

This area of Andalusia has a departure from the usual stone buildings. It has historically been influenced by muslim invasions in  the past. It has white houses, with a Morrocan style. These are the first such white villiages we have seen. 

 

 

As we came down out of the mountians we found ouselves in an area of completely different geology from the mountians. We felt almost at home with vistas of red soil and sparse vegetation, almost like spinifex on the slopes. 

 

    

 

This soil though seems to be very friable. There is severe erosion here. We speculate that this a product of both friable soils and sheep and goat grazing for hundreds (or more) of years. The olive growing with its unprotected soils must also contribute. We saw signs indicating efforts by EU funded projects to stabilise the soil with terracing and replanting.

 

  

 

An unexpected feature we stumbled accross was an archaeological site with evidence of human occupation here 5-6000 years ago. There were tombs (megaliths) and cave dwellings . We camped on the top of a deep gorge with these archaelogical structures all around us!

 

 

And next day we discovered the cave dwellings. These square holes in the cliff sides are the entrances to the ancient caves. And they are still used, with the modern addition  of chimneys for ventilation.

 

  

 

But equally interesting is the fact we learned from people we met, that 25,000 people still live underground in this area! And we soon saw signs of this and WOW - how interesting are these houses!  The best example we saw was this hotel! What an interesting place to stay!

 

  

 

I have moaned about the lack of fauna in Europe in past  blogs. We have been pleasantly surprised by the fauna in southern Spain, particularly in the Sierras (mountains). While we were camped at the archaeological site we saw a mountain  goat (or sheep) jumping almost vertically down the cliff face. It was extraordinary the agility it had. In addition to this we have seen a second species of mountain  goat or sheep, a squirrel (1 only!) 2 dead snakes on the road, rabbits and hares, wild boar, 1 dead mole (on the road), a beaver!, a fox, a couple of deer, a large skink. This is much more fauna than we have seen elsewhere in  Europe.

 

In addition there are many more  birds. There is actually a dawn chorus in  some places we have camped.

 

All of this makes us very happy!