La Manga, Spain.
Every year around October or November we get to choose a destination in Spain to spend a week or so at a government assigned hotel with full board for a very subsidised price in the off peak months between January and April. This year we chose to explore the area known as La Manga in the south east of Spain, which we were not familiar with. Looking at the map of Spain it looks interesting because it is a thin strip of land enclosing a ‘smaller sea’ which opens at one point to link with the Mediterranean. As in virtually all of Spain there are many nice cities nearby so it looked promising, however the Mar Menor (smaller sea) is known in Spain to be contaminated by decades of exposure to chemical waste from local farming and untreated effluents from surrounding towns. Never mind we thought, since we usually hire a car and go out looking for good places to see.
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We arrived to find that our hotel was a good one, something not guaranteed in the subsidised holiday system, although it appeared that right next door, there was a ruin of a building which may have started out being the exact replica of our hotel, but lost its way in the economic volatility of the time of its construction. Our hire car was waiting for us and we lost no time in getting to know the thin strip of land which would be our home for the next 10 days. As expected the enclosed sea looked nice from a distance but contained murky stuff. The Mediterranean side of the strip was also not too exciting as there was a tremendous build up of sea weed along the entire strip. We were not looking to go swimming in any case as April is still cool for Spain.
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The town at the southern end of the strip, Cabo de Palos was quite nice in a fishing village kind of way and we visited a light house which was the only building of any note. The Sunday market sounded promising but it had closed by the time we drove into town. On the other end of the strip the only thing of note was a Venetian style bridge which was frightening to drive over because of the rise in the middle. In between there was kilometres of holiday wasteland mostly abandoned at off peak with a few permanent residents and the odd hotel full of holiday makers.
Next we decided to take a look at the Casino, which was high on the list of must see Murcia locations. The Casino is housed in an old Moor palace and contains magnificent interior decorations similar to the ones found in the Alhambra and other locations in Sevilla and Cordoba. The Casino had a nice restaurant but they were fully booked, however they gave us the address of a nearby alternative which turned out to be great. We sampled some local dishes in a no-frills atmosphere at great value.
The next day we got into the hire car and headed for Cartagena about 40 kilometres away, which sounded more promising because of its history which went back to Roman times. It was a rainy day and we started off by visiting the Roman amphitheatre, which had a museum into which we could escape from the rain. A tunnel connected the museum to the Amphitheatre which was a good size and still standing after two thousand years. The next stop was the Roman Forum a short distance away, however we had to invest in umbrellas on the way as it continued to rain heavily. A Chinese outlet in a lovely square with huge centuries old trees had what we wanted. The Forum too was thankfully covered and we were able to enjoy the archeological site frescoes and mosaics. After a nice lunch we decided to cut our losses and return to base because it continued to rain.
Murcia region has some unique Spanish food. One of the best local dishes was a creamy rice known as ‘Arroz Caldoso’, which consisted of rice and seafood, a cross between paella and stew. We had it at various times and it never disappointed. Another dish went by the name of Paparajote – battered and fried lemon leaves. Also a delight were the Grandma’s artichokes, a tapa called Marinera, and a coffee called Asiatico, made with a liqueur to put life back into someone who had had a lot to eat. Dinner at the hotel offered a lot of variety of Spanish and European dishes. There was always lots of wine and beer available as part of our package but the wines on tap were average in general.
Over the rest of our stay we repeated Cartagena and Murcia and managed to take in the sights we had missed earlier. In Cartagena we walked up (the much easier elevator ride which we had paid for, was bust) to the Castle on the hill right at the centre of the city for great views over the area and lovely gardens with peacocks and old trees. At the Conference Centre (El Batel) we booked a table to eat on a lovely terrace restaurant (Eszencia) overlooking the port in lovely sunshine.
On one of the days we decided to look into a town which was not too far from the Manga which went by the name of La Union. It turned out the town had been aptly named for the union of several mining communities spread out in the area, which united to form a single administrative entity. There was a spectacular building which housed a local market in this town, which had obviously been built at a time of prosperity due to lead and silver mining business around the early part of the twentieth century. However I am reliably informed that mining in this area goes back to Roman times. So how did the Romans and later miners get their produce out? There was obviously a port nearby. A small drive along mountains of residue collected from the mines over thousands of years, brought one to the port that must have served as a point of export in the past for La Union and this port was named Portman. Rather than being a Anglo Saxon name, a little research shows that the port had various names in history finally being known as Port Mayn in the XIV century.
One of the days we decided to visit Alicante which is a large city about two hours drive to the north. Although we had been in Alicante before, one of our fellow explorers wanted to reunite with his brother Luis and his Brazilian wife and that was a good excuse to return to Alicante. It is a lovely place and its highlight is a fort on top of a hill right in the centre of the city. After lunch we took the lift (free for pensioners), which takes one in relative comfort from the centre of the town to the top of the hill. Spectacular views and a nice walk around the interior of the fort is a must for anyone coming to Alicante.
In between we visited a few sorry looking towns bordering on the Mar Menor, now in decline because of the contamination. On our final day we drove to Torrevieja, another town raised by the tourist boom from the sixties, an hour’s drive up the Mediterranean coast. The main feature of Torrevieja was hundreds of apartment blocks and a rather nice seaside walk. Apart from that it was also where Luis, who we met up in Alicante, lives and that was the main reason for going there.
I was feverish and an antigen test revealed that I was Covid positive.
In Spanish they say that its tough being a tourist.
