pics: El Palacio, cork oak woodland, El Rocio, birdwatching
Slept in until 9:30...guess we needed it! I called the customer service guy at Iberia (who sounded just like Javier Bardem, so, of course, I believe him!) who says our bags are safely in Sevilla, and will be sent out at noon today. We leave here tomorrow, so I hope so! I prudently washed a few things, anyway. Great breakfast of fresh OJ, eggs with migas (fried bread crumbs, a local treat) and very sweet pineapple.
We set out back towards El Rocío, stopping at a couple of the five visitors’ centers of the Park. The first was El Acebuche, a beautiful old hacienda with 3 miles of boardwalk and numerous hides from which we could watch the birdlife of various ponds and marshes. There were serious Brit birders in several of the hides so I had to be very quiet and proper! The hides overlooked lovely marsh land surrounded by stone pine forest. Wonderful views of huge storks’ nests on top of the pines with young and parents standing guard. We also saw spoonbills, ducks, grebes and green headed turtles! We got back to the hacienda about 1 PM and bought crushed almond and chocolate covered ice creams and felt sufficiently revived to continue onto the next visitors’ center.
The next one was called El Palacio del Acebrón. We found a large palace in the middle of nowhere which turned out to have been built in the 1960s, rather than 200 years earlier, as I thought. The owner died ten years later and it was deserted until the National Park bought it in the 80s. Its boardwalk wound through dense cork oak woodland full of nearly invisible birds making wonderfully musical calls.
We drove into El Rocío in search of an ATM. The town celebrates its annual pilgrimage next weekend and carnival and food stands were being put up everywhere. The wide street are pure sand, I think for the tourist effect, and makes driving a little problematic. Couldn’t find a money machine and drove to the coast to Matalascañas (kill the sugar cane??) and entered the “mess” of winding tiny streets and huge seaside apartments. We found two ATMs, neither of which would give us money. Thank God for the GPS which got us right out of town and back to our hotel.
It was about six PM and No Luggage! I took a shower, washed my hair and put my clothes back on…and got a call from Iberia. Rosa said unfortunately the delivery person didn’t deliver our stuff…and it’s back in Sevilla. I made her go over to the bags and describe them and told her that we would pick then up tomorrow morning. It’s not too far out of our way, although we’ll miss some stuff we were planning to see, but worth it if we actually, which I’m beginning to doubt, see our stuff again! Really thought by this time I would be able to stop incessantly whining about luggage, but not to be!
At 8:30 we went down to dinner and Bob had seafood paella and I had rice with local tiny clams mixed in and a grilled very sweet half lobster on top. Really great!
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