Thurs, May 21 - Mazagon

pics: dissected skate wing, Stone Pine forrest, Parador beach

Thursday, May 21, 8 PM - Still no luggage, but I’m hopeful! We DID get on the Iberia flight to Sevilla, and began to relax as we descended over the grey-green olive groves, brilliant green citrus and white-washed villages surrounding Sevilla! We stood around while other gathered their luggage and then went to Customer Service where, due to the wonders of bar coding, found out that our suitcases were still in Miami!! But due to fly out later that day and follow us to Sevilla, and Iberia said they would deliver the luggage to to our hotel, 60 miles away, which sounded pretty astounding!
We picked up our rental car, a nice Peugeot, and with the GPS and maps circled around Sevilla and headed southwest to the coast. We left the highway and drove to the tiny town of El Rocío so we could check out where we are supposed to meet our bird guide tomorrow at 7:30. Drove along the coast through Stone Pines, beautiful lollipop-shaped conifers that make a lovely open forest, and finally reached the Parador de Cristóbal Colón de Mazagón at 8 PM. Checked in and went to our room with a large balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. No need to unpack, so washed up a bit and headed for the bar and our welcome drink, which turned out to be a delicious local white wine. Since we were slightly grubby we decided to dine at the bar and both got Salmorejo, an amazingly delicious soup of creamy tomato, garlic and olive oil, garnished with microtome thin slices of crispy ham. Collapsed into bed.

This morning we got up at six in cold fog and drove the 30 minutes back to El Rocío and found the bar where we met José Sánchez of Discover Doñana. He drove us into this wonderful national park of ~100,000 acres of marsh and stone pine forest. Fortunately since I didn’t have a hat or proper shoes, the trip was all driving the sandy roads of the park and birding near the car. Saw buzzards, Little Owl, various larks, pink flamingos and many others. RR got ten life birds! We had scheduled a half day tour, but José didn’t get us back to the car until almost one. We drove back to the hotel and had some lunch before calling Iberia who said our bags were in Madrid…progress! Took a nap for an hour until four and then we headed for the beach. The weather had cleared, temperature of 67 with a cool breeze.
The hotel in on top of a coastal bluff and there is a wooden staircase with 187 steps to the beach.
We reached the very wide, long beach and walked a mile collecting beautiful shells. I waded into the water and measured the temp at 68. Shell fishermen were standing chest deep in the water scraping the bottom with sieves and putting clams in sacks on their backs, not easy work, but at least the water was warm.
We got back at seven still in sunshine as the sun doesn’t set here until 9:30 since Spain’s on double daylight savings (which is why they can eat dinner so late!).
9 PM we went down to dinner, this time in the dining room which luckily wasn’t that dressy, as it is, after all, a beach resort. Had soups, good but not up to last night’s, and then I had skate wings! Not a great sauce but taxonomically really interesting…I really needed the fish knife to lift the long segments of muscle off the gelatinous cartilage center. RR had a fabulous Cabrito stew. Back to the room at 11:30...Gosh, guess what? No suitcases!