| Almerimar 140 miles from Gib was our next stop. It's a very large, well run and well priced marina. It's a little soulless, having been purpose built as a marina and holiday town and the season proper was yet to start (Lindy's diary says that it's a bit like Eastbourne!). This gave it a slight ghost town feel but there were plenty of boat-related services and most of all it was clean! It was a fantastic relief to wash (and wash and wash) off the accumulated grime of Gibraltar. Another great Almerimar plus was being able to get a very acceptable 3 course set lunch for €9 each - including drinks! This seemed a bit of a snip even at the time, but as we moved on the prices would increase with every mile North and East so that €9 would seem miraculous - Chris on Shibumi was able to pay just about that for a small beer in Porto Cervo! I'm pretty confident that if the entire GPS system ever fails I can obtain a pretty good fix from the price of the set lunch on a restaurant menu! |
| On to Cartagena 120
miles further up the coast - Lunch €14! Cartegena is a great city
- with millions of euros being poured in. An amazing Roman
amphitheatre is being painstakingly restored, open air theatre on the top
of the hill looking over the harbour, the oldest bullring in Spain under
restoration, new theatre being built on the harbour, good restaurants and
a new marina for super yachts under construction. A place to buy
property now before it's discovered! Oh, and it's probably also
the first city in the world to experience a full scale aerial bombardment,
courtesy of Franco and his German allies during the Civil War.
One of the beauties of sailing is the huge spectrum of people that you meet. In Cartagena we were moored between Fenella and Ayala. on the one hand Hutch & Gillie on extended cruising, but still keeping their fingers in their property development business. On the other John and Annie partially financing their full time cruising with some street theatre - Annie's puppet show and John's cello.
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| Cartagena was our last stop on the mainland and we headed off for Formentera where we acquired probably the most expensive second-hand Land Rover radiator cap in the world - It's a long story! We also met up again with Ian & Jenny on Moidart (last seen in Lagos Sep 2003). An opportunity for Barry to demonstrate yet again that you don't have to be 19 to get very drunk and make an absolute prat of yourself - showing off whilst planing the rib after much wine, falling overboard and losing a pair of very expensive sun glasses! We were anchored off the small private island of Espalmador and only discovered by talking to the grocery delivery boat, that the very upmarket hotel on the beach with apparently more staff than guests, which looked an excellent place for lunch, was actually the home of the island's owner. We're pretty sure, from the number of dinghies from other yachts that made their way over there and came straight back, that a number of others had thought the same as us! |
