Walking up the office (portacabin at the end of the pontoons), we realised that the small pool (approx 20ft by 8ft) beside the wood hut was where they were keeping two large sealions at least for part of the day (presumably in the hut by night). There was also a parrot with a small piece of tarpaulin for shade day and night at the end of the pirate ship in an old iron bird cage. Even more horrible, not even sure how it’s legal.
We paid and left immediately, then thankfully had a lovely morning sail down the coast before turning the corner at Punta Lantailla light house.
Punta Lantailla Lighthouse (taken through binoculars)
Here it is worth noting that you get an acceleration effect as you pass south of Las Playitas, the pilots don’t seem to mention it at all, but it went from 15 knots before that point to upto 28 knots of wind, luckily we were reefed anyway, so just put some genoa away, but it made it rather exciting putting the main down, as it didn’t even abate coming into the harbour entrance, we were still reading 20+ knots inside the harbour. The bay wasn’t really any better sheltered otherwise we might have anchored up to wait it out. We were struggling to find a suitable berth, (although there are plenty free, again they were quite short for us), luckily we heard a whistle and the harbour master motioned us in to a berth and helped with lines.
Las Playitas (taken through binoculars)
There were a few other cruising boats around, it looked like a good spot, with apparently new pontoons and electric and water. The harbourmaster enquired if we were just staying 1 night and when we said 7, he just said to come and see him manana to check in, perfect!
We had a look round the town, I was expecting a village from the pilot guides, but it is actually a small town. Very Spanish feel to it, not an English voice to be heard and perhaps to correlate to that the cheapest place we have been to so far! Our favourite wine cartons for example between 90cents (Corralejo) to 1.17Euro (Marina Rubicon) are 66 cents here! Infact, there was an offer on for 4 for 3, which mean there was 4 for 2 Euros! That’s less than 50p for a bottle of wine!
We went to the café at the side of the Fisherman’s Cooperative which we are learning is a great place for cheap fresh food for lunch about 2 pm. The café was full and we ordered according to what looked good on other tables, so we shared a “baby squid ends” starter (they had an English translation on the menu, which usually find a shame, but it was worth it for the phraseology!). We barely managed half the enormous plateful they brought between us, then they brought out tuna steaks about 1 lb each with salad and local potatoes, cooked in seawater as they were very very salty. It was really excellent meal which including drinks was 30 Euros.
We head back to the boat as the other thing about Gran Tarajal is that it appears to be a complete suntrap, perhaps just because the town is south facing, the volcanic rocks surrounding adsorbing the heat I’m not sure, but 34 degrees here yesterday afternoon, you can feel the heat rising up from the pavements. We had a siesta after all that food before heading out for some food shopping in the Euro Spar (no Hiper Dino as per the pilot guides) to stock up on wine when the heat had died down! Kevin was also itching to visit the chandlery which has become something of an obsession in each port, though I gather from other blogs this is fairly normal behaviour!
I am afraid that the Euro 2008 competition has kind of passed us by, neither of us being football fans. However, whilst we were watching a DVD, we kept hearing intermittent cheering, followed for about 3 hours by cheering and car horns blaring. Can only imagine that Spain has won a match of significance!! If anyone wants to fill us in with a comment on the blog, we may even go along to the next game!
No comments:
Post a Comment