Beach day...or was it a desert day?

Dunes at la playa de los genoveses, San Jose
Looks more like a desert than a beach from this angle

Yesterday, as I was hoping, was a beach day! And I was lucky enough not to just go to el Zapillo, the beach here in Almería, but to one of the beautiful, secluded, virgin beaches in the nearby Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata. This beach is called Playa de los genoveses, meaning "Beach of the Genoese" (that's what you call people from Genoa, Italy), and is located just outside the quiet little summer-vacationing town of San Jose, Almería. In the aerial photo to the right, you can see the town of San Jose in the bottom right and the crescent-shaped beach of Genoveses to its left.

To me, one of the coolest things about this beach and the natural park in general is how diverse the landscape is. Standing on the shore and looking out at the water, it looks like a normal beach, almost Carribean except for the surrounding mountains.

Then you turn around to look at the dunes and suddenly you feel like you're in the middle of the desert. The sand is windblown and rippled and there are agave plants every 5-10 feet or so (visible in the photo at left and faintly in the background of my photo of the dunes above). Fun fact about these plants: they're also known as century plants because they have to grow for many years before they flower, which they do only once in their lifetime and then they die. Also, Endika's sister, a science teacher in a nearby town, told me a long while back that they are not AT ALL native to Spain. They were, in fact, brought back by Columbus and early conquistadors and in this region of Spain have come to be considered INVASORES or "invaders" because of their abundance and ease of propagation in this climate.

Anyway, then, on your way out, a few hundred yards from the shore, you turn around and it's totally green...which, by the way, is something VERY rare to see especially in this region which is the sunniest and driest in all of Spain. It's incredible to me that you can see such variation in such a small space.

Almería is one of the few places in Spain where you'll find such a well preserved, sparsely urbanized natural park such as this one. Aside from government restrictions on construction, probably the main reason this park remains so unscathed by the ever-increasing presence of technology and people is its difficulty of access. Many of the little coves along this coast are accessed only by footpaths that climb up and over the small coastal mountains. In rare cases, there are little dirt roads that are only wide enough for one car at a time or even ones that close to traffic after a certain hour. As people become lazier and lazier, fewer people are willing to make the trek out to these coves. However, to the adventurous and those looking for tranquility, this only adds to the allure.

From what I've been told, these secluded virgin beaches are not even very well known throughout Spain, and as such, they remain almost a secret. For that reason, little towns like San Jose and Las Negras which dot the coastline of the park, are considered perfect quiet summer hideaways for Madrileños and other big city folk. For me, it's always a treat to get out of the city and honestly, I can't think of a better daytrip destination than the region of Cabo de Gata/San Jose. To anyone who's planning a visit outside of the "winter" months of Nov-Mar, we will be hitting this destination, so get excited! As for me, I'm off to try and get the sand out of my ears for like the third time.