Spring Archives - Page 11 of 13

May 202014 0 Responses

Spain’s Olive Oil Industry

This picture was taken from our room in La Iruela, just an olive stone throw from Cazorla. We drove from south of Granada to Cazorla today through olives. It was 360kms. Nothing but an olive did we see. All I can say is that they better not get anything wrong with them!

Monoculture! I thought we had big stands of pine trees. Well. Our pine trees have nothing on Spain’s olives. I mean. We just took one route. Imagine how many more olives there are than what we saw. What was the worst for me is that underneath probably 95% of these olives there is NOTHING. Mainly the ground has been cultivated with either tractor or rotary hoe depending on the terrain. But in many cases it has been sprayed off, probably for decades. There’s nothing for the bees. Read More…

May 202014 0 Responses

The Aqueducts of the Moors

One of my main reasons for coming to the Alpujarras was the description of the aqueduct system that is still in place and working throughout the white villages.

As you can see from the picture they commence way up in the mountains. We did follow this one for SOME time but never got to the origin! As usual we were on the hunt for a plant. We had heard from an English walking guide that there were Gentians high in the mountains above Capileria. I had already been riding incredibly high above this little white village in the morning and hadn’t seen any so we thought we would take our little car and see how high we could go. Read More…

May 092014 0 Responses

Granada – The Alhambra & Generalife Gardens

Today was one of the highlights of our Spanish trip no doubt. The famous Alhambra and Generalife gardens (the garden of the Architect).

Coming this far and to something so incredibly important we find it extremely worthwhile to pay a little more, take more time and enjoy the experience with the insight you can only really gain with a local guide. There’s no way in the world I’m going to remember half of what we were told, but will manage to retain some I’m sure. We bought the book – as you do – it’s only the second one in three weeks so we are being restrained!

Traditional tuna fishing the Almadraba way

Today our plans were changed abruptly when the cooking class we were going to participate in was called off. However not to miss out on a “foodie day” we drove down to the coast at Barbate where the tuna fishing season has just started. Tuna is always so hard to get in NZ and really fresh tuna, more so. The opportunity to try tuna fresh off the boat and caught in the Almadraba way was not to be missed. Read More…