Jerez, Sanlucar De Barrameda, Donana and Cadiz

Our Jerez hotel - Hostal Fenix (hostalfenix@gmail.com) - is fine, especially as we have an outside room with a window onto the street. It is in the old part of town, so comes with narrow streets, cobbled roads and a genuine 14^th Century wall as part of the room. The owners speak very little English.  You don’t have to go too far outside to find some fairly dodgy areas in the old town, which might explain the very cheap rate. Seems that the rubbish collectors are still on strike which adds a certain fragrance to the town.

 

The orientation walk when we arrived identified a few 'must get back to' places and a few potential eateries. We are back in citrus-lined streets so G&Ts are catered for.

Our Thursday night tapas meal was hilarious. We arrived at 8, but the cook unfortunately doesn’t arrive till 8.30, so we watched the passers-by in the plaza for half an hour with a glass of white wine. The early eaters were mostly tourists, and the waiter’s English was not too good, but point and choose seemed to work OK. One English woman at an adjacent table, who has owned a house in Jerez for 10 years but obviously hadn’t picked up on the Spanish, ordered lamb, but was obviously pointing to a different item. Her large plate of  'lamb' duly arrived and she commented how tender and delicious it was to the woman at the next table who enquired what the dish was. Said woman then looked up lamb in her dictionary and ordered the lamb.  Her lamb was the real deal (lamb chops in fact) and didn’t look anything like the dish it was ordered from. So much hilarity, an apology from the waiter to the woman who thought she’d ordered lamb but was served 'wild boar'. We promptly ordered the 'lamb' and very much enjoyed the wild boar.

We headed off for Donana National Park visit next morning and had a lovely day. We travelled across the Guadalquivir River by ferry with some El Rocio pilgrims heading on their annual peregrination to the Church of Our Lady of Nuestra Senora del Rocio in El Rocio, a village on the other side of the 4000 hectare park. Heaps of 4 wheel drives with flags etc to be ferried across.

Then we had a Unimog tour through the beaches, coastal dunes, lowland forest, grassland and lagoon areas.
         
                                         

Saw locals gathering cockles – they dredge for them, and the park starts at the high tide mark so the traditional fishing goes on.

The commentary unfortunately was all in Spanish, but we did see birds, wild pigs, red deer (see it in photo?) and samba deer and a variety of trees and flowers. This wetland area is important for birds and also is habitat for the European lynx.

The park occupies some of the area that used to be a coastal estuary when Seville (80 km upriver was an important port). Like most of southern Spain there are remnants of Moorish owners, and there was a community who lived there but were removed in 1969 when it became a national park. The thatch houses they lived in are still able to be privately owned and can be passed down to family members, but not sold, a little like Rangitoto’s baches. The tour finished with a cruise down the very muddy river back to Sanlucar de Barrameda.

This port was the departure point for Christopher Columbus on his third voyage to America, and also departure point for Ferdinand Magellan whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe. He actually didn’t make it, he died in the Philippines, but his ships returned home after their continuous sailing to the west. There was virtually nothing here to celebrate these events.

It was good to see a huge area reverting to its former state and forming a habitat for wildlife, including flamingos which we didn’t see in the park but did see later in wetlands near Cadiz. I noted their blue swamp hen (we’d call it a Pukeko) on a poster of occupants of the park; we may be able to export some of Motuihe’s.

Lunch was an all-local seafood affair. We finally found out what pijotas are (small whiting), and had a plate of those plus baby sole, baby calamari, bigger calamari, cod and the inevitable anchoea.

 We had to be home by 4.00 so that we could attend a flamenco session at a bar in the old town. Yes, we are gluttons for punishment. This was part of the local Flamenco Festival and attendees were predominantly locals. Our first experience in Sevilla didn’t quite endear the art to us, and the first performer for this session didn’t really move me on. The photos show the expressive and pain-filled feelings that the singers (and dancer) project.  

The second performer I found a bit more appealing. Then came a joint session - two singers, two guitars and a dancer. With the local crowd and in the courtyard of the bar this was all much more lively and interactive. So we left feeling a bit closer to understanding and enjoying the art.

Dinner was more local fare at Bar Juanita, a famous restaurant that has been part of Jerez for 60 years. Great meal as usual.

Saturday we headed to our Carthusian horse experience at Yeguara De La Cartuja. Directions for getting there were pretty ordinary, and we had no street address so TomTom wasn’t much help. We did allow plenty of time for the trip. We pulled off the carriageway and stopped on an off-ramp to look at our directions. I was a bit engrossed in the process and was a bit startled by the knock on my window, and looked up to see a rear view mirror full of a Policia car (yes Sam a nee-nar - flashing lights and all!!) and two policeman at my window. You can’t stop here. Sorry I’m a bit lost, Ann waved the brochure, and the first guy said 6 km down this road. Then the second guy (good cop, bad cop approach) “Licence” which I duly presented and he went back to his car to write things down, but came back a couple of minutes later because he couldn’t make sense of the licence. "Passport" … Sorry it’s back in the hotel.  "Identity card"….sorry, we don’t have those in New Zealand. Then he asked me to tell him which number on my licence was the licence number. "What is this" …my date of birth, "What is this?"…. the date the licence was issued.  He duly noted it all down then said you are free to go, enjoy your day.  I don’t think I’ve got a record, but it did provide a bit of a diversion. Unfortunately Ann didn’t manage to get any photos. (We had learned back in Barcelona that police take themselves very seriously and regard photos as assault.)

The Carthusian horse show was terrific. We had an hour tour of the facility in very good English, the horses are very friendly and not all white as I had expected. Mind you selective breeding has made white dominant and the stud is working very hard to get the chestnut and black (once thought unlucky) back into the breed.

Our guide joked that they had the only profitable bank in Spain.

Then an hour show of the horses going through their paces, being tamed, carriage racing, dressage and finally the foals with their mothers. All with appropriate music and Spanish-English commentary.

 

 

Carthusian monks (we came across them and founder St Bruno in Granada) started the stud to preserve the Andalusian horse. The wheels fell off the project when the monks had to flee and the horses ended up dispersed among feuding family members, but the Government bought all the horses and set up the facility to continue the good work. The horses are ok for carriage work, carrying knights and working stock, but not for gallops, trots or show jumping. All that aside you can buy a breeding mare for around 80,000 Euros, a stallion for 18-25,000 Euros or a gelding for 3000 Euros. Let us know quickly what you want.

Late on Saturday we got to the sherry, after all this is the sherry triangle. The visit to Gonzalez Byass, which has the Tio Pepe brand started at 5 00 pm. In English again and a very good guide.

 

They own 800 hectares of vineyards, planted 95% in Palamino grapes and 5% in good old Pedro Ximenez. The place stores about 15,000,000 litres of wines and Lepanto Brandy. Some famous signatures on casks.

The tasting was Fino, Croft, Alfonso and Solera 1847 which is a cream sherry. I wasn’t really tempted by any of the tastes; the Solera has 15% Pedro Ximenez and was probably the favoured style. You can buy products up to 30 years old, similar to ports, and the process for sherries is a continuous blending of various aged stocks. The aging barrels, mainly American oak last up to 100 years, then they sell them to the Scots for aging whiskey (and you thought the Scots were canny!!). Ross, you can check out the weather vane…Guinness book of records the biggest in the world, weighs 3 tonnes, stands 40 feet tall and 16 feet wide, very classy really.

Walked home for a regroup and headed to famous restaurant number eleventy billion called La Cardona. This again was just a short walk through the showers.

Just a main tonight at La Cardona which is one of the highly recommended places. There is a limit to the amount of eating out you can take. Iberian wild boar for me and a baby leg of lamb for Ann. No camera unfortunately, but Ann’s lamb rivalled the legendary Blinman steaks of South Australia. It was a complete leg and it did virtually hang over both sides of the plate. Both meals were lovely. (No pics as camera stays home at night here – not keen to invite mugging.)

Today we spend walking around the old city of Cadiz. I was expecting lots of maritime history, but there was very little which was a bit of a disappointment. Cape Trafalgar is not far from here, and Cadiz is the longest established city in Europe, it harks from around 1100 years BC (if we still have this as a measure). So Phoenicians, Vikings, Celts, Goths, Vandals, Romans, Moors, Greeks, and others have all had a bit to do with the place. No one has yet bothered to try and pull this all together. It was a pretty wild place for a long time, they took a lot of convincing to give up human sacrifices apparently, but it all looked pretty calm today.

                                 

It does have a series of good walks, and we took two that showed us significant remnants of fortifications and watchtowers where merchants kept an eye out for their ships returning. The queen has just visited as evidenced by flags, and police tape over the drain covers!

Anyway we enjoyed a coastal stroll and watched the Sunday goings-on.

For our final night's meal we went to Meson del Asador which is recommended for meat lovers. The waitress was the worst we've had, very close to surly. Food was good in terms of quantity and quality, but when the main arrives before you've finished the entrée they've got something seriously wrong. Couldn't be bothered staying there for our final Pedro, so slipped down to the next Plaza, to the very reliable La Cruz Blanca where we had had a couple of lovely meals and the staff were great.
Final day tomorrow, before the trip back begins. So no plans for the day, we’ll see what eventuates. Tuesday will be a 7.00am departure for Seville airport and a 10.00am flight with Vueling Air to Barcelona where we pick up our return Qantas flight. First to London, then an Airbus 380 to Sydney and the trans-Tasman hop home.