Little Day Trips: El Rompido

One Sunday a few weeks ago a friend of mine who grew up in Huelva suggested that we get out of the city for a few hours. He said he was going to surprise me with where we were going. We ended up driving through El Portil, a small beach town that gets really crowded in the summer. A lot of Spanish families (including Miguel’s) have two apartments or houses—one inland in whatever town they work and one in some beach town for the summer. The effect is that these towns are very empty and quiet in the winter and crowded and lively in the summer.

We continued on a beautiful scenic road that runs along the coast to an even smaller beach town called El Rompido. We stopped here, checked out the lighthouse, walked through town, wandered onto a dock and had a café at a little bar that was on the beach. There is a string of small restaurant/bars along the quiet beach. A lot of the chairs and tables are actually on the sand, which I thought was pretty cool. 

I really liked El Rompido. It was quiet and quaint. Miguel said before it became a more popular beach getaway, the town was only fishermen. People still live in the old fishermen-style houses; they are small, simple one story houses all attached in a seamless row. The beach is very calm because the waves are blocked by a narrow strip of land called La Flecha that comes off of the mainland and curls back around some distance out, stretching along across the length of the coast around El Rompido. La Flecha is really pretty and I was told it is a great place to hang out and camp, as the small beaches are more secluded. The beach of El Rompido is littered with little fishermen’s boats turned over, as they are not in use.  As we sat having our café con leche, some little kids lumbered up over, stood atop and slid down the sides of one of these boats playing some imaginary game—extremely peaceful. I think out of the ones that I have visited El Rompido is my favorite little town around Huelva.

Today in Mazagón

I had an inspiring day in a little seaside Andalusian town called Mazagón. Two friends and I who didn't have to work the first half of the day wanted to make a little excursion. It's about a forty minute bus ride from Huelva.

Upon arrival we tried our best to locate the tourism office, which due to nonsensical Spanish signs it took us a good few minutes even though we were standing right in front of it. We were given a map and some information. The map showed the center and there were 5 sights noted on the map as things to check out in Mazagón. The first was the faro (lighthouse) but it was small, plain and underwelming. The second was a military barracks. We had some trouble finding it because actually all it turned out to be was a cement block covered in graffiti in the middle of an abandoned, semi-wooded lot. A homeless person or two had obviously claimed it as theirs. The third "site" we went to visit was a house built along the beach some ways away from the center. It's over 100 years old (quite young in the European sense of old) but it was fenced in and locked up. So really, not much to see. The cultural highlights of the town were pretty bleak...however, I did start this post off by saying I had an inspiring day in Mazagón so I should get to that part of the story.

The best part of the day was the long walk we took along the beaches to the right of the town to get to the house. These beaches were almost completely deserted. Some rough chaparral flower bushes dotted the beach close to the coast line and there were a lot of cool sea shells that had been stuck and cemented together in layers with other shells over time. They looked like little sculptures. I took a few. My favorite thing about the port and the beaches was all of the old boats. They were scattered about turned over and tied up haphazardly about the beach, their paint faded and chains and anchors rusted. Some were clearly abandoned as they were moss-covered old wooden boats rotting away and filled with sand. These made for some great photographic material. There was also other nautical junk like splitting ropes and lonely buoys scattered around. The whole scene had a grungy, old-rustic nautical feel that I love.

At the beach in February

Even some of my Spanish high school students have stopped to ask me about the crazy weather that is happening in a lot of places in the US this winter. Mom and Dad have not been enthusiastic about how often they are shoveling the driveway these days. However, here in Huelva, the winter has been extremely mild (at least for my standards). Of course no snow. It has been off-and-on overcast/rainy and clear skies. We had a few cold weeks in the fall in which our non-heated apartment was pretty nippy. That being said, save for a few isolated cold nights, it hasn't been bad at all this winter, I rarely feel really cold. At night it drops to low forties and in the day it gets into the high sixties sometimes (even into the seventies this week!) Needless to say, it has been a pretty good contrast from what's going on in the US--at least from my side of the globe. This is a picture I took from our balcony on a particularly clear day.

Anyways, the weather was nice enough that some friends and I could enjoy the beach while wearing a few layers. We packed up a picnic lunch and headed off to a secluded area of the beach on a February Sunday. To get to this section of the beach you have to walk on a boarded sidewalk that winds through a sandy woody area and then the dunes. It was beautiful. 

We had a lovely time lounging and drinking wine on the beach until the wind became cold enough that we retreated to a more sheltered spot in the dunes. I actually liked this best--we still got to hear the constant pulse of the crashing waves and feel the sun but we were tucked into the dunes. Dunes are really cool places. Limbos between land and sea. Though it was only a silly little excursion with friends, I had a faint feeling of being somewhere exotic and uncharted. No one was about and we stayed chatting, sipping on wine and relaxing until after the sunset.