Mar de plástico

For balance, c.f. yesterday. This is where your out-of-season fruit and vegetables come from -- think about it next time you buy strawberries, tomatoes, or asparagus in December! This is a relatively modest "sea of plastic" -- the acres of polytunnel are much more extensive around Almería, big enough to be seen from space. In this area (not far from Motríl) they are gradually encroaching further up the valleys -- every potentially flat surface bulldozed for more of them. On the left of this photo you can see the traditional terraces, now mostly abandoned since they can't be worked mechanically.

When we were on our walk yesterday, we saw a poster for an open day on one of the polytunnel farms. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss, so we photographed the poster. The only clue to the location was a Google satellite view of -- guess what -- a mar de plástico. S got to work on Google Earth and reckoned he had identified where it was, programming it into the satnav. We had an interesting drive deep into the plastic zone, but our search was fruitless (apart from seeing a lovely little charm of goldfinches). There was no other publicity to be seen. 

Eventually we arrived in the village of Gualchos (see white-on-white extra)  and decided to ask around. The first people we met seemed to be English. We chatted to them for a while and when S asked where they were from, they replied "Denmark." Needless to say, they couldn't help.

Next stop: the village bar. S asked the owner -- she had no clue about the open day but showed us some truly gigantic red peppers she had grown in her polytunnel. Having finished our coffee we crossed the square to the shop, and S happily engaged in conversation with baffled locals who had not heard anything about an open day either, seeming puzzled that we would even want to go if there were.

We decided we'd done our best, and as it was nearly lunchtime by now, our favourite fish restaurant in Motríl beckoned. A nice drive down to the coast through groves of blossoming almond trees with views of plastic in the distance. When we got there we found that the restaurant was closed for holidays ... typical. En route into town to look for an alternative we happened across an organic shop that also did lunch; as we dawdled outside the owner tempted us in and we had a nobly healthy lunch of salad, pasta, and grilled apple slices with almonds and agave syrup. Serendipitously, as we chatted to the (German) owner, she told us we'd just missed the regular Friday intercambio (mixed English and Spanish conversation), so we may be back next week.

It was drizzly and cool, so instead of exploring further we returned home. Earlier the visiting engineers had pronounced the heating system expensively dead, so in our absence H had delivered an electric radiator and another gas bottle for the heater.

On the global front, my commiserations to all my US friends on this fateful day. The next four years will be very tough, the only consolation knowing that a majority of Americans are not OK with this.