We stayed in Manilva for a few days, enjoying the hotel-standard showers at La Bella Vista and made full use of the washing machine. A line of washing would be bone dry in a couple of hours and the warm wind did the job of ironing – sort of. We cycled to Marina Ducquesa where we enjoyed a Chinese meal one evening and the next evening we ate seafood at the beach café. We cycled into Manilva and purchased two new garden chairs to replace ours stolen in Agadir. The chairs were delivered to our pitch later that day.
Fully refreshed we set off to join our Andalucían Tour that would show us a different Spain, a country of of high mountain ranges, sierras and rolling plains – just a few miles inland from the coast with its well known tourist resorts of Marbella and Torremolinos.
We met up at a campsite at Alhaurin El Grande in the hills above Malaga where they had a beautiful swimming pool. The water was perfect and was an ideal way of cooling down in the 30° heat.
It was a short drive the following morning to Parque Ardales, a series of lakes, fed by river Guadalorce. A dam had been completed in the 1950s. Our campsite was by one of these lakes, amongst the pine trees. The lakes were surrounded by hills and the waters glowed a wonderful rich aquamarine blue.
