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If you survey a representation of Spain, successful the south-east country you’ll spot a portion of bare abstraction on the borderline of the Mediterranean. It contains nary large towns and hardly immoderate roads. Its coastline is arsenic barren – nary ports oregon resorts; conscionable a fewer tiny villages tucked distant successful intriguingly named coves – “raven”, “coal”, “bitter water”. This spot of emptiness is the Cabo de Gata-Níjar nationalist park, a protected haven of godforsaken wilderness connected the borderline of Europe.
Having been forced to cancel an expedition to the Algerian Sahara earlier successful the year, this parkland appears to beryllium the reply to my yearning for the arid warmth and stark quality of godforsaken travel. Zooming successful connected the outer view, a web of paths appears, suggesting a walking way of astir 40 miles (64km) – from the Cabo itself, up the coast, on the cliffs, to the formation municipality of Agua Amarga. My husband, a keen Iberophile and relentless explorer of España vacia (literally, bare Spain) is ever up for a wilderness adventure, truthful we get successful the van and caput south.
This trek is nary camino. There’s nary acceptable route, waymarkers oregon pilgrim-ready hostelries. It’s much a postulation of stony goat tracks, aged mining routes and ungraded roads connecting the sportfishing villages, beaches and coves of the nationalist park, galore of which are accessible by ft only. There’s small successful the mode of tourer infrastructure, particularly disconnected season, but conscionable capable hotels and shops enactment unfastened to marque an unsupported locomotion viable. The longest agelong without civilisation is astir 10 miles, and navigation is easy: support the oversea connected your right.
We statesman our travel astatine the Faro de Cabo de Gata, the lighthouse astatine the extremity of the peninsula, wherever we parkland our van, heave connected a rucksack loaded with oranges, and acceptable retired on the cliff. In these archetypal steps we are rendered speechless by the earthy quality each astir us. The stony hills are live with wildflowers successful pinkish and yellow, and the Mediterranean shimmers a silvery-turquoise nether the pure, cleanable sunlight. Inland, the barren mountains agelong distant similar a immense choppy sea. It’s hard to ideate the existent satellite bustling distant beyond their jagged skyline.
The contours of the representation uncover a just magnitude of undulation up and we admit that our younger, fitter selves could person knocked this retired successful 3 days, but we’ve acceptable speech a leisurely five, for swimming and exploring on the way. Taking a breather connected the cliff edge, it’s wide it was the close decision. This is not a travel to beryllium rushed. The aerial is warm, scented with chaotic rosemary, lavender and sage. Spiky aloe, prickly pear and flowering succulents enactment the trail. We travel the rugged coastline, descending towards our destination for the archetypal night, the tiny municipality of San José. With its thenar trees and whitewashed buildings astir a crescent bay, it beckons similar a 1930s question poster for northbound Africa.
San José is tiny but it’s the biggest municipality for miles, and a bully halt for stocking up connected supplies, oregon arsenic a basal to research if the afloat locomotion isn’t an option. Joe Strummer of the Clash made this spot location successful the 1990s, having fallen successful emotion with the country portion filming Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell successful the adjacent Tabernas Desert. The locals inactive archer tales of him singing successful the formation bars, knocking backmost rum and cokes.
In the summer, San José is simply a engaged vacation destination but retired of play it transforms into a sleepy one-horse town. Fortunately, the tiny beachfront Hotel Doña Pakyta stays unfastened each twelvemonth round, which is fitting, considering its namesake, without whom this country of Spain would look precise different. Doña Pakyta was a Spanish businesswoman and environmentalist, who worked tirelessly to support the unsocial Almerian godforsaken and its spectacular coastline from the onslaught of developers successful the 1960s.
The proprietor of 3,300 hectares (8,200 acres) of onshore astir San José, she was profoundly connected to the landscape, flora and traditions of the area, and arsenic she watched Spain’s confederate seashore go ravaged by wide tourism, she held retired for her beloved Cabo de Gata, allowing afloat nationalist entree to her beaches and refusing to fto her onshore beryllium built upon. Now the park’s 178 sq miles are a Unesco protected biosphere and Doña Pakyta (also known arsenic Francisca Torres Díaz) was immortalised arsenic a favourite girl of Andalucía successful 2010, the highest favoritism to beryllium awarded by the region.
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I americium grateful to her astatine each step, gasping successful delight verging connected disbelief arsenic each concealed cove and pristine achromatic soil formation reveals itself. Apart from the tiny villages of Los Escuellos, Isleta del Moro and the somewhat larger Las Negras, the lone signs of civilisation on the seashore are the ruins of 18th-century forts that were built to fend disconnected pirates, and the ghostly remains of a goldmine that closed successful the 1960s.
Other walkers are fewer and acold between, and the archetypal 2 days walk by with conscionable a fistful of quality sightings. We’ve go utilized to our solitary presumption truthful it’s a daze to look astatine the formation of Cala de San Pedro and find ourselves successful what appears to beryllium a quality colony of driftwood shelters, rootlike plots, a ramshackle formation bar, and adjacent a composting toilet for visitors. It’s arsenic though we’ve stumbled into the movie The Beach, and it’s adjacent much astounding arsenic determination is nary roadworthy entree to the cove – everything present has been brought successful by oversea oregon connected foot. This, it transpires, is Spain’s past surviving hippy commune, acceptable up successful the 1960s and inactive location to a radical of astir 50 inhabitants.
It’s casual to spot wherefore they stayed. Not lone is it the eventual idyll, but the ascent retired is the toughest of the full locomotion – a steep, 250-metre ascent of rocky, twisty constrictive tracks requiring the occasional scramble. At the top, we prevarication supine among gorse and chaotic thyme, gazing down astatine the adjacent immaculate beach, Cala del Plomo. This 1 is bare isolated from a corral of campervans bearing signs advising visitors to beryllium “mindful of the vigor they’re bringing into this space”. We defy the temptation to marque mischief and resistance our past scraps of vigor into the oversea for a sunset skinny dip.
As time 5 closes with different aureate sunset, Agua Amarga beckons and we get via a giddy descent that delivers america close extracurricular the town’s lone out-of-season hotel. We consciousness deserving of this last-night luxury but besides strangely bereft astatine our instrumentality to civilisation and the imminent taxi backmost to our van. The elemental enactment of getting up and walking each time successful these bright, axenic surroundings has been truthful satisfying to the caput and body, I privation to support going, into the mountainous hinterland, on the adust riverbeds, winding among the cacti and palms for ever. It whitethorn not beryllium the Sahara but it’s our ain small European desert, and it’s conscionable perfect.
For much accusation sojourn cabogataalmeria.com; the Cabo de Gata Nijar, Guide and Map: Natural Park and Coast of Almeria is utile for way planning.
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