Costa Tropical in November - Almunecar 1

We spend four full days in Almunecar doing very little. This is the holiday within the holiday of our three weeks between Costa Tropical and Málaga. We have rented an apartment with Airbnb for 6 nights. The apartment is in Urbanización Miramar right down the end of San Cristobal beach where Paseo de Cotobro starts, then up an almost vertical steep bank. It's worth it because the sea view back along Paseo Cristóbal and to the Peñones is spectacular, there's a sunkissed and mostly sheltered from the wind little terrace where we can squeeze around a plastic table to eat outside looking at the view, I can hear the waves and it's just a short walk from a well stocked Mercadona with a particularly good range of fish. The apartment has been recently refurbished and has a very new and good oven, so part of our time is spent choosing fish, cooking it and relaxing on the terrace before, while and after eating it.

It's the beginning of November but the weather is superb, well it is for us, sunny every day and warm enough for a t-shirt and shorts along the seafront in the sun, a lot cooler in the shade. Talking about seafront it's absolutely the best thing about Almuñécar, 4 kilometres between Cotobro and the Acquapark and even more beyond that, it's mostly wide with palm trees, a good view of the sea (not blocked out by beach establishments as happens in some places), plenty of places to stop and sit a while, easy access to the beach and, since it mostly faces approximately south, the sun shining across the sparkling water, all day long. It's warm, it's sunny, there's the constant sound of the waves coming and going on the coarse sand or gravel. Relax.

We do. I, more than Andrea, because after descending unscathed from the Eremi di Pulsano and the canyon Rio Higuerón below Frigiliana, the first morning in Almunecar I manage to not see a step in the walkway leading from the apartment and badly twist my ankle. I limp back to the apartment in search of ice and spend the next 24 hours icing my ankle as per the Rest Ice Compression Elevation protocol. I also take ginger to help with the inflammation and douse it in Arnica cream all night. The first afternoon it's really painful and I can't even take one step on it, I'm almost resigned to the fact the rest of my stay in Almuñécar at least will be confined to the balcony, and who knows how I'll manage in Málaga. Andrea, in the meantime, explores Almuñécar and does some shopping. 

On Friday morning he also goes to Paseo Blas Infante where there is the large weekly market with stalls selling local fruit and vegetables, ceramics, clothes, leather goods and all the usual things. The fruit is particularly good and inexpensive. Costa Tropical is famous for the production of tropical fruit and Andrea returns loaded down with delicious ripe mangoes, cherimoya, and the first of the avocados because the season is just starting.
Unexpectedly, by that morning I can limp as far as the balcony and by the afternoon I'm out with the collapsible stick Andrea managed to find at the market, and get as far as the Peñon del Santo.

The seafront in Almunecar has a lot of high-rise but very little traffic and is punctuated in the middle by the Peñon which also makes a good viewpoint. There's an enormous statue of Abderramán an Umayyad prince who landed on the coast of Almuñécar from Damascus, in 755, before instituting the Independent Emirate of Córdoba.

Just after the Peñon, on the next beach, a hippy has prepared a sand sculpture of a mountain village with snow in the mountains behind. I sit a while and rest my ankle. The people walking by on this Friday afternoon in November are a mixture, a lot of Spanish people (this seemingly obvious sentence is obligatory after Nerja) and some foreign tourists, but not so many and a mixture of nationalities.

The botanical garden is just below the castle, the subtropical trees and plants are well established and the garden is well cared for and tidy, 

there are also some statues of Syrian art and part of the space is occupied by the Factoría de Salazón de Pescado which dates back to Phoenician and Roman times. Almuñecar was then called Sexi Firmum lulium and the fish salting factory was at a safe distance from the urban centre to minimize the impact of the smell wafting around during production. 

Its products were in demand from the whole Roman Empire, and the factory also produced garum, extremely popular in Roman times, a kind of fish sauce made from a puree of fish waste, intestines and other ingredients (yum?).

The Mercado Municipal also has good selection of foodstuffs as well as fish 

although during this holiday in the end we have preferred to buy from Mercadona because information is available on sell-by dates etc. On Saturday morning, by which time I'm on my feet again so we can visit together, the place is quite busy. It's cooler in the centre, in the sun it's t-shirt weather whereas in the shade a fleece is very welcome because the air is cool. We stop for a Vermouth and tapa just outside the market also so I can rest a little, surprisingly it's the first of the holiday, a week today, but the supply of fresh ingredients is so plentiful and tasty that we've been enjoying cooking. For just 2€ each it's a nice snack. The lady explains in which order we must eat the slices of cheese and we actually remember to take a photo before pouncing.

Lunch is particularly good back on the balcony at home, super fresh mullets from Mercadona simply cooked in the oven. Mmmm, mullets are often risky but these are simply excellent.

After lunch my ankle seems much better and we walk at almost a normal pace towards Playa Cotobro and then beyond to Playa de los Muertos. 

These are nudist beaches although the weather really isn't that warm, there's a Spanish family fully dressed in jeans and pullovers fishing and lying in the sun and a foreign (although I didn't look too closely) man totally nude and some others in between. These beaches are stony and with high cliffs or steep terrain behind. We take the path which should eventually lead to Marina de Este and eventually La Herradura but desist when it becomes stony underfoot. I'm feeling a lot better but don't want to tempt fate. Instead, we walk back to Playa Cristóbal where I take a very slow and relaxing stroll and Andrea does a return run of 8 km. I buy a 5 litre bottle of water from the corner shop and take it slowly up the hill, we arrive back together, as the sun slides behind some low cloud and it feels snug and warm entering the apartment.