Adventure

Road Tripping Around New Zealand: Part 2 – Quintessential, Quaint & Quirky or North to Cape Reinga

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Auckland’s skyline soon vanished from our rearview mirror as we drove through the high-density suburbs that ringed the city, but the developments soon thinned and the landscape transitioned to gently rolling farmlands, still a lush pastoral green at the end of a southern hemisphere summer in February.

Our ultimate destination was the Cape Reinga Lighthouse on the very northern tip of the sparsely populated Aupōuri Peninsula, on Aotearoa (“land of the long white cloud”), the ancient Māori name for New Zealand’s north island before it came to describe the entire country.

It was a 423 km (263mi) 6 hour drive from Auckland’s airport, which we planned to break up with two nights in Whangarei along with two nights in Taipa, which would be our base for driving to Cape Reinga and exploring the northern region. The traffic was light and the scenery was pleasant, but we didn’t get our first taste of the epic landscapes we expected until reaching the Brynderwyns Scenic Lookout, about 90 minutes from Auckland. With rolling hills in the foreground receding to distant mountains above Bream Bay and Whangārei Harbour, the panoramic view was spectacular.

Getting off Rt1 we drove into Whangarei, a riverfront city that is the regional capital of New Zealand’s Northland area, where the decades old facades of the buildings gave the town an antique feeling, a backwater lost in time; we wondered if we should have planned differently. Fortunately, after checking into our hotel, the Quest Whangarei, and walking around the quaint downtown area, our opinion changed.

We were quickly enthralled with the frozen in time aspect of the architecture that spanned from the 1940’s to the 1980’s, which were reinvigorated with colorful, contemporary street murals, sporadically located around the historic downtown area that also gave it a youthful vibe. The artistic endeavor was started in 2019, when some of the world’s best street artists took part in the Street Prints Manaia, International Art Festival in Whangarei, and created 15 large scale art murals based on the theme “Tuia te muka Tāngata” “Weaving the Threads of Humanity.” The city even has a mapped walking tour to fifteen of these wonderful murals, several of which we saw from our hotel room that overlooks a small alley.

Long before Europeans arrived, the Whangārei Harbor and its surrounding coastline were heavily populated by various Māori tribes. During war councils, massive gatherings of their war wakas would fill the width of the Hatea River, the canoes close enough that warriors could run almost across them from one shoreline to another. Across the river atop Mount Parihaka, one of the Māori’s largest fortified villages (pā) had a commanding view of the Whangārei Harbour from which they spotted Captain James Cook’s ship and crew aboard the Endeavour, the first Europeans to sight the entrance to Whangārei Harbour on the 15th of November 1769. Cook’s crew were also the first Europeans that the Māori people of the region ever encountered.

The early 1800’s was a turbulent time in the region with the English and Māori elbowing each other for control of the land, and settlers fled, not returning to the region in significant numbers until the late-1850s, when the lucrative kauri timber and kauri gum trade, along with exporting coal, revitalized the local economy. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Whangārei evolved from a logging camp into a bustling, but isolated maritime port. Things improved tremendously when the North Auckland Railway, a year-round passenger and freight line, reached the town in 1925. Though poor seasonal roads into the area continued to hamper the town’s growth until an all-weather road was built in 1934, spurring three decades of growth that resulted in Whangārei being designated at city in 1964.

By the 1990s the economy had changed and the city was shifting its focus away from maritime industries to focus on tourism and culture. The old commercial port at the Town Basin was extensively gentrified into a picturesque waterfront dining, shopping, and marina precinct. This cultural evolution culminated with the opening of the iconic Hundertwasser Art Centre in 2022, which embraces the internationally acclaimed artist’s philosophy that “The straight line is godless and immoral. The geometric straight line is not a creative line, it is a duplicating line, an imitating line, not existing in nature.”

Happening upon this museum was serendipitous, as I first learned of Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s work in the 1970s, when the flamboyant artist was living on a canalboat in Venice and I owned an artbook of his paintings. He first arrived in New Zealand in 1973 for the opening of an exhibit of his work arranged by the Auckland City Art Gallery, and quickly fell in love with the country and found ideological kinship with the Māori culture, “sharing a deeply aligned worldview centered on interconnectedness, environmental guardianship, and the rejection of rigid human boundaries.” The Hundertwasser museum also houses the Wairau Māori Art Gallery, the first dedicated public Māori art gallery in Aotearoa.

We found Whangārei to be a laid-back, underrated hidden gem that was perfect for a two night day stay on our way to Reinga Peninsula.

The next morning as we left the city, we visited the Whangarei Falls, a short distance outside of town, and one of New Zealand’s most easily accessible waterfalls, with the parking area a short walk away. It’s a beautiful 26 m (85 ft) tall curtain waterfall, with an upper viewing platform and a pathway down through a thick forest to the base of the dramatic falls.

The parking lot was a moderate size with several Freedom Camping spots reserved for camper vans. “I wish we did this 30 years ago,” I said to Donna. With a smile and a gentle elbow to the ribs she replied, “more like fifty.” It’s a great program that allows folks doing extended grand tours around New Zealand the ability to budget travel. Restrictions vary from site to site and several apps, such as CamperMate, Rankers Camping NZ, and WikiCamps NZ offer maps and reviews of approved Freedom Camping areas.

Later that morning we u-turned to investigate a tall traditional Māori wood-carved pou we had just zipped by as we entered Te Tai Tokerau, the northlands region, near Maromako.  Pou (or pouwhenua), which are often compared to totem poles, are traditionally used as territorial boundary markers or to designate significant Māori sites. Carvings on the poles depict, “ancestral figures, lineages, and tribal histories, reflecting a profound relationship between the ancestors, the natural environment, and the tangata whenua (people of the land).” This pou, created by Arapeta Te Hauhau and Shane Whatarau, portrays the Māori tūpuna (ancestor) Kahukuri, who conquered the rohe, region, of Ngāti Hau, a vast area between Whangārei and Hokianga, farther north.

Continuing on we were urged to stop when we saw a huge midden pile of oyster shells next to a nondescript roadside shack that offered only oysters and chips. It was mostly a take-away shop with a few well-worn tables and chairs, but we immensely enjoyed our pre-lunch snack of fresh raw oysters. If you are an ostreophile, New Zealand is a great destination as the cold waters that surround the islands allow oysters to be harvested nearly year-round. We were now in the Bay of Islands area of the Northland Region and we could turn onto Rt 11 to travel along the coastlines of Waikare and Rawhiti Inlets to the Haruru Falls and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the controversial first accord between the British Crown and the Māori people was signed in 1840. It was controversial because the Māori received an interpretation of the treaty in which they believed they were of equal standing to the Crown of England and not subjects as the English treaty stated. Māori disillusionment with the treaty quickly grew and was the catalyst for the Northern War in 1845. Though it only lasted ten months, it was the first of a number of major conflicts that continued sporadically to 1872, that arose after the signing of the treaty.

A site marker pointing the way to the Hundertwasser Public Toilets in Kawakawa caught our eyes and we couldn’t resist a quick detour. Yes, a quirky decision for an equally quirky destination. We do not do a lot of extensive research ahead of time beyond mapping out our routes to the major destinations and our hotels. Leaving the day’s drive a combination of sites picked the night or a day before and leaving plenty of time for spontaneous detours.

Surprisingly there was no train crossing gate when we entered Kawakawa,  as a slow-moving locomotive pulling a few passenger cars entered the road and caused traffic to momentarily stop. We followed behind the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway’s train as it slowly rolled down railroad tracks centered in the town’s wide main street until it verged into an old railyard.

Parking in town was very limited and I didn’t want to try my left-hand side of the road parallel parking skills just yet. So, we ended up parking outside the railyard, which conveniently had a highly praised restaurant, the Railway Station Cafe, with favorable reviews on Google maps. It’s a quaint place with tables outside on the train station’s old platform, just inches away from the rolling stock. We enjoyed a lunch of local mussels served with a cream based white wine and garlic sauce, along with a scrumptious homebaked chocolate muffin for dessert. A placard announced the train’s departure schedule and we realized we had time to explore the town a little, so we made a spontaneous decision to take the day’s last excursion at 3pm.

We didn’t realize when we toured the Hundertwasser museum that the artist spent much of the last three decades of his life living and working in Northland Region around the Bay of Islands, until his death in 2000. Living only 20 minutes from Kawakawa he visited often, and had some aesthetic influence on the town, which can be seen in certain murals, sidewalk benches, the town library, and the public toilet. In the 1990s Kawakawa was struggling as a bypassed “thoroughfare” town. Approaching Hundertwasser, local business owners hoped a unique, artist-designed landmark would turn the town into a tourist destination rather than just a quick stop on the way further north, and he was asked to redesign the old concrete block building.

He agreed and donated his services to the community as an “architectural doctor” to cure an ugly structure by merging it with nature (incorporating uneven floors, a living tree roof, local recycled bricks, glass bottles, and hand-made student tiles. He believed “community ownership” of the project would directly foster local pride and prevent vandalism and insisted that local craftsmen, students, and volunteers help build it. Honestly, it is a really quirky destination, and aesthetics have changed over the years. We expected something different, but elements of his philosophy can still be seen today in new earth homes being constructed across the globe. His former home on Waikare Inlet is now a museum called Living Hundertwasser, that we did not get the chance to see.

Boarding an open carriage on the Bay of Island’s train we stood with the other passengers as the train traveled back down through the center of Kawakawa. A minute outside of town we were transversing open fields and passing eccentric way markers like a totem of hanging old toilet bowls erected in someone’s backyard. As we traveled along, one of the volunteer conductors told the history of the line as we struggled to listen above the click-clack of the iron wheels. The oldest passenger line on the North Island was started in 1867 after coal was discovered in a gully outside Kawakawa and a horse tramway was built to pull passengers and carriages of the ore from the mine to Derricks Landing on the Kawakawa River, to be loaded onto shallow draft boats.

The coal mine became so important that in the early 1870s steel railroad tracks were laid through the center of town and a bridge across the river was built to extend the coal and passenger line to the deepwater port in Ōpua to access larger ships. The tracks eventually linked into the wider North Auckland Line and Kawakawa was a stop for the famous Ōpua Express which ran between Auckland and Ōpua from 1925 to 1956. Passenger service along the route stopped in the 1970’s as the roads in the northland improved and more folks bought cars. Freight service continued on the tracks into the mid1980s until modern containerized shipping forced its discontinuation.

During our pleasant two-hour journey across fields, marshlands and forests we got our first exposure to the Kiwi sense of humor, which is typically dry, self-effacing, and delivered with a straight face. When sharing one of the construction highlights of the “World Famous in New Zealand” railroad, the conductor mentioned “it has the longest curved wooden bridge in the Southern Hemisphere.” If you blinked you might have missed it.

Our halfway point ended at the Whangae Tunnel station, where a collapsed ceiling blocked the route. Here, folks with bikes who got on the train at the Taumārere Station to cross the marshlands, got off of to continue pedaling towards Ōpua, along one of the most popular routes mapped in the Twin Coast Cycle Trail guide.

It was very late in the afternoon when the train returned the station and we continued our journey west along Rt1 to Pakaraka, before turning onto Rt10 to our final leg of the drive to our lodging for the night and next day at the Taipa Beach Resort hotel. According to our apps map it was about 98km (58mi) away, about an hour and fifteen minutes if we zipped straight through. But we drove slowly instead to enjoy the beautiful landscapes of the Northland region and then seascapes along Pekapeka and Mangonui Harbour as we were driving, and stopped often to take photographs. There were also a couple of construction zones where flagmen narrowed the road to one lane and alternated the flow of traffic, which delayed us. Fortunately, the southern hemisphere’s summer sunset was about 8:15 in mid-February as we drove towards the tip of the North Island.

We arrived at the hotel, set across a narrow road from the beach on Doubtless Bay, just in time to enjoy the golden hour as the sun illuminated the waves and cast long shadows of folks walking their dogs across the sand. Silhouetted on the horizon, across Doubtless Bay were the hills of the Karikari Peninsula. The bay owes its unusual name to Captain James Cook, who, in December 1769, was prevented from sailing his ship, the Endeavour, closer to the coast. After observing it from afar, he wrote in his journal “that it was doubtless a bay.”

Only a few strides from the ocean, our beach-facing room was very spacious and comfortable. Relaxing on our patio with a glass of wine that evening, listening to the waves crash against the beach, provided a tranquil ending to our day. The other major draw for staying at Taipa Resort were the good reviews its restaurant received, which made life very easy at the end of two long days. The hotel was a great base for our day trip to Cape Reinga, 126 km (78mi) about two hours away, and Ninety Mile Beach on the Aupouri Peninsula the next day. It’s hard to choose whether the sunset or morning light on the beach was more beautiful, but we enjoyed both during our stay.

After a promising sunrise the weather turned finnicky after we stopped in Awanui to photograph the St Josephs Anglican Māori Church, consecrated in 1887.  It’s a pretty white church with a red roof, and a picturesque cemetery along the road.   Many of the gravestones showed beautiful portraits of the deceased, and shared information about their lives. One we found especially touching was erected for a drowning victim, by his twin brother, mourning his death on what would have been their 50th birthday. The Māori inscription at the end reads, may peace prevail.

The drive to the cape was an endless landscape of very hilly cattle and sheep pastures on both sides of the road that followed the spine of the terrain up the center of the peninsula. Storm clouds raced across the sky with occasional downpours dampening our hope for the day until the sky brightened and sunshine eventually won the day. Though February is typically one of the Northland’s driest months, the narrow Aupouri Peninsula gets buffeted with strong winds blowing in off the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea, and occasionally sees the tail end of subtropical storms.

The Northland area is widely celebrated as New Zealand’s only region with a subtropical climate, earning it the nickname “The Winterless North”. Due to its northerly latitude, low elevation, and surrounding ocean waters, the region enjoys warm, humid summers from December–February averaging between 22°C and 26°C (72°F to 79°F), with mild frost-free winters hovering between 14°C and 17°C (57°F to 63°F). This mild year-round weather is the perfect climate for growing a variety of fruit and berries, and we passed a number of kiwifruit, citrus, and avocado orchards, as well as an olive orchard. Self-serve honesty boxes, “Avo” stands, were ubiquitous along the road. Loving avocados, we bought some at a stand. Disappointingly though, a week later they were still as hard as a cannonball. There were even orchards and farm stands selling corn and watermelons along the way.

The day was brilliant as we neared the cape and we stopped to photograph the graceful curve of the Cape Maria Van Diemen Beach. It was named by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman upon its discovery in 1643 for Maria van Diemen, the wife of Anthony van Diemen, the Governor-General of Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies. It is one of only two geographic features in New Zealand that still retain the original names given by Tasman, alongside the Three Kings Islands, which the Māori call Manawatāwhi.

We thought we had the road to ourselves that mid-week morning and were surprised to find the parking area for the lighthouse packed when we arrived. Fortunately, we only had to wait a few minutes for a spot to open. The views are spectacular, and well worth the twenty-minute windy and winding walk to the Cape Reinga Lighthouse, the north island’s most northern point, and one of New Zealand’s most iconic landmarks, since its construction in 1941. Just as interesting though is the headland, where the turbulent waters of the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea collide just offshore; in Māori tradition it is their most spiritually significant place in New Zealand. The cape takes its name from the Māori phrase Te Rerenga Wairua, which means “the leaping place of the spirits.”

“It is here that after death, all Māori spirits travel up the coast and over the wind-swept vista to an ancient pohutukawa tree clinging to a rock on the headland of Te Rerenga Wairua. They descend into the underworld (reinga) by sliding down the tree’s root into the sea below. The spirits then travel underwater to Manawatāwhi, the Three Kings Islands, where they climb out onto Ohaua, the highest point of the islands and bid their last farewell before returning to the land of their ancestors, Hawaiiki-A-Nui.”

Heading back down Rt1 towards Ninety Mile Beach we stopped at the Giant Sand Dunes in the Te Paki Recreation Reserve. It’s a mammoth stretch of sand that is about two miles long and a mile wide. We followed a narrow trail to a shallow tributary that separated the scrub forest from the dunes, some of which are very steep and 150 m (500 ft) high. We didn’t have time to go any farther, but we did watch several groups with small sleds, which can be rented in the parking area, cross the stream to sandboard down the dunes.

Later we pulled over at Honey Bee Takeaways, a small roadside storefront in a converted shipping container, with shaded picnic tables under a corrugated tin roof. We shared a table with a French couple, and chatted about their three-month long slow-travel Freedom Camping trip around New Zealand. Lunch was delicious with two beef pies of steak and oyster, and mince and cheese, along with fish & chips, coffee and our first taste of “World Famous in New Zealand,” Lemon & Paeroa, widely known as L&P, a refreshing lightly carbonated drink. And yes, they do sell honey.

South of the town of Pukenui we followed the sign for Ninety Mile Beach and turned onto Whalers Road, then Hukatere Road, both lined with tightly spaced tall, trimmed Monterey Cypress, planted as boundary markers and windbreaks to protect crops from soil erosion and animals from the strong gale winds that frequently blow across the peninsula. The road eventually turned to rough gravel as it passed through pine plantations, and our going slowed as the car kicked up stones and dust before we reached the low sand dunes that separated the parking area from the beach. There is a gap between the dunes where folks with 4×4 vehicles can drive onto the beach, as it is officially classified as a public highway, and travel the full length of Ninety Mile Beach, which is actually 88 km (55 mi) long. An inaccurate measurement derived from early settlers on horseback, when it took them three days to ride the length of the beach. They knew a horse could easily cover 30 miles in a day, but they didn’t take into account the horse’s slower pace on the soft sand. The mistake was not realized until the peninsula was surveyed many years later, but the name had stuck.

It’s a beautiful wild windswept beach that is spectacular vastness of sand, sky and sea. If you want to consider staying over, the Hukatere Lodge – Camping Ground, is within walking distance of the beach.

It’s always a balance with trips, whether to do single nights along a route or plan some long transition days so you can have more time in particular spots. The next morning we started the longest transition drive of our eight day road trip around the northern half of the island. Driving 440km (273 mi) south from Taipa to Hamilton, a trip that would take us all day, after one major stop to see the Rainbow Warrior Memorial.

About an hour into our trip we turned off Rt10 near Orotere and followed the road to the Matauri Bay Holiday Park, a stunningly beautiful campground on the bay, where we registered and paid a small parking fee so we were in closer walking distance to the memorial which is located atop a very steep headland, with gorgeous views over the bay.

The site commemorates the sinking of the environmental group Greenpeace’s ship, the Rainbow Warrior, which was bombed by French secret service agents in 1985.  The attack on the ship, which resulted in one death, was designed to thwart the group’s campaign to end nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. The group’s flagship vessel was intended to lead a flotilla of private yachts to Moruroa Atoll, in an attempt to disrupt French military nuclear experiments. The attack rallied environmental organizations around the world and the planned flotilla sailed to the atoll and succeeded in halting nuclear testing for 10 years in the region. France’s final test occurred in January 1996, after which the country signed the protocols of the Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty) and dismantled its testing facilities.

Deemed unseaworthy, the Rainbow warrior was scuttled in 1987 offshore near Motukawanui Island to create an artificial reef in Matauri Bay, and its now a popular spot for fishing and diving. The memorial created with local stone and pieces of the ship by the New Zealand artist, Chris Booth, serves as a memory to the disastrous event that became a defining moment in the New Zealand’s modern history, which fostered a stronger, more independent national voice and self-reliance in foreign policy. One of the things we admire about New Zealanders is their tremendous respect for the environment. It can be seen in so many ways, but most noticeably in the towns and countryside, which were litter free.

Leaving the campground, we stopped at Te Tou O Taki church, which was built in 1896 to commemorate the beach landing in 1814 of a group of Anglican missionaries led by Reverend Marsden to establish New Zealand’s first mission station. The reverend later that year held the island’s first Christmas service on a beach in the Bay of Islands, that was attended by settler families and roughly 300 to 400 Māori, with a local chief translating the service for them. The interior of the church is supposed to contain beautiful Māori carvings representing Māori legends and whale tails which represent the Māori relationship with the sea. Unfortunately, it was not open when we stopped, though there were some interesting headstones in the cemetery.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but just minutes off RT10 near Waipapa was Waianiwaniwa, Rainbow Falls, a spectactular 27 meters (89 feet) tall cascade, that I wish we had stopped at. On the way to or from Cape Reinga, the climb to the Rainbow Warrior Memorial or the short hike to Rainbow Falls would be great additions to an itinerary.

On to Hamilton.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Road Tripping Around New Zealand: Part 1 – Waiheke Island: Oysters, Wine and Seascapes or Learning How to Drive on the Left

| 2suitcasesfor2years

Why do we go where we go? It’s a dilemma for many of us. As nice as the many different regions of Europe are, it was time for something different. We had been avoiding the South Pacific for a long time, but a good deal on airfare to New Zealand that started in our home airport in Georgia was too good to pass up so we packed the neck pillows and booked that excruciatingly long 22-hour flight. In economy, no less – yikes!

Our early morning landing timed perfectly with a beautiful sunrise. We weren’t particularly keen on seeing Auckland, but we needed a low-key destination to recover from the jetlag and learn how to drive on the left-hand side of the road again, without immediately being thrust into city traffic. Somewhere along the line Waiheke Island popped onto our radar, and after a little research we determined that it would be a perfect and interesting spot for us to recoup, before returning to Auckland and starting our nine-day road trip around the North Island.

The Auckland Airport was easily manageable and after a good cup of coffee in the main terminal we proceeded to the Ride Share area which was only a short walk away, to meet our driver we booked through Uber New Zealand for the 30-minute trip from the airport to the ferry terminal. Didi Rider is also a popular rideshare option. If you have a larger group and a little more time there is the Super Shuttle which offers low, fixed rates to points across Auckland.

Landing on a Friday in mid-February, it was still the summer season down under. We weren’t sure how busy the afternoon ferry would be, ahead of the weekend. Fortunately, before leaving the states, we booked the 1:00PM Fullers360 Ferry departing from the Auckland Downtown Ferry Terminal on Quay Street; no last-minute walk-ons were allowed to board, as the time slot was fully booked. Island Direct also offers a ferry service from Pier 13 at the downtown terminal. The 21.5 km (13.4 mi) crossing takes about 40-minutes to reach the Matiatia Wharf landing on Waiheke Island. Folks wanting to take a vehicle to the island need to use the SeaLink car ferry, which departs from Half Moon Bay in East Auckland or the Hamer Street Ferry Terminal in downtown Auckland and docks at Kennedy Point on Waiheke.

The view of Auckland’s skyline was stunning as we headed across the harbor and Hauraki Gulf. Thousands of sailboat masts dotted the seascape and rocked with the waves. Sailing is a popular activity in Auckland and about 18,000 sailboats call the “City of Sails,” their home port. The Hauraki Gulf is a huge body of water with over 50 islands, of which Waiheke is the second largest with a land mass of 9200 very hilly hectares (22,734 acres). Surprisingly, Waiheke is the most populated of the island chain with nearly 9400 permanent residents, some of whom commute daily to Auckland for work, and about an additional 3,400 folks have holiday homes on it. It’s said to be more densely populated than the North and South Islands, but from our experience it felt almost uninhabited, as most of the homes across the island were well hidden in the island’s forested hillsides. And local tourism had pretty much stopped with the reopening of the schools at the end of the summer break several weeks earlier.

Boats anchored in Matiatia Bay bobbed up and down with the small waves that a strong wind had kicked up. Fair weather clouds scurried across the sky. The small harbor was reminiscent of coastal Maine with a red fisherman’s shack along the waterfront. On the wharf we picked up the key to a compact older car from Waiheke Car Rental, a subsidiary of Mint Car Rental, through which we also reserved a vehicle at Auckland Airport for the later part of our trip around the North Island.

Outside the ferry terminal was a Māori influenced sculpture by island artist Chris Bailey called Te Werowero. The statue is intended to act as a guardian of the island and challenges visitors to respect the environment and local way of life, wāhi tapu. It was a bit of a trek through a dusty parking lot to find the car: the air-conditioning worked so we were good to go, but I have to admit that I did open the wrong side of the car and was surprised there was no steering wheel in front of me, and that I’d be manually shifting with my left hand. With our mantra, “stay left!” and a “you’ve got this,” pep talk we set out. Luckily, there was hardly any traffic, and our lodging was only a short, five-minute drive away. We followed Ocean View Road, the main street which passes through Oneroa, Waiheke’s largest village, that has a small cluster of restaurants and shops along the street.

Our base for three nights was the laid back Punga Lodge where we enjoyed the sumptuous breakfasts and afternoon tea prepared by Diane and Rob, on the deck overlooking an old growth grove of native punga ferns filled with lovely song birds. Our hosts are a delightful couple whose company and conversations we enjoyed, and contributed greatly to our wonderful experiences on the island.

After settling in we headed to Big Oneroa Beach for a walk along the fish hook shaped coastline, before strolling through the village to have dinner at Obee’s, which has a nice view of the bay from its terrace. The local Waiheke mussels we ordered were delicious.

Decades ago, Waiheke Island was a counterculture haven with over 100 artists calling the island home. Gentrification soon followed but growth was limited due to the island’s lack of a public water utility infrastructure, which necessitates most of the households, restaurants, and hotels on the island to sustain themselves with roof collected rainwater funneled into large water cisterns. Some of the larger estate homes and farms on the island have chosen to drill expensive wells. During droughts folks can buy water from local tanker trucks that pump water from the island’s deep aquifer, and the local council operates emergency drinking stations where residents can fill 20-litre containers.

Wines from the first vineyard on the island in the early 1980’s were a success and more winemakers followed, drawn to the island’s Mediterranean microclimates and hilly volcanic landscape which affords an array of terroirs. The island is perfect for growing the red grapes for Syrah, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Malbec. Along with plantings of the white grapes for Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Viognier & Sauvignon Blanc.

Today there are over thirty boutique wineries of various sizes with slightly more than 250 hectares (618 acres) of vineyards across the island. Over the years many of the vineyards have produced award winning vintages which have put Waiheke Island on the map as a destination for wine connoisseurs, much like Sonoma Valley in California or the Bordeaux region in France. And on the island, there is small infrastructure in place to support the popular tours of the vineyards for folks visiting the island from the Auckland mainland just for the day that starts and ends at the Matiatia Wharf ferry terminal. For a formal tour with a guide try the Waiheke Island Wine Tour  or for a self-directed tour try Western Explorer: Waiheke Island Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour. The Waiheke Bus Company also offers a local service with five routes that starts from the ferry landing and covers the most populated western side of the island, passing some of the wineries along the way. The Waiheke Wine Growers Association also has a nice interactive map that shows the location of all the wineries across the island.

There are not really any centrally developed shopping areas on the island, aside from the short strip of stores along the road in Oneroa, where multiple restaurants, a small grocer and a liquor store can be found. While the only supermarket is a Woolworths in Ostend, centrally located village on the island. Instead, small cafes and art galleries can be found unexpectedly at random crossroads anywhere across the island.

The next morning, we crossed the causeway over Putaki Bay and stopped to photograph some boats which were beached along the shoreline for repairs as we headed to the Waiheke Ostend Market. It’s the island’s year-round Saturday only farmers market, that is open from 8AM-1PM. Part social club and marketplace it is a spot where folks catch up with friends and island news while relaxing on bean bag cushions as they listen to a local band. It was not a particularly large event, but there were several stalls for coffee, breads, pastries and crepes, along with vendors selling books, ceramics, clothing, jewelry, and antiques. A downpour sent us into Take a Bite, Café & Pastries across the street for another cup of coffee as we waited out the rain. Everything in their display case looked delicious.

Afterwards we set out to explore some of the island’s northern beaches. The island is only 19.3 km (12.0 mi) long and varies in width from a narrow .64km (.4mi) at Oneroa near the western end the island to 9.65 km (6 mi) wide on eastern side of the island or “The Far End,” as islanders like to call it. An aerial view of the island reveals a squiggly 134 km (83 mi) coastline with multiple coves and 25 miles of sandy beaches.

Though it’s a slight exaggeration, there’s not a straight road anywhere on the hilly island, so it took a while to get between points on the serpentine roads. Sudden rain squalls occasionally interrupted our wandering, on an otherwise mostly sunny day. The views of the countryside were beautiful, but often the roads were too narrow to stop safely to take photographs. Wild fig trees full with ripe figs grew along the roadsides.

Our first destination was Sandy Bay Beach, a small swatch of sand surrounded by volcanic rocks, a with boat ramp. Continuing along the Great Barrier Road, we stopped at the top of a steep driveway that afforded a good view of Palm Beach and the north coast receding in the distance. Reaching the beach, we watched two sailors launch their dinghy from the shore and row across the calm water to their anchored yacht. A block back from the beach was the restaurant Arcadia, where we enjoyed a very nice mid-afternoon lunch.

By the time we reached Onetangi Beach later that afternoon the weather had committed itself to be brilliantly sunny. Stretching for about 2 km (1.25 mi) along the coast it’s the island’s longest and widest beach, with shell free sand that is perfect for the annual sandcastle building contest. It’s also a popular beach to arrange a guided horseback ride with the local stable Waiheke Waiheke HorseWorx.

A narrow road with limited parking paralleled the shady shoreline. Across the road from the water were several restaurants with outdoor terraces that were very busy with customers. On a hill high above the beach is the restaurant Casita Miro; it’s a festive place with great tapas style cuisine and nice panoramic views, that was highly recommended. Alas, it was a missed opportunity, which we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to dine at.

Later, back in Oneroa we celebrated Valentine’s Day with a seafood platter and local white wine on the veranda at  The Oyster Inn, which is co-owned by the New Zealand celebrity chef Josh Emett and his wife. Emett notably trained with Gordon Ramsay and was a judge on Master Chef New Zealand. As the restaurant’s name suggests, local Te Matuku oysters raised in the pristine waters of the Te Matuku Marine Reserve at the southeast corner of Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf are a prime feature on the menu. While we dined, we could hear the guitar of a valiant busker performing across the road, keeping his old hippie days alive.

The next morning, after another one of Diane’s fabulous breakfasts we headed out to explore the eastern part of the island, with two wineries – the Jasper Ridge Estate and Man O’ War Vineyards. The later was a recommendation by a friend of ours from the states who had recently returned to the South Island to care for her aging mother, and enjoys vacationing on Waiheke.

It was a gorgeous ride through rolling grasslands dotted with sheep, stream crossings over narrow one lane bridges, tunnels of tall mamaku fern trees, and our first kiwi crossing caution sign, warning of the nocturnal flightless birds that were reintroduced to the island in 2025. We never spotted one. Turning off Orapiu Road onto Cowes Bay Road we were suddenly on a gravel tract.

The island has a total road network of approximately 100, mostly paved miles, however a high percentage of them are compacted gravel, especially on the way to the Stony Batter Historic Reserve on the rugged north-eastern tip of the island. As the road rose the view transformed into a majestic panorama of land, sky and sea. To the east the Coromandel Peninsula, 55 km (34 mi) away, was a barely visible stroke of grey on the horizon.

At the entrance to the Jasper Ridge Winery the views of the seascape were extraordinary. Owned and operated by David Bishop and Derek Ireland, Jasper Ridge is one of Waiheke’s smallest wineries, with 4000 Syrah vines planted on one hectare (2.5 acres), where they craft very small, limited-edition wines. But they have earned a lot of prestige, having won awards with their first vintage in 2023 for their Single Vineyard Syrah, and 2025 for their Rosé and Pinot Gris. A rain shower forced us to take shelter briefly under the umbrellaed picnic tables overlooking the rows of grapevines covered with netting to keep the birds away from the grapes almost ready to be picked later that week.

Continuing on the road, we passed through a forest of tall Kauri trees, then dipped into a dry wash strewn with boulders and timbers carried down the steep hillside in a recent flashflood. Reaching the Man O’ War Vineyards, the road leveled out and the view opened to the beach along  Man O’ War Bay with folks swimming, and boaters motoring small dinghies ashore to visit the winery. The winery really is a destination venue, offering wine tours, fine and casual dining, and a kid’s playground. It even has a small white chapel for weddings as well as an adventure sports center that offers ziplining through the forested hillside above the winery, and into the forever happily after for the newlyweds. It’s a big, popular fun spot to visit, and the setting on the bay was quite pretty.

The tall straight Kauri trees, which can live for thousands of years, were noted for the strength of their wood in colony’s early shipping journals, and by the early 1800s Waiheke’s hillsides were being deforested and the wood exported to England to be used as masts for the Royal Navy’s “Man O’ War” warships, which is how the name Man O’ War was bestowed upon the bay. A favorite legend suggests that the masts of Lord Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, were made from kauri trees taken from hills of Waiheke Island.

Continuing on we headed to the Stony Batter Historic Reserve. It was once a World War II coastal defense installation to protect Auckland from potential Japanese naval attacks, and features three massive concrete gun emplacements. There was also an interesting boulder field we hoped to walk through. But we didn’t realize before hand that the parking was pretty far away as the access road to the site was gated, and required a longer walk and more time than we wanted to commit to. But there was one hillside next to the road that gave a feeling for what the larger site would have looked like.

Nevertheless, the views of vineyards and sheep-covered hills surrounding us were beautiful as we coursed back towards Oneroa with a plume of dust trailing behind us as we drove down Man O’ War Bay Road. Cresting a hill, we stopped at a lone bench along the road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. But it did have a distant view of Cactus Bay Beach, a remote curve of sand only accessible by boat or kayak, that many “Waihekeans consider the perfect beach and, with nearby Garden Cove, a romantic place for picnicking.” Unfortunately, its land access has been blocked off by a private landowner. All the more to make it a special place, that requires more effort, to visit.

Our scenic drive that day reconfirmed our expectations of what lay ahead for the next part of our journey – that we were truly in an exceptionally beautiful part of the world. The next morning, we headed back to Auckland Airport for a different rental car to start our nine-day road trip to Cape Reinga Lighthouse, the farthest point north on the mainland, Hamilton, and the Coromandel Peninsula before flying south to Wellington.

Though we only drove 110 km (68mi) over the weekend, Waiheke Island was the most gorgeous place to learn how to drive on the left.

Stay left!

Till next time,

Craig and Donna

Gran Canaria: Sunny, Volcanic & Diverse

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The cone-shaped summit of Mount Teide poked through hazy blue clouds. At 3,715m (12,000ft), it is Spain’s highest mountain, it’s not on the Iberian Peninsula, but on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. For centuries, the iconic landmark was the first sight of land for sailors returning from the newly discovered Americas.  Now tourists get the pleasure of seeing this majestic peak after flying 2,170 km (1,350 mi) south over the Atlantic Ocean from Barcelona to Gran Canaria Island, 280 kilometers (175 mi) off the coast of southern Morocco.  

Our desire to flee the hot and humid weather of the southern United States, which usually lasts until beginning of December, coupled with a reasonable airfare, was the catalyst for the trip. And escape we did, initially to Andorra, that beautiful small, isolated microstate in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Our day had started hours earlier in the chilly mountain predawn as we fled the cold Andorran mountains, that the week before received an early November covering of snow, to Gran Canaria. The Canary Islands’ third largest landmass in the eight-island archipelago, is often referred to as the “land of eternal Spring.”

Driving south along the GC-1 from the airport toward Maspalomas, the island’s Montañas Sagradas mountain range dominated the inland view. Though Pico de las Nieves, the tallest peak in the range, is only half the height of Mount Teide, the mountain range’s sheer austere ruggedness was beautiful, and so close.

Our destination for nine days: Taurito, on the island’s southwest coast, one town over from Puerto de Mogán, and Club Cala Blanca,  a stunning apartment-style hillside resort, with views of the ocean and a black sand beach, folks in the pool, and not a snowball in sight. This would be a very liberal interpretation of a staycation for us, something unheard of until now in our travel vocabulary.  Usually, our lengthiest stay in any one place is four days, but we used this opportunity to also get some dental work done while enjoying a region blessed with over 320 sunny days per year, and weeks of cloudless skies. The island chain’s perfect year-round weather is the consequence of the aptly named Canary Current bringing cooler water from the North Atlantic Ocean south around the islands. This moderates the hot winds, known as the Calima, that blow west from the Saharah Desert. This perfect meteorological balance provides Gran Canaria spring-like conditions year-round, while refreshing trade winds that blow storms in from the Atlantic Ocean get blocked by the mountains and keep the northern part of the island wetter and greener with forests, than the southern part of the island.

With favorable weather year-round, Gran Canaria’s high seasons are geared to Northern Europe’s holiday and school vacation schedules, rather than seasonal weather changes. The island’s shoulder seasons run in the Spring from March to May and in Autumnfrom September to November. We were delighted there were fewer tourists about during our visit, as it made finding parking much easier.  The only drawback was that some of the restaurants were only open on weekends.

Ironically, on our first full day on the island we headed off early to see the dentists at the Clinica Margarita in Maspalomas, where, over the course of three visits during our stay on the island we had an extraction, fillings, and a crown replacement. We gave ourselves enough time that morning to enjoy part of the coastal road, Carr. Mogán, from Taurito to the Playa de Amadores in Puerto Rico. The Playa de Amadores was a beautiful white sand, crescent moon shaped beach that looked so inviting, with plenty of folks enjoying the sea temperatures that still averaged 22C (71.5f) in mid-November.

Heading to the GC-1 highway we passed the Anfi Tauro Golf, a strikingly lush green 18-hole golf course, surrounded by arid hills void of vegetation. It’s one of eight golf courses found across the island, but their presence is often protested by environmental groups because of the amount of irrigation water pulled from the local aquifers to keep the fairways verdant, on an island with limited water resources. The golf industry defends itself by noting that approximately 80% of courses in the Canary Islands use treated, reclaimed wastewater. Still environmentalists argue that producing this reclaimed water is energy-intensive and a better use would be to divert the water for agricultural use.

We embrace dental tourism because visiting the dentist in the United States is outrageously expensive, with dentists wanting to have their patients leave their offices with a set of Hollywood choppers, and the corresponding bill. I’ve often felt that when dentists in the states looked at my teeth, they calculated that they could retire early if I got all the procedures they suggested. We found Clinica Margarita online and were impressed from the start by the initial emails from Rebecca, the patient care specialist, to the services provided to us by Dr. Álvaro Martín Mingorance and Dr. Vibeke Lorentsen, in their state-of-the-art clinic. They have a very professional team, and the cost was much less expensive than having the dentistry done in the United States.

Rebecca was also quite nice in offering tips on local restaurants to try. The first, the Bar Aridañy Montaña Blanca, was right around the corner. It was a small neighborhood restaurant that was bustling with activity at lunchtime, with folks enjoying their meals. The décor was simple, but the waitress was welcoming, the atmosphere perfect, and our tender fried calamari paired with the locally brewed Tropical beer, fabulous!

Afterwards, we headed to the promenade that overlooks the Dunas de Maspalomas, across town, several miles away on the coast. Walking down Av. de Tirajana, we noticed that news crews were setting up to cover an event, that we later learned was the Gay Pride Walk, part of weeklong activities of Winter Pride Maspalomas. It’s a yearly event and one of the major LGBTQ+ autumn festivals on the European calendar.

The dunes, with their origin in the Ice Age, are an amazing vast track of ever shifting sands, shaped by the trade winds, that cover over 404 hectares (1,000-acres), and separate the town from the sea. It was a photographer’s paradise with unlimited compositions. You can even plan your own Laurence of Arabia experience riding camels across the dunes with Camello Safari Duna Oasis.

Staying home the next day, we lounged on our balcony, watching cyclists and rollerskiers pump up the long incline of the coastal road, before driving down into Taurito for lunch.  Four large tourist hotels with clubs and a casino, along with the massive Lago Taurito Water Park,dominate the approach to the beach. Street parking was limited even in the quieter November shoulder season, though the waterpark was still open this time of year, and there was only a handful of tourists enjoying the amenities all to themselves. It looked like a wonderful place for families with children to spend an activity-filled day.

At the head of the beach was a short promenade lined with a few shops and restaurants that only had outdoor seating. We chose one with the most diners, always a good sign when in doubt. The black sand beach under towering cliffs was very beautiful.

From our balcony the next morning we watched the sunrise cast the morning clouds a pastel pink against the soft blue sky. On the calm sea a flock of gulls trailed the wake of a fishing trawler heading back to Puerto de Mogán to offload its catch.

We are not really inclined to sit still for too long, so that Sunday we headed into the mountains to browse the weekly Mercadillo de Teror, 87km (54mi) away on the northern part of the island, slightly over an hour drive. The weather along the coast was very pleasant as we followed the GC-1 past the cosmopolitan city of Las Palmas. With a population of approximately 384,000, it is the largest city in the Canary Islands and is the co-capital (along with Santa Cruz de Tenerife) of the autonomous Spanish archipelago. Las Palmas’ importance dates back centuries to when its harbor, the Puerto de La Luz, was a vital resupply point for maritime expeditions during Spain’s Age of Discovery in late 15th to 17th centuries. Over the course of hundreds of years, the port has become an important shipping hub in the global economy, and today connects the island to 510 ports in 135 countries. This global connectivity has contributed to making modern Las Palmas a vibrant, energetic city with a diverse multicultural population that’s made up of folks from Spain’s former colonies across the globe, northern European expats, and long-established Asian merchants. The sailors, traders, and vacationers that came liked the weather, and stayed if they could. We originally made plans to stay in Las Palmas; however, this idea changed when we decided to devote more days to getting our dental work done. Disappointingly, we did not have time to visit the city properly. But what we’ve heard and read about the city sounds intriguing, and it’s just the right excuse to return to Gran Canaria one day.

The GC-1 is an excellent 4-lane highway that connects towns along the coast, but once we turned off it to head into the island’s mountainous interior our journey slowed on the narrow serpentine roads, with limited opportunities for passing, and we crawled at a snail’s pace when stuck behind a campervan or worse, a pack of cyclist.

Arriving to Teror mid-morning, we were fortunate to find one of the last parking spaces in a grassy lot several blocks downhill from Calle Real de la Plaza. Calle Real is the main lane through the town’s historic center and is lined with traditional brightly colored Canarian homes, that have carved wooden balconies over the street. The calle ends at the plaza around the 18thcentury Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pino, which was built on the site where tradition holds the Virgin Mary appeared in 1481 to a group of shepherds in a pine grove. The town quickly became an important religious site, with an Episcopal Palace, and the Cistercian Monastery to support pilgrimage activities. The octagonal yellow tower on the corner of the basilica represents the architectural style of an earlier church that was on the site.

Across from the church at the far end of Calle de la Diputación, is a stepped cascading waterfall that’s lined with parallel stairways that connect the lower and upper historic quarters of the town. Most importantly they lead to the Cistercian Monastery, where the sequestered nuns sell convent-made truchas de batata (sweet potato pastries), bollos de anís (anise rolls), mazapanes (marzipan), and mantecados (shortbread) through a torno, a revolving wooden turntable built into a wall cabinet, with doors on both sides to keep the nuns hidden from view.

The street market totally encircled the church and was packed with shoppers strolling among cheese makers, food stalls, craft stands, and clothes racks. Cheese is our weakness, and being able to sample a variety of the artisanal cheeses Gran Canaria is famous for landed us in queso heaven. So interesting are the cheeses made on Gran Canaria there’s even an official Cheese Trail that folks can follow, to eleven cheesemakers located in three regions across the island. These artisans produce cheeses from the raw milk of goats and sheep. And to help folks pair a locally vinted wine with the cheeses, there’s an official Gran Canaria Wine Route, theRuta Del Vino de Gran Canaria, that explores the different terroirs of eleven vineyards hidden in the rugged volcanic landscape of the mountains across the wetter northern part of the island. Here the winemakers grow around forty different varieties of grapes, that have adapted well to the island’s 14 distinct microclimates. Twenty-five are local varietals such as the red grapes Listán Negro, Tintilla, Malvasía Rosada, and the white grapes Marmajuelo, and Malvasía Volcánica whose purity and longevity are unique in the world and recognized under the DO Gran Canaria designation. We could have bought a suitcase full of cheese, but we restrained ourselves and only bought a wedge each of goat and sheep cheese, and a bottle of red wine.

Photographs from official Gran Canaria Wine Route, and the Ruta Del Vino de Gran Canaria, courtesy of The Gran Canaria Tourist Board.

By the time we left Teror the sunny morning had vanished as we followed a road that zigged and zagged as we drove higher and farther into the mountains. We had originally planned to go to the mirador atop Pico de las Nieves, but the weather was fickle and changed with each curve around the mountainside. Altering our plans, we continued on to Artenara, an hour’s drive still deeper into the mountains, on a route that took us through the towns of Valleseco, and Lanzarote. Along the way we noticed many cars parked precariously along the side of the narrow road as it passed through woodlands. These cars, it turned out, belonged to families that were foraging in the forests for wild mushrooms and fallen chestnuts; it’s a traditional activity that has been passed down through Canarian generations for centuries. In one town the sale of a fine stallion was being finalized with a test saunter along the side of road.  Unfortunately, that afternoon the clouds were low in the sky, and the views from the miradors we stopped at, while interesting, vanished into the misty horizon. We could only speculate how spectacular the panoramas would be on a sunny day.

Reaching the outskirts of Artenara, the highest village on Gran Canaria at 1,270m (4,170ft) above sea level, we stopped at Mirador De La Atalaya which had a nice view of the old colonial town’s church framed with trees against a mountainous background.

As we crossed the town square a sudden down pour sent us scurrying into the Iglesia de San Matías, where the warm light of the cathedral’s stained-glass window helped take the mountain chill off the day. Initially the temple was a small hermitage built in 1630, but after going through a long period of deterioration and ruin, the current three-nave temple was built in 1870, with the construction of the towers being completed in the mid-twentieth century. The beautiful murals in the church are the last works of the painter José Arencibia Gil, a Gran Canarian who, sadly, died before finishing them.

Up from the church was the Mirador de Unamuno that overlooked the deep volcanic Caldera de Tejeda, a massive basin stretching 28km by 18km (17mi by 11mi), that’s ringed with rugged peaks, steep gulleys, and several of the island’s iconic sacred rock formations, including Bentayga and Nublo Rocks. The mirador is named after the Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno (1863-1936), who described the panorama as a “petrified storm of fire and lava”. If only the day had been sunny for us! There were, hopefully, signs the storm would clear.

Volcanic eruptions that started 10 million years ago and lasted to 20BC created the island’s dramatic peak, ridges and ravines.  Before the Spanish arrived in the 1400s the Montañas Sagradas were home to the cave dwelling indigenous Guanches, a Berber people, whose priests conducted seasonal solstice ceremonies in the majestic mountains. The mountains’ Spanish name refers to the importance of the snowcapped peaks as a life source of water on the arid island. This snowy resource was critically important to the island’s early settlers, who shoveled winter snowfall into pits and dams called neveras, an early island infrastructure project that started in 1694 by order of the Catholic Church. These small reservoirs were built on the northern, shady sides of the steep ravines that never got sunshine so the collected snow would melt slowly and be used for drinking and watering crops. “The snow was collected by laborers using wooden shovels and wicker baskets, making real mountains of snow. It was then put into rectangular boxes of wood or cork, stacked in rows in the neveras, then covered with layers of straw.” In Las Palmas ice was delivered in panniers wrapped in straw and covered with blankets, from the Pico de las Nieves snow pit by horseback, a six hour journey across the rugged mountains. The ice was used to lower the patient’s temperatures during epidemics of yellow fever and cholera, as well as “chill the beverages of the upper class.” The need to carry ice down from the mountains lasted until in the early 20th century, when electrical refrigerators were brought to the island.

A short distance from the mirador was the Ethnographic Museum of the “Cave Houses” of Artenara, a cluster of three cave dwellings, that had their origin with the pre-Hispanic troglodytes that originally lived in the rough caves dug into the volcanic rock mountains. Over the centuries the caves were improved, and were occupied until the early 1990s, when they were bought by the town council to become a museum. All things considered these modern caves looked pretty comfortable, if you could ignore the lack of indoor plumbing. Nearer to Las Palmas there are several other troglodyte sites across the island, including Barranco de Guayadeque, Quatro Puertas, and Poblado de Acusa Seca, and Cuevas del Rey, all places to consider visiting if you’re into cave dwellings. Afterwards, we stopped next to the church for lunch at Arte-Gaia Restaurante BioTasca, a small rustic tavern with only a handful of inside tables, but on sunny days their seating spills out onto the plaza. They had a wonderful menu featuring local Canarian dishes and wines.

Past Artenara we started our loop back to the coast on GC-60 which took us by Tejeda, a whitewashed hamlet, that’s considered the prettiest village on Gran Canaria. It’s set dramatically near the towering pinnacle of Roque Bentayga, a 1,404-meter-high volcanic rock formation, that served as a sacred sacrificial site for the island’s ancient Guanche people.

Finally, the clouds broke during our descent along a never-ending set of switch-back curves lined with soaring rockfaces on one side and plunging gorges on the other. The afternoon now offered the first views of how dramatic this violently hewed mountainscape actually was, after spending the earlier part of the day seeing its features softened in clouded light. There were not nearly enough miradors to stop at to soak in the tremendous views that transfixed us.

Rebecca’s tips for where the locals go took us past the luxury resort Lopesan Villa del Conde, that was purposely built to resemble a traditional Canarian village, complete with a façade of a church with belltowers.  Farther on, the Meloneras Golf Club beautifully overlooked the ocean and the wide Playa de las Meloneras beach. Before we reached the El Senador Restaurant & Beach House on west end of the Dunas de Maspalomas promenade, near the Faro de Maspalomas lighthouse. Mid-afternoon tables with views of the beach were open, and we spent a delightful time just sipping our drinks and people watching.

We ended our day with an early dinner at La Tapita Los Jose’s, an upscale neighborhood tapas bar far from the Meloneras beach areas. The food and local wine were very good, the vibe relaxing, another good recommendation.

On the opposite hillside across from our hotel, we could see pedestrians walking along a road that curved up the hill, but we never saw a car. This was part of coastal road (GC-500), a quick route with wonderful views, that used to connect folks in Taurito to Puerto de Mogán, until 2017 when several dangerous rockfalls from the towering coastal cliffs above the road forced the local authorities to block the road permanently with a substantial wall that folks can walk to, but can’t climb over. Recently funds have been approved to excavate a tunnel between the two towns to speed transit.

Deciding to have lunch in Puerto de Mogán we needed to get on the GC-1 for a convoluted route that required us to drive east for several miles before doing an U-turn, and then driving west again past Taurito to the exit for Puerto de Mogán. A trip of twenty minutes that will be reduced to seven with the new tunnel.

Puerto de Mogán started as a poor fishing village, where men pushed their small boats into the surf from a rocky shoreline, until a major redevelopment project in the 1980s constructed new apartment blocks designed to look authentically old, the breakwater, and a marina with over 200 berths.

New hotels and the half-moon shaped Playa de Mogán, constructed with sand imported from the Sahara Desert, soon followed. Today Puerto de Mogán, with its whitewashed homes and lanes shrouded with blossoming bougainvillea, is considered Gran Canaria’s prettiest coastal village. Some folks call the town with its small bridges over several narrow canals, “Canaria’s little Venice,” but it’s more a phrase coined by an over-zealous travel agent, than based on reality. But still, we thoroughly enjoyed wandering along the harbor, and through narrow hillside alleys of the historic quarter to the Mirador de Puerto de Mogán for a fantastic view out over the town and sea. It would be a great spot to see the sunrise.

On Fridays the town hosts Gran Canaria’s largest weekly market, with roughly 250 vendors that sprawl out across the town to the marina, and along the harbor wall. Parking is challenging in the small town, but ferry services to Puerto de Mogán from the coastal towns Arguineguín, Anfi del Mar, and Puerto Rico, are a stress-free option that many tourists utilize.  

On the last day before leaving Gran Canaria we headed to the Mirador del Balcón, on the island’s western coast, 54km (34mi) away. An hour’s drive without stopping, but what is a day without a journey that’s just as nice as the destination? Our route took us west to the end of the GC-1 then north on the GC-200 through a wide dry valley covered with endemic Cardonal cacti and tabaibales shrubs, native plants that tolerate the semi-arid environment well. Clusters of yellow-trumpeted, wild Esperanza also dotted the landscape. Native to the Americas, it found its way to Gran Canaria centuries ago and is now naturalized across the island.

In Mogan, the Molino Quemado, Burnt Mill, a 19th century windmill towered above the road. There used to be nearly 100 windmills across the island that ground toasted grain into “gofio.” Often called the Canary Island’s “superfood,” gofio is a whole-grain, stone-ground product, with a nutty flavor, that retains the nutrients of the entire kernel: it is served like mashed potatoes, in soups as a thickener, or kneaded with honey and nuts into Pella, round dough balls. The mill is used now as a heritage museum, and has a nice café, surrounded by a quirky garden filled with Alice in Wonderland-sized everyday items.

As we drove higher into the mountains a scene with a classic farm windmill reminded us of the American Southwest, and views down the steep ravines revealed oases of greenery, where farms straddled the streambeds.

Farther along intriguing stratum of rainbow-colored rock at the Los Azulejos de Veneguera Nature Preserve called for further investigation and we scrambled a short way up a gully. The colors of the rock were the result of volcanic action millions of years ago when supercharged hot water and gases permeated and altered the minerals within the rocks.

Stopping at the Mirador de San Nicolás provided us with a sweeping view of the La Aldea Valley all the way down to Los Caserones and the sea. Descending into the valley revealed its lower slopes were covered with white-tarped greenhouses. Farmers here mostly grow tomatoes in the rich volcanic soil, but cucumbers, bananas, zucchinis, and tropical fruits are also grown in the fertile valley.

Parking was limited at the Mirador del Balcón, but we only had to wait a few minutes before a space opened up. The dramatic overlook is cantilevered out from the cliff face on a section of the coast with towering cliffs, and spiking peaks nicknamed the “Dragon’s Tail.” If you look over the glass railing, waves crashing against the rocks are a dizzying 350m (1148.29ft) straight down. The views up and down the coast were breathtaking. It was a good way to end our time on this wonderfully engaging island.

In hindsight we should have stayed on the island for a few more days, using Las Palmas as a base to explore the northern inland region and coast.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Road Tripping Through Andorra: Fall Foliage, Snowy Mountains, Shopping and a Spa

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Ever since grade school, where my history teacher displayed a large rollup chart of Europe unfurled in front of the classroom, I’ve always had an interest in maps. They were proof that a world existed beyond my town. Amid that patchwork of countries were small swatches of color that looked unintentional, like drops of paint that hadn’t been touched up and absorbed into the colors around them. These oddities, it turned out, were Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Andorra, the largest splotch of all. They were small medieval-era feudal states that kept their independence through alliances, and existed as protectorates or as dependent territories for a while. Over time, treasuring their independence, they have chosen to remain independent microstates.

That map and watching the television reruns of the pioneering broadcast journalist and explorer Lowell Thomas’s High Adventure program on the weekends sparked within me a curiosity about the world that, thankfully, has never faded.

“You’re going where?” our friends asked. “Andorra. It’s a small, beautiful country in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France.” “We’ve never heard of it!” A fact I imagine Pliny the Elder also expressed with “where in Hades is Andorra?” and could explain why, even though the area of Andorra had Roman military posts since the 2nd century  BC to thwart hostile Northern tribes from crossing the Pyrenees, it was not included in his writings about the Iberian Peninsula in his voluminous Natural History books.

After landing in Barcelona and renting a car, we followed route C-16 north and headed to Llívia, another oddity on the map. It’s a Spanish exclave in the Pyrenees, near Andorra, that is totally surrounded by France, the result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, that ended the 24-year Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659). In the treaty, Spain ceded 33 villages in northern Catalonia to France, establishing the Pyrenees Mountain Range as the natural border between the two countries. Llívia, however, was officially granted the status of a town back in 1528 by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (aka Carlos I of Spain). With this loophole in the treaty, Llívia was excluded from the treaty’s transfer clause and became a unique Spanish exclave surrounded by France, only 168km (104mi), a 2.5-hour drive from Barcelona.

In early November our ride through the countryside was still graced with autumn colors. Our route plateaued onto the Cerdanya, a wide fertile plain surrounded by mountains that separate Andorra from Llívia, and we got our first glimpse of peaks covered with a light dusting of early snow. It was overcast and colder than we expected. It rained occasionally. The sun came out brilliantly, only to disappear behind storm clouds. It was that type of day.

It was once a small village until the Romans colonized the area in the 1st century BC and named it Llívia of in honor of Livia Drusilla, the influential wife of Emperor Augustus. The outpost’s importance as an administrative and commercial center on the Pyrenees frontier grew when gold was discovered in the Cerdanya valley. On the outskirts of the town, archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a substantial Roman forum and temple. Unfortunately, time restraints prevented us from climbing to the ruins of the Castell de Llivia, for a panoramic view of the town. The hilltop has been fortified since antiquity. The last castle stood until the French King Louis XI ordered it destroyed in 1479. We consoled ourselves with a hot lunch, and a glass of vermouth, interestingly garnished with olives, by a fireplace at El Jardi, a small tavern.

The shortest route into Andorra, without tolls, was along the N-260 which would have brought us into Andorra through its southern border with Spain and then straight up the Gran Valira valley to Andorra la Vella, the capital and the country’s largest city. But we chose a slightly longer route deeper into France along the N-20 where we hoped to cross the steep mountains along the N-22 and Andorra’s CG-2 into the northern part of the country, but our plans required a U-turn when we reached the exit, and found the road closed with traffic barricades due to a landslide that blocked the route further along in the mountains – a  traffic condition that our map app did not show.

We had hoped to reach our hotel in Andorra la Vella before sunset, but our plans were now akilter and we needed to backtrack to the intersection of N-20 in Ur, France, where a whimsical sculpture of a winged rhinoceros stood atop a small hillock in front of a Carrefour supermarket. Fortunately, the morning’s clouds had given way to a glorious sunny afternoon. Just south of Andorra’s border was La Seu d’Urgell, Spain. Crowned by its hilltop cathedral, the city looked intriguing. Little did we know at the time that the city and its church were an integral part of Andorra’s history.

Surrounded by steep mountains, darkness descends early in the Gran Valira valley that shelters Andorra la Vella. The city, Europe’s highest capital at 1,023m (3,356 ft), straddles the Gran Valira River, and is a convoluted zig zag of one-way streets that hug the mountainside, but we found our hotel, the NH Andorra La Vella, relatively easily. They had a limited number of paid parking spaces, which we found very handy. After dropping our bags in the room, we went out to explore the city that was bustling with nighttime shoppers. Shopping seemed to be the national sport for visiting couples, if the number of folks carrying shopping bags on the street is any measure.

The hotel was conveniently located near Salvador Dali’s the La Noblesse du Temps, The Nobility of Time, a surrealistic sculpture of a melting clock draped over a gnarled tree, that is meant to be interpreted as a “commentary on the fluidity of time, and time’s inescapable mastery over humanity.” The artwork stands in a small plaza at the foot of Avinguda Meritxell, the shopping mile, a pedestrian-only gauntlet of upscale duty-free shopping that starts in the capital and continues into the neighboring town of Escaldes-Engordany.

We followed the flow and window-shopped. The aroma of roasting chestnuts and sweet potatoes filled the air as we wandered. Chestnuts yes, but we hadn’t seen sweet potatoes being offered as street food before during our travels in Spain and Portugal. Their traditional popularity is tied to the autumn Catalan festival of La Castanyada, which is celebrated around All Saints’ Day in early November, when the nutrient-dense tuber was roasted to sustain families through long night vigils and religious services honoring the dead.

With a population of 27,000 in the capital, and 84,000 folks and over 1200 shops countrywide, Andorra has approximately one store for every 70 residents, one of the highest store-to-citizen ratios in the world. The duty-free shopping concept was developed in the 1950s to help Andorra’s burgeoning tourist industry that centered around skiing. This didn’t really take-off until car ownership exploded across France and Spain and folks made road trips into the country to stock up on inexpensive alcohol, cigarettes and luxury goods that were heavily taxed in their countries.

In early November, sunrise was around 07:45 AM, but with Andorra la Vella being located in a narrow valley surrounded by steep mountains, the first rays of sunlight didn’t brighten our hotel room until 10:30 AM.

We had breakfast at Santagloria Coffee & Bakery, where we indulged in wonderful pistachio cream filled croissants; it was extremely budget friendly. We then set out on a pathway along the Gran Valira River to explore the city. We followed it through riverside parks and plazas until we found a sculpture of a colorful large espresso moka pot. You have to love a country like this that embraces whimsical art.

We then circled back and came across an interesting sculpture installation in Plaça Lídia Armengol called the Seven Poets. The artwork created by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, consists of seven pale yellow figures, sitting cross-legged on tall, slender poles. The meditative figures represent the unity of Andorra’s seven parishes and are appropriately installed in front of the country’s parliament.

Up a steep sidewalk from there was Plaça del Poble, a massive rooftop plaza built atop a architectural complex that houses government offices, and a multi-level public parking garage. It was a popular place for families to bring their young children with small bikes to pedal around safely. It also had a nice alternative view of the Seven Poets and access across the Rambla Molines bridge to the 11th century. St Esteve of Andorra Church.

Afterwards we looped back down Av. Meritxell, and wandered through the large multi-level Pyrénées Andorra department store. Offering the widest selection of merchandise under one roof, along with a gourmet supermarket on the top floor, it is considered the flagship shopping destination in Andorra.

Later we continued past Dali’s melting clock, and the often-photographed Pont Andorra la Vella bridge, and a modern sculpture centered in a roundabout on the way to the Caldea Spa.

The unique piece of contemporary art is called the Calidea i la Dama del Gel. It’s a collaborative work by the Andorran sculptor Ángel Calvente Gutierrez whose Calidea figure was inspired by myths and legends of water. While the Dama de gel, the Ice Lady, created the Catalan artist Philippe Lavaill depicts a mythological sylph on a horse.

Housed in a slender eighteen story, 80m (262ft) tall glass pyramid finished in 1994, the Caldea Spa is one of Andorra’s most notable landmarks, and the tallest building in the country.

As we neared the tower a dramatic glass walled swimming pool cantilevered out from the building’s side, over the Valira d’Orient River. Funnily, only the swimmers’ bobbing legs as they stood along the glass wall were visible from our perspective on the street. Across the street we glimpsed, through a window, a quartet performing for the residents of a senior’s home. We didn’t want to participate in any spa activities, but we did have lunch in their restaurant that overlooked the lush inviting pool.

Afterward, as we returned to the hotel, we walked around a sports complex where other retirees were enjoying tennis lessons on a beautiful sunny autumn day. For dinner that evening we joined the long queue, a few doors down from our hotel, in front of the Crepería de la Rotonda, a hole-in-the-wall takeaway window. It is popular for its delicious and inexpensive crepes, one of the best values in Andorra, and for the uniquely entertaining customer service style of the owner, who has an Instagram account with 140,000 followers. Think Seinfeld’s soup Nazi character.

Visigoths controlled the area of Andorra after Rome fell in the 2nd century AD, a period in which Christianity continued to spread across the peninsula. Later it was under the control of the Kingdom of Toledo, then the Catalan Diocese of Urgell. In the 700s Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco and conquered a significant part of the Iberian Peninsula. North across the Pyrenees Mountains, Charlemagne, Charles the Great, ruled as King of the Franks, and united most of western Europe into the Carolingian Empire.

Tradition believes Charlemagne granted a charter to the Andorran people as reward for fighting with his troops against the Moors near what is now Cerdanya, the wide fertile plain surrounded by mountains just to the east of Andorra in modern-day Spain. With this charter the area of Andorra fell under the rule of the Catalonian Counts of Urgell, and became a territory in the Frankish Marca Hispanica, a military buffer zone established after the failed Moor invasion of France. Andorra was one of twelve Marca Hispanicas created in the Pyrennes Mountains by Charlemagne, but the only one that wasn’t eventually absorbed into France or Spain but survived as an independent country through crafty political machinations. In 988 the Counts of Urgell traded their Andorra territory to the Bishops of Urgell for land in Cerdanya. All was peaceful for 100 years until the Counts wanted to reclaim the territory. Seeking to avoid a war with the Counts, the Bishop of Urgell asked the Lord of Caboet for protection, to which he agreed in return for co-sovereignty of Andorra in 1095, establishing the country as a feudal protectorate with the signing of two treaties called Pareatges. Through various Royal marriages over the centuries this side of the co-sovereignty and feudal protectorate survived various wars, revolutions, and changes in government and is now held by the current President of France. The co-sovereign of Andorra has been a ceremonial title since 1993 when the country’s first democratic constitution was ratified.

Andorra pretty much survived through the centuries as an isolated, subsistence farming community by growing grain crops (only 2% of the mountainous terrain is arable), trading wool or cheese with nearby Catalan towns, and smuggling goods between Spain and France. Many of those ancient smuggling routes through the mountains have now been mapped and incorporated into a 275 km (170 mi) long network of popular hiking trails, that draws tourists to Andorra in the summer. These trails were especially useful during WW2 when they were used to smuggle weapons to the French resistance, and help downed Allied airmen and Jewish refugees escape Nazi-occupied Vichy France into neutral Spain.

During the early 1930s Andorra’s population was estimated to be under 10,000 as waves of emigrants fled the country to pursue better opportunities abroad. This population crisis threatened the existence of the country. It was a pivotal decade for the country, but things improved substantially when the FHASA (Forces Hidroelèctriques d’Andorra) hydroelectric plant project was conceived as a catalyst for modernizing the country and spurring Andorra’s economic growth. It was a massive infrastructure project that electrified the country both physically and metaphorically. The surplus power was exported via high-voltage lines to Spain and France, establishing a crucial, steady stream of foreign currency revenue for the tiny Andorran economy. The dam’s construction also brought the first paved roads to a country that until then relied solely on walking and pack animals to navigate the steep terrain, providing a vital connection for the isolated country that’s too mountainous for an airport or train connections to the outside world. Workers that came from Spain and France brought new ideas with them, which resulted in the Revolution of 1933, led by the Young Andorrans, a trade union that called for political reforms and the right to vote for all Andorrans. The country’s new banking sector grew with this influx of wage earners and also benefited substantially from the surge of refugees, from both sides of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, that sought shelter in the country. The unregulated banking sector grew for decades and was recognized as tax haven for wealthy individuals to hide accounts. This continued until 2015 when a large Andorran bank was accused of being used primarily for money laundering, and international pressure forced immediate reforms and regulations to the country’s financial institutions.

The country’s new roads ended the centuries of isolation and now allowed it to promote itself as a unique tourist destination in the Pyrenees Mountains that offered duty-free shopping, as well as skiing. And a flourishing counter-culture that allowed access to cinematic films and literature banned in Spain during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, only a short drive away from Barcelona and Madrid. Andorra’s first ski resort, the Pas de la Casa–Grau Roig, opened in 1957. Today there are four modern ski resorts in the country with over 303km (187mi) of slopes, that can be reached by ski lifts that can swiftly transport up to 156,000 skiers per hour to their summits.

Surprisingly, Andorra only has 270km (167mi) of road of which 198km (123mi) are paved, and 8.2km (5mi) of tunnels to connect its communities in the steep mountain valleys. This includes the Envalira Tunnel which connects northern Andorra to France. With an elevation of 2,052m (6,732 feet) it is the highest toll tunnel in Europe.

During our short time in Andorra we tried our best to see as much of the country as possible. For our first day trip from the capital, we followed the CG-2 north through the towns of Encamp and Meritxell in the spectacular Valira d’Orient river valley to Canillo, where we found the Petit Mercat, a small café still open in the off-season. Their coffee was good and they had a nice selection of premade sandwiches. From the parking lot across the street, we could see the terrifying height of the cantilevered observation deck of the Mirador Roc Del Quer jutting out over the valley, our ultimate destination.

But first we wanted to see the Pont Tibetà Canillo, a modern steel, Tibet-style footbridge that is over 600m (1970ft) long, and is suspended 150m (490ft) above the Vall del Riu. We knew the bridge was closed this time of year, but we wanted to see it as the views of the mountainside along the long walk to the bridge were very nice. During the warmer months there is a shuttle bus from Canillo for hikers, as there is very limited parking along the shoulder of the road.

Farther up the mountainside there was free parking a short walk away from the Mirador Roc Del Quer;the shuttle bus only goes to Pont Tibetà Canillo. Here a 12m (40ft) long glass observation deck seems to float dizzyingly in the air 500m (1640ft) above the town of Canillo and the river valley below. The views up and down the valley were fabulous.

At the far end of the mirador is a sculpture of a fearless man contemplating casually on the edge the abyss. Perhaps the figure is contemplating his ancestors, nomadic hunter-gatherers, who first entered Andorra’s valleys as the glaciers retreated at the end of the Ice Age. It’s called El Pensador, The Ponderer, and was created by the Argentinian sculptor Miguel Ángel González in 2016.

There was still enough snow on the ground from an earlier winter storm for Donna and I to make snowballs and playfully throw them at each other. The afternoon was sunny and delightfully warm enough to eat outside at the site’s restaurant, that doubled as the ticket office.

Continuing in the car we drove over the mountaintop, a beautiful drive through autumn colors, that descended into Ordino, and the Valira del Nord river valley.

The next day we returned to Ordino and drove along the CG-3 until we took a spur road into the Parc Natural de la Vall de Sorteny. We had hoped to visit the Mini Jardí Botànic, an alpine garden that features over 300 species of Pyrenean flora, including medicinal, edible, and endangered endemic plants. Unfortunately, it was too late in the season and the road to it was gated. But nearby we could hear animal bells echoing in the crisp mountain air and we spotted horses grazing in a frost-covered meadow.

Returning to the main road we ventured past the small village of El Serrat to the Ordino Arcalís Ski Resort where preparations were under way to open the slopes later in the month. With its north facing slopes that peak at 2,625m (8,612 ft) the resort has the longest ski season in Andorra and is popular with freeriders – those who enjoy the adventure of skiing in the resort’s backcountry powder. The views from the resort were pretty impressive too.

The big disadvantage of traveling in the shoulder season is many sites, restaurants and  hotels are closed, as was the case with the high mountain road past the Ordino Arcalís Ski Resort that ends at the trail head to the Mirador Solar de Tristaina, a massive circular, suspended metal ring built atop the Peyreguils peak on Andorra’s border with France, that servers as a sundial. With an altitude of 2,701 meters (8,861 feet) the mirador offers panoramic views of the three Tristaina glacial lakes and the Ordino valley. During the warmer months it can be reached via the resort’s Tristaina Gondola.

On our last full day in Andorra, we headed north along the CG-2 again. Past Canillo the road rose steadily above the valley floor through El Tarter, and the Grandvalira Ski Resortto Soldeu, the northernmost town on the CG-2 in the Valira d’Orient before the highway splits to the CG-2A, the entrance of the Túnel d’Envalira that leads to France, and the old serpentine CG-2 that winds through the mountains.

This route crests the highest road pass in the Pyreenes at 2.408m (7900ft) above sea level, a vertical ascent from Andorra la Vella of 1,294m (4245ft) in 25km (15mi) before reaching the small, isolated town of Port d’Envalira, on Andorra’s frontier, where the Pas de la Casa, part of the Grandvalira Ski Resortthat connects the mountains slopes from Canillo to Port d’Envalira with a huge interconnected network of ski lifts, The resort is popular with beginning and intermediate level skiers for its gentler slopes.

Heading back through Soldeu, the views looking down at the valley surrounded by steep mountains covered with a light snowfall were amazing and we stopped frequently to take photos as we headed to the Vall d’Incles, a tranquil valley with rolling meadows.

The valley is also the primary gateway for the Andorran Camí de la Transhumància, the traditional moving of livestock up into high-altitude mountain pastures in the spring and then back down to the valley floors in the autumn. The seasonal herding of livestock here is a UNESCO-recognized heritage practice that preserves mountain biodiversity and ancestral shepherding traditions. The valley was also an important transfer point for Andorran smugglers to offload the contraband they had carried from France across the Port d’Ingles mountain pass.

After parking the car at the far end of the valley, we had hoped to do a short hike a little farther up the valley to the Pont del Travenc, an old stone bridge across a mountain stream. Unfortunately, melting snow rendered the track a muddy mess and we contented ourselves with a picnic in the parking lot.

The next morning we were on the road, back to Barcelona before sunrise to catch our flight to Gran Canaria Island to relax in warmer temperatures that hovered around 22C (72F) during the day.

We had a wonderful time exploring Andorra in the November shoulder season. It was slightly colder than we expected, but we had sunny days, and there were surprisingly few cars on the road outside of Andorra la Vella. Though the country is only 2.5 hours from Barcelona, it often gets overlooked as a destination, but there is plenty to do, beyond shopping, if you like hiking and skiing. The concentration of so much gorgeous scenery in one small country is amazing, and inspiration enough to plan a visit.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

P.S. Andorra has excellent international bus service to the airports and train stations in Barcelona, Spain and Toulouse, France. As well as a reliable local bus service with 7 routes that connect all the towns and ski resorts in the country.

Panama: Snowbirds in Paradise – Sand, Sea, and Skyscrapers or A Relaxing Visit to the Azuero Peninsula

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By the time we picked up our rental car at the Tocumen International Airport it was the height of the evening rush hour in Panama City. Fortunately, we were heading into the city, while the traffic lanes carrying the daily exodus of commuters home from the financial capital of Latin America were jammed. It was only a twenty-five minute drive to our hotel on the waterfront, but we missed our exit and had to re-route our way through the now deserted downtown streets to the Hotel Plaza Paitilla Inn, for a one night stay. We chose this 19-floor waterfront hotel after determining it was the best place to get those iconic photographs of the city’s modern skyline along the Pacific Ocean coast. And we were not dissappointed.

Golden light filled the room as we drew back the curtains along a wall of windows to reveal a spectacular cityscape that transitioned through the sunset, twilight, and darkness. It was a million-dollar view and we felt as if we were some place only accessible to billionaires or actors lucky enough to have a movie scene filmed on location here. Surprisingly, the Hotel Plaza Paitilla Inn was an excellent value and very budget friendly.

After discussing our travel plan with the concierge the night before, we departed after an early breakfast to avoid the expected traffic delays as folks took the Friday afternoon off in anticipation of the four days of Carnaval before Ash Wednesday. The nationwide el Carnaval de Panama, which literally happens in every town, is the biggest celebration of the year in the country. It starts in each town with the coronation of a queen and ends with the Burial of the Sardine, which symbolizes the past festivals and enjoyment of drink and food, in the predawn hours of Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of Lent. Little did we know that Panama’s Carnaval is regarded as “one of the largest— and rowdiest — events in Latin America.” Nightly events feature themed parades with elaborately decorated floats escorted by trumpet and drum bands, called tunas. To the benefit of all, water trucks called Culecos spray the revelers in the ninety-degree heat to keep them cool. And between the water trucks, mojaderas, wetters, keep everyone partying around them soaked with water pistols, water balloons, and buckets of water. It’s not a particularly camera-friendly event.

Our destination for the next 5 nights was Posada Los Destiladeros on Playa Los Destiladeros, in Los Santos Province, a 5 hour, 335km (208mi) drive. Leaving the city, we crossed the Bridge of the Americas which soars 64m (210ft) above the Panama Canal, and stopped on the far side at the Mirador de las Américas for our first look at the canal. Two monuments commemorate the arrival of 750 immigrants from China 170 years ago to work on projects relating to the construction of the canal, which created an enduring friendship between Panama and China. The view of the canal wasn’t as impressive as its fact sheet: over 12,000 ships carrying $270 billion worth of cargo pass through the locks of the canal annually. Over 70% of the ships are headed to or are returning from ports in the United States.

Continuing on Rt1 we passed the first of many pillars being constructed to support Panama City’s new Metro 3 line, a double-track monorail project sponsored by the Chinese, that will connect the growing towns of Ciudad Del Futuro and La Chorrea to the city’s Metro 1 and Metro 2 lines, Central America’s first and only subway system that became operational in 2014. Rt1 is alternately called the Pan-American Highway, that famously stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in the United States, 19,000 miles way to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. Though a 100-mile section is missing in the difficult terrain of treacherous Darien Gap region between Yaviza, Panama and Chigorodó, Colombia.

Shopping centers and strip malls with McDonald’s golden arches, Starbucks, and Burger Kings lined both sides of the highway before giving way to open crop- and pastureland. The occasional hilltop offered views of the Gulf of Panama and the Pacific Ocean to the south. While to the north the rural highlands of the Cordillera Central, the jagged mountainous spine of the country, graced the horizon. Veering off the Pan-American Highway we headed west on Rt2 to Las Tablas. The town has been ground zero for Carnaval in Panama since the mid-1800s when two fiercely rival groups representing Calle Arriba and Calle Abajo started to compete in a festive, one upmanship every year before the 40 days of Lent began. The event in Las Tablas is very popular with folks from Panama City seeking to experience a more traditional Carnaval with folkloric music and regional dress, in what many consider Panama’s “heartland.”

Traffic had been slowly building all morning, and by early afternoon the streets of our intended route were blocked with floats being prepared for the weekend’s first parade that night. Folks were already creatively parking along the side of the roads and walking to the town’s central plaza, Belisario Porras. The congestion in the town unfortunately nixed our plans for lunch there, and we continued on for several miles along Rt2 through a scenic landscape of lightly treed hillocks. Cattle grazed in the shade under the trees.

Cars were parked on both sides of the road in front of El Cruce #2. It was a small fonda – a Panamanian roadside food stand, with smoke billowing up from its barbeque pit. It piqued our interests, and we stopped.  The outside grill area was open sided, under a corrugated tin roof. In its shade a man prepped and attended the meats that were smoking above a fire while another was using a machete to shave kernels from ears of corn. The unhusked pile next to him seemed monumental, akin to the Greek myth of Sisyphus and his never-ending task. It was the beginning step in the preparation of masa, a corn flour. It’s a must-have ingredient for traditional, homemade corn tortillas and tamales. The menu hung above a small window to the kitchen filled with women attending various stoves. Everyone was very nice and curious about where we were from, but seemed surprised that we had stopped. A large John Deere combine harvester with a police escort passed as we ate. A small caravan of pickup trucks with farm workers standing in the back followed it slowly down the road. The fonda was a very authentic, nothing touristy about it experience, and the food was good.  The line of traffic behind the harvester slowly disappeared as cars passed it when the opportunity arose.  It wasn’t until the last seconds as we raced past the tractor that we realized we also had to pass the police car! We returned the officer’s wave. It seemed like it was an everyday occurrence in the rural countryside. In Pedasi, the closest town to our hotel, preparations for the Carnaval were also visible down the side streets.

We missed the entrance to the hotel and continued down the road in hope of finding an easy spot to turn around, only to find that the road suddenly ended, with a log across it, at the top of Playa Destiladeros, a short distance away from the thundering waves of the Pacific Ocean, as if an early extension had been washed away in a storm. We were at one of the farthest points south on the remote Azuero Peninsula.

When we made plans for this return layover from our trip earlier in the month to Uruguay and Argentina, we didn’t realize our week coincided with Carnaval, consequently many of the hotels we were interested in were fully booked. After scouring the map for areas we wanted to stay we found Posada Los Destiladeros. While it showed as fully booked on Booking.com and Hotels.com, we were able to book a room directly through the hotel’s reservation page.

From the gated entrance we followed a long twin-tracked road, through a large palm tree covered property with many outbuildings, to the parking area. Through a grove of palm trees, the inviting blue water of the Pacific glistened behind the receptionist.

The vibe was really nice. It’s an unpretentious, tenderly time-worn resort in a verdant oasis of greenery on the low cliffs overlooking a wild beach and undeveloped coastline. The staff were very nice and friendly, and after a few days felt like family. The dinners that emerged from their kitchen were extraordinary!

It’s very unusual that we stay in one spot for 5 nights to unwind. But the Posada Los Destiladeros was the perfect place for us to relax, with easy walks on the beach, lounging around the pool and under palm thatched gazebos overlooking the surf as we waited for sunset every day, which offered a dramatic play of light across sand and surf.

A conversation in the pool one afternoon with another guest, a Panamanian American man visiting family over the week of Carnaval, related that he and his wife had been coming here for years, but “somehow it remains a hidden gem.” Of course, we took several half day trips to explore what else the Azuero Peninsula had hidden away.

Several days later we drove toward the beach town of Las Escobas del Venado. Well suited to the heat and humidity of the region, herds of Brahma cows have rested in the shade of the region since Spanish colonists first brought them to the area in the mid-1500s. At a turnoff for the small ranching town of Los Asientos, a roadside monument highlights the town’s traditional la corridas, bullfights. These are non-lethal events since a 2012 law prohibited the injury or death of the bull; however, la corridas are still popular in rural Panama. Along the road milk cans were placed next to the rancher’s gate, waiting for the local dairy cooperative to pick them.

A little way farther along, the colors of the tombs in a small cemetery seemed to vibrate against the verdant landscape, which receives between 45 and 90 inches of rain every year. A large group of cyclists, followed slowly by a support vehicle, made passing difficult along the narrow hilly road, with many blind curves. Though the congestión they created was well tolerated, without the honking of horns. Drivers respected their safety and gave them a wide berth when they were eventually able to pass. Small artesanal lumber mills along the way vertically stacked their milled lumber, like skis, against a wall to dry.

During the dryer summer months the Rio Oria lazily flows through the ranchlands to the ocean.

Las Escobas del Venado was the closest example of a traditional beach town, with several small hotels build along the shore of the half-moon shaped Playa Venao. It is not by any means a large resort town. The beach is very wide and shallow, especially when the tide is out, and it’s a popular spot to horseback ride or drive an ATV along the sand. Across the water a sailboat was safely anchored out of the wind and rolling waves behind the bluff at the southern end of the bay. The day was very hot, so we didn’t spend much time on the beach, and hugged the shade as we walked to the Almendro Café for our traditional “walk a little then café.”

It was a really nice spot, under large shade trees. Our coffees and pastries were excellent, and its menu looked very good with vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free choices. It was to our surprise part of the Selina River Hostel which promotes itself as a destination for digital nomads to enjoy the sun, surf, and sand of Playa Venao. We definitely skewed their demographics for the morning.

We continued driving into the highlands along Via Hacia El Carate, a narrow serpentine road that rose through a mesmerizing landscape of hills and valleys. Unfortunately, there were not any places to stop along the way until we reached the Mirador La Vigía, which offered great views of forested ranchlands, backed by the Pacific Ocean on the horizon.

Familiar with the road now, we occasionally stopped along gated pastures to photograph the expansive landscape, that showed little sign of human intrusion, as we followed the same road back downhill.

They were few opportunities for lunch along the way so we decided to head back to the Almendro Café at the Selina River Hostel . We were not disappointed; the food was excellent and healthy. It’s so nice to order from a menu that doesn’t automatically serve French fries with every order.

Nearing our hotel, a rancher blocked the road with his herd of cows as he moved them to a different pasture.

We were back in time to watch the sunset over Playa Destiladeros. We stayed until the last color in the sky had faded away before walking back to the resort’s restaurant, where we usually dined inside to take advantage of the air conditioning and ceiling fans.

Though having breakfast on the veranda, with the sound of the waves crashing in the distance, was a delight during the cool morning hours.

Early morning walks along the beach as the sun crested to the horizon were equally as enjoyable as the sunsets, but more tranquil with squadrons of pelicans swooping low over the surf, looking for fish. Occasionally some would peel away to dive headfirst into the water to catch fish.

Remnants of Carnaval celebrations the night before were still visible in the small towns along our route as we headed back early to Panama City to avoid the traffic. We arrived on the outskirts of the city sooner than expected and decided to spend the afternoon at Perico Island. Located at the end of the very long Amador Causeway which extends for 6km (3.7mi) into Panama Bay, it’s a popular spot for city folks to catch the breezes, picnic, rent bicycles or walk along its full length which offers great panoramic views of the city’s modern skyline and large cargo ships underway to the entrance of the Panama Canal.

After strolling along the waterfront for a while we decided to have lunch at Sabroso Panamá, a uniquely decorated place with a nice vibe, that also had a balcony overlooking a marina. We tried the carimañolas, similar to empanadas, though they are made with mashed cassava (yucca) dough and then fried.

Carnaval celebrations continued that evening and the direct route back to Hotel Plaza Paitilla Inn (we had such a nice experience there earlier in the week we decided to stay there again) along the Cinta Costera, the city’s waterfront park, and the eight lanes of the Pan-American that parallel it were blocked, and we had to circumnavigate our way around it. The massive street party continued well past midnight into the wee hours of Ash Wednesday morning.

Ash Wednesday was our last full day in Panama City, and we spent it exploring the Casco Antiguo, the historic old town district which dates from 1673, and is also known as Casco Viejo or San Felipe.

This town, built on a defensible small peninsula, replaced the city’s original settlement, Panama La Vieja, which was started 11km (7mi) farther east in 1519 when Spanish conquistador Pedro Arias Dávila landed 100 settlers along the coast, and built the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific. The city prospered for 150 years as the Spanish used the town as a base for expeditions to conquer the Inca Empire and sent the plundered gold and silver they seized back to Spain. The city’s wealth did not go unnoticed, and in 1671 the British privateer Henry Morgan landed over a thousand brigands on the Caribbean coast and trekked through treacherous jungles across the Isthmus of Panama to reach the city, which they then attacked, pillaged and burnt to the ground. Six hundred Spaniards died during the assault. Though the booty they looted wasn’t as much as expected, Morgan was declared a British hero, and knighted.

We arrived by Uber to the Catedral Basílica Metropolitana Santa María La Antigua on the Plaza de la Independencia in the center of Casco Antiguo. Its striking façade which blends Baroque and Neoclassical architecture dates from 1688, but the cathedral took more than 100 years to build, and wasn’t consecrated until 1796. Inside, an interesting mural in monochrome blue depicted the indigenous peoples of Panama accepting Chrisitanity.

The Old Town was once a citadel, though the defensive wall which encircled its 36 blocks was taken down ages ago to ease its expansion. Surprisingly, within this small area there were 4 still active historic churches and the ruins of another. Our basic plan was to visit every church and then spur off to other nearby points of interest.

Adjacent to the cathedral was the Museum of Panamanian History, housed in the Municipal Palace of Panama. It’s a beautiful Neo-Renaissance style building with pilasters, arches and decorative cornices. We didn’t tour the exhibits, but we did enjoy resting in the air-conditioning of the lobby.

The narrow-bricked lanes were more suitable for the horse drawn carriages for which they were designed than the cars of today. They surrounded a plaza full of colorful well-maintained 18th and 19th century buildings with decorative iron railed balconies covered by profusely blooming bougainvillea.

Cafes surround the Plaza Simón Bolívar where a grand monument commemorates the Latin America independence hero. Behind it the graceful belltower of the Saint Francis of Assisi Church looms above the plaza. It was a later addition to the original early 1700s church that was damaged during fires in 1737 and 1756.  

Nice views of the modern Panama City skyline were available along the lane leading to the Corredor Artesanal De Casco Antiguo, a trellis-covered lane with flowering vines that offers shade for the indigenous artisans who have stalls along its length.

Back in the center we passed the ruins of the Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús. It was built as a Jesuit monastery in 1641 and later in the 1740s it also served as the home of the Royal Pontifical University of San Javier, Panama’s first university, until the Spanish Crown banished the Jesuits from the colonies in 1767, and the church and monastery was abandoned. The ruins still standing are all that were left from a 1781 fire that ravaged the complex.

A block away was the Iglesia de San José. The 1670s church is notable for its ornate gold altar, that legend believes was saved from Morgan’s pirates by a priest who painted it black to hide its importance. There is also an interesting collection of religious sculptures and nativity scenes in a side chamber.

Afterwards we headed to the Santa Anna neighborhood, which was outside the walled citadel. While parts of it are in the UNESCO protected area of the Casco Antiguo; most of it is not. We had read that the area has great potential with many older buildings needing renovation, but were surprised by the quick transition from one neighborhood to another. While hopes are high for the barrio, many of the buildings we passed were only colorfully painted facades, with the sky above showing through the windows of roofless buildings.

Returning to Old Town we passed the Iglesia de la Merced, the only church to survive, fully intact, the destruction of Panama La Vieja during the pirate’s 1671 attack on the town. After the attack the church was disassembled by Franciscan monks and moved stone by stone to the new town, where it was painstakingly rebuilt, and is believed to be several years older than Iglesia de San José.

Our “walk a little then café,” beckoned when we happened upon Café Unido, a local coffee shop that pridefully specializes in Panamanian grown coffee, which they consider the best in the world.

A delightfully warm March day wandering the colorful streets of the Casco Antiguo was the perfect way to end our week in Panama. Between the beauty of the countryside and the coast, along with the warm hospitality of the Panamanians, we can understand why the country is a warm weather haven for expats from all across the northern hemisphere.

Hopefully, we will get the opportunity to explore more of the country in the future.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Along the Coast of Uruguay: Sand in Our Shoes – Faro de José Ignacio & Punta del Este & Beyond

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After a three-day road trip through the colonial towns of Colonia del Sacramento and Carmelo, then the rural farmlands of Minas and ranchlands of Gorzon, the amount of activity around the traffic circle in Faro de José Ignacio took us by surprise. We had reached civilization again! Not that it was really busy, but literally more cars had passed us in the last five minutes than the last three days, as we pulled into the small collection of shops along Rt10, which leads up from Punta del Este. Some fruit and supplies were gathered for our four night stay at Casa Franca from the Devoto Market, a well-stocked, but typical beach town store that benefits from a captive market. A few doors down the Panadería José Ignacio, a popular bakery, has a very nice selection of bread, pastries and tasty delectables. They also have a pizza and sandwich counter along with tables for eating outside on their terrace. We returned every morning during our stay for fresh from the oven delights.

Folks parked along the road followed sandy paths across the dunes to the beach. The sails of kite surfers filled the sky as we passed the Laguana de José Ignacio, a freshwater lake separated from the South Atlantic Ocean by a sandbank, which it breaches when it rains too much.

Surf pounded against the Playa Balneario across from our host Daniel’s guesthouse in the tiny hamlet of Santa Mónica, only 5km (3mi) west of Faro de José Ignacio, but a sea change in tranquility, compared to our earlier shopping experience. His wife and children waved from their balcony as his friendly dog energetically greeted us. Daniel helped take our bags to our room, which was located through a private entrance to an extension on their home with three other guest rooms. While our chic petite studio didn’t face the ocean it did thankfully have a shaded porch, where we spent many hours.

After settling in we headed to the lighthouse in José Ignacio, located on thumb-like peninsula that juts into the South Atlantic. Its 32m (105ft) tall lighthouse has guided sailors off this treacherous reef coast since 1877.

While Punta del Este has been promoted as a beach resort for wealthy Argentinians and Uruguayans since the early 1900s, and is now known as the “Ibiza of Uruguay”. José Ignacio remained a quiet isolated fishing village without running water or electricity, as the coastal road from Punta ended at the Laguana de José Ignacio. All that changed in 1981 with the construction of a bridge across the lagoon. The infrastructure improvements that came at that time were appreciated, but the town’s small population rallied to prevent the coastal area from becoming a Miami-esque playground, and successfully petitioned the local government to enact ordinances to ensure its quiet, peaceful character remained intact by allowing only single-family homes, no taller than two-stories within the Maldonado region. Along with banning discothèques, pubs and nightclubs, as well as all motorized vehicles on the beaches, jet skis and speedboats are also prohibited in the lagoons. Today the town’s seven miles of pristine beaches attract folks from all over who just want to unwind along what many consider the best part of Uruguay’s 410-mile-long coastline.

We walked out onto the rocky point next to the lighthouse, then down a boardwalk over the dunes to the Playa Brava, a long gracefully curved stretch of sand, scoping out the best spots to return to the next morning for sunrise photos. We strolled along the wide beach between lifeguard chairs. Squealing kids ran into the surf from the beach speckled with blankets and sun umbrellas amidst impromptu volleyball and soccer games. We stopped at El Chiringo, an outdoor restaurant with tables in the sand and shared a pizza for an early dinner.

Heading back to Casa Francawe stopped along the lagoonto watch a beautiful sunset across its calm water. Kite Surfers unwilling to end their day skimmed along the water until it was nearly dark.

The next morning Donna slept in while I rose before dawn and drove back to the lighthouse to watch the sun cast its first rays of light across the rocky headland and lighthouse.

A few hardy fishermen had already made their first casts of the day from the rocks. On the other side of the lighthouse a group of fishermen were readying two large skiffs to push into the surf from the beach. Next to them the first surfer of the day paddled out, and a few joggers pounded along the cool sand in early morning solitude.

After a day of rest and relaxation we wanted to explore the beach towns farther east along the coast as it runs towards Brazil. The weather doesn’t always cooperate, but we were hopeful the sky would clear as we drove along Rt 9 near Rocha. There were a good number of produce stalls along the road hoping to entice travelers to the beaches to shop. We stopped at one with shelves stacked full with jars of local honey, jams, and Dulce de Leche, along with wheels of artisanal cheeses. We purchased a Dambo, similar to Edam or Gouda. It is a traditional local cheese made with the milk from grass fed cows which graze freely in the palm tree studded, pampas rangelands, that define the region. Farther up the road we stopped for our “drive a little then café,” break at a small shop attached to a gas station in the uniquely named town, 19 de Abril.  The town takes its name from an event related the revolutionaries called the Thirty-Three Orientals, who returned from their exile in Argentina on April 19, 1825, an event that eventually started the Cisplatine War, which led to Uruguay’s independence from Brazil.

Normally in the states we avoid like the plague any eateries attached to gas stations, as they are typically places that just offer junk food, but route 9 traversed a semi-rural region, and there were few options. We were pleasantly surprised as we parked to see a mural of a painting by Simon Silva on the side wall of the café. We bought a poster of this image twenty years ago and it still hangs in our home, and it was nice to know that someone else enjoys the image as much as we do. The café Parador 19 de Abril delighted us. It’s a quaint oasis in the wilderness. The cappuccinos and fresh pastries were quite good, and the folks who ran it were very nice.

Folks were slipping and sliding through streams of water that were gushing down the hardpacked sandy roads of Punta del Diablo, as a deluge had descended upon us since our coffee break. The rain was too heavy to wander about, but we contented ourselves with driving through the haphazard layout of the oldest part of the rustic fishing village, that now has brightly painted shops and restaurants but is reminiscent of a village being founded by survivors of a shipwreck, using whatever materials they could salvage from the sea. Taking a horse drawn cart across the dunes was the only way to reach the once isolated village, until a road connecting it to Rt 9 was built in 1968. Larger flat bottomed fishing boats were beached along the gentle curve of Playa del Rivero, awaiting their next awaiting their launch at the arrival of high tide. A fisherman under a rain tarp offered his morning catch. Often during the Uruguay’s winter, June to November, the deep ocean just offshore allows folks to spot humpback and southern right whales breaching from the town’s beaches as they migrate north to the warmer waters around Brazil.

By the time we reached Aguas Dulces the rain had stopped, though the sky was still threatening, and the streets were nearly deserted. The high tide was rough from the earlier storm and was inching its way towards the row of boulders placed along the shoreline to prevent further coastal erosion and homes being swept away.  Laidback and low keyed, Aguas Dulces is a budget-friendly destination for Uruguayan families who enjoy its lifeguard protected beaches when the weather cooperates.

On the way to La Paloma we stopped at Puente Valizas, a picturesque riverside fishing village along the Arroyo Valizas. The tributary flows 10km (6mi) from the Laguana Castillos to the Atlantic Ocean, near the beach resort of Barra de Valizas. The river was busy with fishermen speeding to the Laguana to catch pink shrimp, which thrive in the brackish waters of the lagoon, for the restaurants along the coast.

In La Paloma the afternoon sky was brightening as we walked along the Paseo Marítimo, a boardwalk through the dunes that lined the tranquil waters of Bahía Grande, a small clam shell shaped bay. La Paloma is the largest coastal town east of Punta del Este and is a popular resort area with 20km (12mi) of beaches that are suitable for surfers and families with young children to enjoy.  Eventually we reached El Faro del Cabo Santa Maria, the town’s historic 42m (138 ft) tall lighthouse. Built in 1874, the powerful navigational beacon atop the tower can be seen 37km (23mi) out to sea. When it is open, folks can climb 143 steps to the top for some spectacular views of the coast.

On the way back to Faro de José Ignacio we followed Rt10 across the Laguna Garzón Bridge, an experience that totally took us by surprise, as the 2015 bridge has a unique circular design that resembles a flat donut. It’s really quite unusual but was designed this way to naturally slow the speed of traffic.

Our host and his family the next morning departed for a day trip a few minutes ahead of us. Their dog which watched their leaving from the second-floor deck had somehow escaped and was running frantically around outside the gated area. Fortunately, Donna has mastered that universal dog-call kissing sound, and we were able to lock him securely behind the gate. We called Daniel to let him know.

A few blocks down we stopped to photograph two abandoned properties. They were both very interesting, and we always wonder what the backstory is that goes with these places.

Route 10 hugs the beautiful 33km (20mi) stretch of wild undeveloped coast that extends from Faro de José Ignacio to Punta del Esta.

Reaching the outskirts of Punta we got our first glimpse of the Puente de la barra, a whimsical wavy bridge, that our route followed across the Arroyo Maldonado. Designed in 1965 to force drivers to reduce their speed, it’s said the rollercoaster-like bridge can cause vertigo if you drive too fast across it. On the Punta side there is a traffic circle that made it too easy for us to cross the bridge multiple times, just for the fun of it.

We stopped at a mirador near the “La Ola Celeste,” a stylized sculpture of a wave that overlooks the fast rolling breakers that beat against the waters of the Arroyo Maldonado as the river empties into the sea, and separates Punta from the smaller resort town of La Barra, which has a vibrant nightlife that rivals Punta’s as the best place to party in Uruguay.

This was also a great spot to get an expansive view of the dramatic beaches along the coast and Punta’s modern skyline, which often prompts folks to refer to it as “the St. Tropez or Monaco of South America.” The vista reminded us of Miami Beach.

We stopped for lunch at the Aura Beach House, a small modern café with a light menu, set on the brilliant white sand of Playa La Brava. They also have several rows of lounge chairs under nicely thatched beach umbrellas for daily rent. It was a beautiful, relaxing spot and our food and coffees were excellent; we didn’t want to leave. We found in our travels across Uruguay that street parking was always free, even along the beaches, something that is very rare in the United States.

We weren’t sure what the weather was going to be like the next day, so we took advantage of the splendid afternoon and stopped at The Hand, Punta’s most iconic landmark since the Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal installed it along the oceanfront in 1982. It was very crowded with a tour group, but we waited for their departure before taking any photos. As it turned out the sculpture was within walking distance of our hotel, and we returned to it several times during our stay in Punta.

We continued on our way to the Faro de Punta del Este lighthouse that stands on the highest point of the narrow peninsula that was Old Town Punta, a whaling port established in the early 1800s.  

Punta, like Montevideo, has a lot of public art on the streets we realized as we drove by the Monumento El Rapto de Europa. The large bronze sculpture references the myth of Europa, a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull and taken to the island of Crete.  Why it is on a street corner near the beach in Punta, we haven’t a clue. Across the street from the lighthouse were several architecturally interesting homes and the very blue Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria church which had a lovely tranquil interior.

At Punta’s modern marina, sleek motor yachts and sailboats now bob gently in the water where the whaling ships once anchored. The first tourists to Punta arrived in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the infrastructure improvements of the 1940’s supported the construction of modern hotels and the town’s first casino that Punta’s reputation as a luxurious destination in South America was cemented. We stayed in the Old Town at Hotel Romimar, a budget-friendly lodging with an excellent breakfast, off Av. Juan Gorlero, Punta’s main shopping street.

We love exploring a new city early in the morning as it wakes up. By 7:30 beach attendants were hard at work carrying lounge chairs and umbrellas from trailers parked along the street, down to the sand and assembling them into tidy rows for their expected sunbathers. It was the perfect time to re-visit The Hand, as the sun was just cresting over its fingertips, and sunlight was reflecting brightly off the row of high-rise condos that fronted the coastline.

Wandering about we spotted several cachilas, old cars that out of economic necessity were lovingly maintained and passed forward through hard times. Some are now totally restored and look as good as the day they rolled out of the showroom. One, an old Plymouth, was creatively covered in a mosaic pattern of old Uruguayan coins.

Families were also out early to claim their preferred batches of sand at Playa El Emir, a small beach on the edge of Old Town Punta with a wonderful view of the coastline, near the Ermita Virgen de la Candelaria. The shrine to the patron virgin of Punta del Este is located on a narrow sliver of land that juts into the South Atlantic Ocean, that is believed to be where the Spanish explorer Juan Díaz de Solís held a mass when he landed nearby in 1516. Our “walk a little the café,” breaks were satisfied that morning with excellent coffee and pastries at Donut City and Cresta Café. Both were only a short walk from the beach.

A day trip the next morning took us to towns west along the coast from Punta that also interested us. Our first stop was at the Escultura Cola de la Ballena Franca, an open wire metal sculpture of a whale tail that overlooks the ocean between the endless beaches of Playa Mansa and Playa Cantamar. It is a popular lookout spot for southern right whales during the peak of their winter migration between July and October.

Casapueblo  is a surreal Guadi structure that captures the essence of the whitewashed cliffside homes on the Mediterranean island of Santorini, Greece. It started as a small wooden shack in 1958, the studio of Páez Vilaró, a Uruguayan abstract artist. He expanded it himself along the oceanfront as his family grew, and friends like Picasso and Brigitte Bardot visited, until a whimsical 13-story structure with 72 rooms stacked upon each other covered the cliff face. Today it is a museum and hotel.

Afterwards we drove to the Laguana del Sauce and enjoyed a quiet lunch overlooking the lagoon from the Hotel Del Lago.

Away from the oceanside a rural landscape quickly unfolded as we drove through farmlands to the Capilla Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, a pretty church that reminded us of settings in the American Midwest.

The next morning, our last full day in Uruguay, we headed west toward the Canelones wine region near Montevideo, an area which produces nearly fifty percent of Uruguayan wines at vineyards which were started four to five generations ago by families which immigrated from Europe. Piriápolis is a small coastal city which grew from a private investment as the country’s first planned resort was along our route. El Balneario del Porvenir (the Resort of the Future) was the vision of Francisco Piria, a wealthy Uruguayan businessman, who in 1890 bought 2700 hectares (6672 acres) of undeveloped land along a beautiful beach, 99km (62mi) from Montevideo. He spent forty years commissioning hotels and a promenade along the oceanfront, which he likened to the French Riviera, before his death in 1933. In 1937 the population of the resort town was large enough to be declared a pueblo, and twenty-three years later it achieved the status of a city. From the landing of a small chapel atop Cerro San Antonio we had a perfect panoramic view of the city that still draws visitors to its beach where families can rent scooter cars for their children to wheel along the promenade. During the high season the Aerosillas Piriápolis chairlift whisks tourist from the marina to the top of the hill. The Castillo de Francisco Piria, the entrepreneur’s home, was on the outskirts of the city as we headed to a wine tasting and overnight stay at the Pizzorno Winery & Lodge.

We arrived at the winery as a tractor pulling a wagon full of just-harvested grapes was being unloaded into a destemmer-crusher, the first step in the long process to create wine.

Founded in 1910, the fourth generation of the Pizzorno family operates the wine estate. It has 21 hectares (52 acres) of vineyards planted with Tannat, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Malbec, Arinarnoa, Marselan, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Muscat of Hamburg vines.

We were the only guests that afternoon during the last week of February and thoroughly enjoyed the interesting tour of the wine cellar led by Joaquin, the winery’s sommelier. He   explained their viticulture philosophy which endorses “traditionally harvesting grapes by hand, respect for the ecosystem, environmental conservation through a no fertilization and watering wisely policy, along with green pruning, leaf removal, and bunch thinning to obtain the best grapes, which is reflected in the quality of the wines we make using only our own grapes.”

Afterwards Joaquin’s experience continued to enhance our tasting of four wines as he shared his knowledge of the vineyard’s terroir, and the different grape varietals, along with their aromas, flavors, and recommended pairings with food.

It was our last night of our 15-day trip around Uruguay and we treated ourselves to a luxurious stay in the winery’s posada. It was for many years the family home until it was creatively restored into an attractive boutique inn with four guest rooms overlooking a pool and the vineyards.   

“You will have the posada all to yourselves tonight. Enjoy the pool, and feel free to walk through the vineyard. A nightwatchman will arrive later.”  The golden hour was upon the vineyard as we cooled off in the pool. 

This surely dates us, but it felt like we were in an episode of the TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous hosted by Robin Leach, who used to sign-off with “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

A Latvian Road Trip: Part 8 – Aristocrats, Soviet Propaganda & the Mountains of Vidzeme or on the Road to Sigulda

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Šiauliai, the Hill of Crosses, and the rustic wooden Chapel of Jakiškiai were our only stops in Lithuania. All three were incredibly interesting, and an art filled Šiauliai was a fantastic discovery that we hadn’t expected but thoroughly enjoyed wandering through. The city of Vilnius, Latvia’s capital, required a time-consuming loop to the east that we chose to forgo, but hope to have a chance of visiting in the future.

It was a beautiful fall day as we recrossed the border into Latvia. Our route took us through the Zemgale Plain, Latvia’s agricultural heartland, an area flat to the horizon as far as our eyes could see. The country’s most fertile region, it’s often called the breadbasket of Latvia. Farmers ploughing their fields revealed dark rich soil ready for the planting of winter wheat.

We don’t do a lot of research before a trip, just enough to determine that we will probably enjoy where we are headed. We find spots along our intended route, to break up the drive, by examining Google maps the evening before the next morning’s departure. That’s how we discovered the Rundāle Palace, an exquisitely restored 18th-century baroque manor with ornamental gardens and museum highlighting the history of the Dukes of Courland, and their thoroughbred stud farms that were renown throughout the Baltics and Russia for the horses they supplied for the equestrian pursuits of various royal courts.

The interior of the palace was splendidly restored with period furniture and elaborate stucco decorations in every room. It was one of the nicest estate type homes we have visited in Europe, and was well worth the price of admission, something we can’t say for some of the other “palaces” we’ve toured.

Being gardeners, we enjoyed the extensive formal landscape plantings that have been described as the “Versailles of Latvia.”

Ten minutes down the road, Bauska Castle stood strategically on a small hill above the confluence of the Mūša and Mēmele rivers where they merge to form Lielupe River, a vital trade route in ancient times through southern Latvia. It was the highest point of land we had encountered in several days. Originally it was a hill fortress built with timber by the Semigallians, a pagan tribe noted for their strong resistance to the Livonian Order of Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, before their subjugation in the last years of the of the 13th-century. In the early 1400s the knights constructed the first stone castle on the hill. It became one of the main residences of the Dukes of Courland, before the Rundāle Palace was built, when the castle was given to the Dukes after the Livonian Order collapsed in 1562.

A long path through dense woods led to a vast field dominated by five towering brutalist, as in the Soviet style, depictions of prisoners. The field was once Salaspils Camp (1941-1944) built by the Nazis as a “detention center,” for political prisoners and a “labor correction camp,” for Latvians who resisted the forced labor demanded of them by the occupying German army during World War 2. It was later used as a “transit and collection camp” for Jews before they were sent to concentration camps in Poland and Germany. One thousand Jews were brought from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, to build the camp, and died from exposure during the brutally cold winter of 1941/1942. Two walls of barbed wire and six towers with machine guns, search lights and sirens that wailed at any sign of escape surrounded the field.

It’s estimated that over the camp’s three years of operation, 23,000 people, half of them ordinary citizens captured during special campaigns against civilians in Belarus, Russia and Latgale, a region of eastern Latvia, were imprisoned behind its barbed wire. Trainloads were sent as forced laborers to Germany, and roughly two-thousand men were forcibly conscripted to fight for the German army.

In the museum a video displays historical footage of the camp when it was liberated by the Russian Red Army, including survivor testimonies as documentation of the brutality the Nazis inflicted upon the people of Latvia. Many in Latvia believe the Soviet Union built the Salaspils Camp Memorial in 1967 during the communist occupation of Latvia as propaganda to divert attention away from their policies of deporting Latvians to Siberia and Ukraine, while depicting themselves as great liberators who also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The communist regime ignored the fact that the Soviet Union’s 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany, contained a secret amendment that allowed the USSR to forcibly annex Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, while Germany invaded Poland, starting World War 2. The irony of our visit to this somber site on a sunny fall day was not lost on us. We can only hope for a better future.

The flat farmlands slowly changed to rolling hills then mountains as we drove into the Gauja National Park, Latvia’s largest nature preserve, which surrounds the small town of Sigulda, and straddles both sides of the picturesque Gauja River valley, as it flows through the Vidzeme region. An area filled with steep ravines and historic medieval castles, which is often referred to as the “Switzerland of Latvia.” It’s an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise with over 560km (350 miles) of hiking trails and 320km (200 miles) of cycling paths, all of which are popular with the cross-country skiers during the winter months.

There might be a little bit of wishful thinking along the lines of “one country’s mountains are another country’s hills,” as the highest point in the Gauja National Park is 160 meters (525ft) tall. Though that’s the equivalent of 52 story building and a significant height if you had to climb the stairs to the top, especially if you are from the lowlands around Riga. During the winter months the region is a snowy wonderland with several ski resorts and a bobsleigh, luge & skeleton track that twists down a Sigulda mountainside for 1.2 km and has 16 curves. It’s a challenging course successfully used by the Latvian National Team to train ten Winter Olympics medalists since Latvia’s independence in 1999. One team won a gold medal in the four-man bobsled event at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, in Russia.

The Emperor’s Chair was not far from the sports complex and offered a nice view of the Gauja River flowing through its valley, which was just beginning to show the first signs of autumn color in late September. Sigulda is a quaint town without a center as the buildings along its treelined streets are very far apart. Now late in the afternoon, we checked into the Hotel Sigulda, a beautiful older ivy-covered building. The front houses the restaurant, with rooms above which hide a modern wing that faces the parking area. The hotel would be our home for the next two nights while we explored the surrounding area.

The next morning was very overcast as we entered the grounds of Sigulda’s New Castle and Old Castle. Partially restored stone ruins are all that remain of an older fortress that was built in the 13th century by Order of the Sword Brothers over the spot where an 11th century log fortress built by the Livonians of Gauja advantageously overlooked the river and Turaida Castle across the valley to the north.

By the late 1700s the von der Borch family had acquired the ruined castle and its surrounding lands. A century later a von der Borch daughter, Olga, married Prince Dmitry Kropotkin of Russia and the estate was passed to him as part of her dowry.

Construction of the Sigulda New Palace, a neo-gothic style manor house, began in 1878 with masons reusing stones taken from the older ruins; the best local woodworkers were hired to craft the fine interior. Princess Kropotkin was instrumental in getting the new railway line from Riga to Pskov, which then branched to St Petersburg and Moscow, to run through the town, and promoted Sigulda area as a burgeoning resort area. Her son Prince Nikolai Kropotkin followed her civic mindedness and built the first bobsleigh and luge track in Latvia and the Baltics.

The interior of the manor style castle is full of highly polished wood and stained-glass windows. But we thought the best part was being able to climb the circular stairs of the building’s tower to the catwalk at the top.

Even on a rainy day it offered a spectacular panoramic view of the old castle and the refurbished outbuildings of the estate that now host workshops and craftspeople selling their wares.

It was from this lookout that we spotted the aerial tram that crosses the river valley from Sigulda to the Turaida Museum Reserve.

We drove there instead as we thought it was too windy for us to take the aerial lift, after a pleasant lunch at Kaķu Māja, the Cat House, which also operates as a bed & breakfast inn. It is a very pretty restaurant that has a nice vibe. The food is served cafeteria style and was surprisingly very delicious, while also being extremely budget friendly.

The Turaida reserve is a large 42 hectares (104 acres) park with a partially restored medieval castle, period buildings and Dainu Kalns, which translates as “I sing the mountain,” but is commonly referred to as Folk Song Park, a tremendous rolling field with over 25 large stone sculptures inspired from Latvian folktales by the artist Indulis Ranka.

Dainu Kalns was constructed in 1985 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Krišjānis Barons, a Latvian folklorist who collected and transcribed over 30,000 of the country’s folk songs that had been passed down through the generations, and is recognized as being an important contributor to Latvia’s National Awakening in the mid-19th century. Folk Song Park also hosts various folk festivals throughout the summer months.

You have to admire the gumption of the city of Cēsis, a forty minute drive through a beautiful landscape from Sigulda, for declaring themselves the Latvian Capital of Culture 2025, the first in the country, after losing the title of European Capital of Culture 2027 to the Baltic port city of Liepāja . This was on top of an earlier disappointment in 2014, when  Riga won the honor. Not wanting to see all their efforts of planning fall by the wayside, city officials designed a year-long celebration with numerous historical and art exhibitions, dance performances, theatre, and concerts with the motto – “Culture in minds, castles, and yards.”

Cēsis is considerably larger than Sigulda and has a well-established old town with Rīgas iela, a pedestrian mall running for several blocks through its core. We arrived to the Cēsis Castle late in the afternoon, as the sun was painting the rough castle walls in its golden glow.  It shares a similar history with the castles of Sigulda. Construction of this castle started in 1209 and in 1279 Teutonic knights rode from the castle into battle carrying a red-white-red banner, first noted in the 13th-century Livonian Rhymed Chronicle.

Legend believes this banner was made from the bed of a knight fatally wounded in an earlier battle. The colors became the Latvian flag. By the mid-1400s the castle was the permanent base of the Livonian Order of Teutonic Knights, and the growing town’s location near the Gauja River made it a key trading hub, which led to its membership in the Hanseatic League in the early 1500s.

Crossing a creaky drawbridge over a dry moat, we entered the courtyard of the castle and were greeted by a Latvian maiden, a costumed reenactor, who offered us two glass lanterns holding lighted candles to illuminate our way through the dark passages of the fortress.  I was about to decline, but Donna convinced me otherwise with “come on, this will be fun,” and it was! We carried them up and down the narrow tower stairs and through various cavernous halls with only the ambient light from small windows providing a little bit of illumination.

The third floor of the tower hall hosted the immersive Multimedia Story of Cēsis Castle, that used surround sound and digital technologies to project an engaging animated film onto the castle’s  walls.It was very well produced and contributed greatly to our understanding of the history of the area and life in a medieval castle. It was really surprising how such a simple prop as a lantern could enhance our experience so much. We had a great time, and it was well worth the modest admission price.

On the way out of town we stopped in the park below the castle to photograph Cēsis’ pretty Byzantine style Enlightenment of Christ Orthodox Church, which dates from the mid-1800s.

On our way into Cēsis earlier an old cemetery caught our attention. We had time to stop and wander through it now as we drove out of the city. The cemetery was interesting but very neglected with overgrown bushes and roots covering toppled headstones. It’s named Vācu kapi, though it’s also referred to as the German Cemetery, as it contains 371 graves bearing the Iron Cross, identifying German soldiers killed in Latvia during WW2.

But there are also the graves of Ottoman Empire soldiers who died in Cesis as prisoners of war during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. The Turks weren’t really incarcerated – “First they lived in Cēsis under supervision, but afterwards, as they were so far away from their motherland, their regime became freer – they could traverse the city, go to the pub, the sauna. After a while some went back to their homes, while others struck root in Cēsis.” But it’s also believed the cemetery contains the graves of Latvian Germans, Russian atheist, and some Jewish citizens of Cēsis. Most of the vandalism to the cemetery is thought to have occurred during the communist occupation of Latvia. It’s an interesting side note to the history of a complex part of the world.

In hindsight, staying in the larger town of Cēsis might have been a better choice, as it has a compact historic center with cobbled streets and shops that would have been interesting to explore had we stayed there.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Ronda Road Trip – The Pueblos Blancos or Blinded by the Light

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Needing a break from city life we rented a car at the Santa Justa train station and within minutes we were out of Seville heading south to Ronda, one of Andalucia’s many “Pueblos Blancos,” the white villages, so called because of their uniformly whitewashed houses.  Although it was less than two hours from Seville, it took us all day due to the number of planned stops and spontaneous detours we made.

Lime paint was introduced to the region when Rome controlled the Iberian peninsular. Its use was greatly expanded during the mid-1300’s when a bubonic plague pandemic swept through the Mediterranean countries.  Residents of villages were required yearly to cover the outside and the interiors of their homes and churches with a limewash, known for its natural anti-bacterial and insecticidal properties, in an effort to reduce the spread of disease. Community inspections were done, and folks were fined for noncompliance. This mandated conformity was eventually appreciated as an aesthetically pleasing look and a symbol of meticulous tidiness. Fortunately, the custom stayed and has become an iconic signature of southern Andalusia.

Cresting a low hill on the A-375, we spotted a small castle with crenellated walls and towers in a shallow valley not far from the road. Turning towards it we followed a dirt track through farmland not yet ploughed for the Spring planting to a small intersection where the castle stood next to a narrow, babbling brook.  The history of the Castillo de Las Aguzaderas isn’t really known, but it is thought to have been built in the 1300’s by the Moors as they retreated from advancing territorial gains made by the Spanish during the Reconquista. 

Of Spain’s 2500 castles this is the only one that does not sit atop the high ground of a hill or mountain to command the surrounding terrain, but according to its historical placard, stands in a hollow to protect the spring that emerges from the earth outside its wall. With no attendant and an open gate, we were free to scramble around the walls and climb stairs in a terrible state of disrepair to the top of the castle keep for views all around. In the distance an ancient stone watchtower, Torre del Bollo, dominated a hill.

From afar the whitewashed casas of Zahara de la Sierra brilliantly reflected the sunlight like polished marble.  The homes, stacked like building blocks, rose up the hillside until they met a sheer butte. A square tower crowned the butte’s summit.

We followed the long ring road that circles the mount through the village and decided to have lunch at Meson Oñate where we were drawn to the outdoor patio that overlooks the Zahara-El Gastor Reservoir and the rolling farmland that surrounds it. 

After lunch, to work off our delicous meal, we hiked to the Castillo de Zahara, which crowns the mountaintop above the village. It was a well paved steep path at the start, but soon the slope decreased to a manageable incline that zigzagged up the mountain.  For our effort we were rewarded with stunning bird’s eye views over the red tiled roofs of the village and to the distant lake below. A tower is all that is left of a larger Moorish castle from the 13th century that was built over the ruins of a small Roman settlement that once called the mountaintop home. Barely accessible, it provided a safe haven during times of trouble. The castle had a turbulent history with its control passing back and forth several times between the Moors and Spanish. Even French troops once commanded its summit through Napoleon’s conquest of Spain during the Peninsular War that raged in the early 1800’s.

With a last-minute decision to take a longer route to Ronda, we headed into the mountains outside of Zahara de la Sierra on CA-9104, a serpentine road with steep slopes that took us into the Sendero La Garganta Verde, a rugged and wild scenic area that is known for its population of Griffon vultures, and Monte Prieto.  The wind was insanely whipping around us when we parked the car at the Puerto de las Palomas (4500ft above sea level) mountain pass and walked to an observation deck in hope of viewing some vultures.  Griffons are large birds of prey that have wing spans up to nine feet across. We were fortunate to spot some, far off in the distance before we ran back to the car, chilled to the bone.

The sun sets early when you are on the eastern side of the steep Sierra del Pinar mountain range.  The last rays of sunlight still illuminated Grazalema as we drove into the village, but the temperature dropped along with the vanishing light of a February afternoon.

We sat in the plaza and had café across the sidewalk from an interesting statue of a bull being roped.  The statue commemorates the ancient practice of hunting wild bulls. The tradition continued through the Romans and Arabs and was Christianized by the church into the feast of the bull to celebrate the Virgen del Carmen. During the festival, three times a day, a bull is released to run through the village for an hour with the men chasing after, in hopes of roping it. The beginning and end of each bull’s run is announced with fireworks throughout the day.  Sections of an old Roman road that led up into the village are still visible from the mirador on the edge of town.

Enjoying the freedom and spontaneity a rental car offers is a big plus when developing itineraries. Finding convenient and affordable hotels that have free or inexpensive onsite parking was another whole issue.  It was dark by the time we reached Ronda and we were having difficulty finding the hotel’s parking. With one last call to the hotel receptionist the garage door to their secret lair, that was our parking space, was magically revealed to us on a back alley, under the Hotel Plaza de Toros. Only big enough for six cars, our tiny Fiat 500 easily fit in its tight confines.

The next morning revealed that the hotel was in an excellent location, just a block from the town’s famous bullring, Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda, built in 1784. Aside from bullfights it has been used as an armory and calvary training grounds by the Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda, a noble order of horsemen in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The promenade next to bullring is dedicated to famous literary talents who were enamored with the “Ciudad Sońada” or “Dreamed City,” as Ronda is also called. While Don Quixote didn’t tilt at any windmills in Ronda, his creator Miguel de Cervantes certainly drew inspiration from the area as he traveled between villages for his day job as Royal Tax Collector. Washington Irving found inspiration in the rugged landscape of southern Spain when he traveled through Ronda in 1828 prompting him to write, “There is something in the austere presence of this Spanish landscape that wounds the soul with a feeling close to the sublime.” He also romanticized the brigands, who some saw as Robin Hood figures that lived in the mountainous terrain surrounding Ronda, and Irving was disappointed in not encountering any on his journey through Andalusia, ignoring the poverty and repressive feudal system that forced many into a life of crime. Ernst Hemingway was drawn to the machismo and pageantry of bullfighting in Ronda, where the sword and red muleta cape were first introduced into the ring by the legendary matador Francisco Romero in 1726.  Orson Welles explained bullfighting as “an unjustifiable yet irresistible, three-act tragedy.” Wells was so fascinated with this quintessential Andalusian village that he chose to be buried here on the hacienda of a bullfighter friend – “A man does not belong to the place he was born in, but to the place he chooses to die.” Spanish poet, José Agustín Goytisolo summed it up best for us with, “We sighted Ronda. It was raised up in the mountains, like a natural extension of the landscape, and in the sunlight it seemed to me to be the most beautiful city in the world.”

The mirador beyond the park overlooked olive groves and spring fields still dormant.  Past them distant mountains faded into the horizon.  The path through the mirador led to the Puente Nuevo bridge that connects the younger old town to the ancient village across the steep sided El Tajo (The Deep Cut) gorge, carved out eons ago by the rushing waters of the Rio Guadalevín.  Finished in 1793 after 34 years of construction, the new bridge isn’t so new anymore, but it was an engineering feat when it was constructed across the shear 390ft deep chasm that divided the village. It replaced a poorly built 1735 bridge that tragically collapsed after only six years’ use, killing fifty people.

Ronda is a fabulous city for walking and as we continued across the bridge into La Ciudad, Ronda’s old-town quarter, we stopped in awe, to photograph the iconic whitewashed houses that are tenuously perched atop the walls of the gorge. Precarious to the point that if their front door slammed too hard the back of the house might fall into the gorge! 

We worked our way to Plaza Duquesa de Parcent in the center of the historic district for lunch. Passing architectural details from Ronda’s Moorish and Spanish past still evident on some of the ancient buildings.

In the off-season not all of the restaurants were open, but it was a beautiful day and we didn’t mind waiting for a table in the fascinating historical surroundings. A few minutes later we were seated at a table in the sun, caddy corner between the Convento de Clarisas de Santa Isabel de los Ángeles and the Convento De La Caridad, both built in the 16th century. The classic symmetry of Ronda’s Town Hall with its two-tier colonnade anchored the far side of the plaza.  

Adjacent to the town hall the Iglesia de Santa María la Mayor is the real draw to this side of the historic district.  With two rows of covered balconies next to an adjoining former minaret turned belltower, it’s a unique façade for a church and it’s built on the foundation of a 14th century mosque. Ronda and Granada were the last Moorish strongholds in Andalusia, and the mosque was ordered destroyed after Ronda surrendered in 1485. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel immediately ordered that a Gothic church be built upon the spot. 

The balconies on the front were added during the reign of King Felipe II in the 1500s for the well-to-do and nobles of the city to watch maestranza tournaments in the plaza, before the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda was built. A century later the church was partially destroyed in an earthquake and the rebuilding over the next two centuries embraced a mishmash of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles that sends architectural purists into a frenzy of “how could they.” Though smaller than the churches in Seville, we found the Iglesia very refreshing with its lofty interior and fabulous religious art.

Just inside one of the side entrances, a worn stone stairwell led up to a walled catwalk that wrapped around the side and back of the building. The views from it over the red tiled roofs of the old quarter seemed not to have changed for centuries.

Later that evening we explored the new town and found Grabados Somera, Shallow Engravings, a wonderful workshop and gallery filled with etchings of matadors, senoritas and Ronda, all the creations of master printmaker engraver Pedro Somera Abad. Writing this now we regret not purchasing a print as a souvenir of our time in Spain.

We eventually came across La Casa de Jamon, a gourmet store and Iberian Ham bar that will leave any carnivorous epicure salivating. Here a leg of the best jamon to take back to your casa will dent your wallet an extravagant 600€.  We never realized those acorn fed porkers could command such a price. Along with jamon, they have locally sourced sausages, wine and cheese from the Andalusia region. We decided to order a charcuterie board for dinner and we were not dissappointed with the tasty assortment presented.

The next morning we walked through the Jardines De Cuenca along a walled path that traced the course of the Rio Guadalevín through El Tajo gorge far below. Across the chasm the hanging gardens of the old palatial homes that lined the cliff edge were redolent with color. The path through the park slowly descended to the Puente Viejo; built in 1616, it is the oldest stone bridge over the river.

Across the bridge the route split to go back into La Ciudad, the old town, through the Renaissance era Puerta de Carlos V, where taxes were once levied on the wares merchants brought into the city.  Or we could go downhill to the impressive arched ruins of the Baños Arabes, a 13th century Moorish bathhouse on the outskirts of the city, that provided heated water, an impressive feat 800 years ago.

Along the river that supplied water to the Arab baths, grist mills once stood just inside Ronda’s double ring of fortress walls that protected this side of La Ciudad.  The mills ground wheat harvested from the surrounding countryside. The stones of the outer wall were repurposed long ago. Now only remnants of the massive inner wall, the last line of defense before entering the city still stands, causing us to pause and imagine its former glory. Walking under the last vestiges of Ronda’s mighty defenses, we headed back.

It was lightly raining as we strolled along Carrera Espinel in search of an interesting place for dinner.  Most of the inside tables at the restaurants we passed were taken with diners escaping the damp evening chill.  But the aroma of savory clams drew us to an outside table at Restaurante Las Maravillas, where the waiter was attentive and refueled the tower heater next to our table to help keep us warm. The dinner and wine were delicious.

Plans to visit Olvera and Setenil de las Bodegas the next day were made over dessert and coffee. It had been a long satisfying day, our “walk a little then café” evolved to “walk a little more, then bed.”

Till next time, Craig & Donna

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Belize – When Iguanas Fall from Trees, Head South

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“Welcome aboard, folks. Our flight time to Belize is two hours and ten minutes. The weather is expected to be a balmy 80 degrees Fahrenheit today when we land,” the pilot announced as we were buckling in. Then continued with “As you know the National Weather Service has issued the very rare ‘Beware of Falling Iguanas Weather Alert’ for Miami and South Florida this morning.”  As funny as this sounds, it actually happens when the temperature dips into the thirties in Florida.  Cold blooded animals, the iguanas slowly stiffen as the temperature drops and eventually lose their grip on the tree branches they have been sleeping on and fall to the ground, stunned, where they lay immobile until the temperature rises.  Iguanas can grow quite large and may cause serious injury or death if you are unlucky enough to get struck by one of the falling frozen reptiles. It sounds like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie – be careful out there. We were delighted to be heading south again to a warmer climate after a cold and rainy November and December in Italy, which was followed by a warm-hearted, but very frigid Christmas with our kids in New Jersey.

On our final approach for landing the wing of the plane dipped to reveal a beautiful azure sea outlined with dense green jungle and brilliantly white sand beaches – and not much else – as far as the eye could see.  It was still much like it was several millennium ago when a prosperous Mayan civilization flourished, supporting an estimated population of 500,000 – 1,000,000 in the region. Columbus sailed by without stopping and landed in Honduras during his last voyage to the Americas in 1502.  Navigator Juan Diaz de Solis did not mention a landfall or discovery during his expedition in 1507 sailing from Panama to the Yucatan. Several theories suggest that the 190-mile-long Belize Barrier Reef, the largest in the northern hemisphere, was too difficult to navigate through so the Spanish fleets sailed past. We witnessed this difficulty once from the deck of a cruise ship as the captain left a snaking wake as he steered a serpentine route through the underwater obstacle course.

The first European to arrive in Corozal literally washed ashore as a survivor of a 1511 Spanish shipwreck. To stay alive, conquistador Gonzalo Guerrero offered his skills as a soldier to Mayan Chief Na Chan Kan at Chactemal, (now Santa-Rita, Corozal Town). He proved his skill as a warrior and married the chief’s daughter, Princess Zazil Há. The children from their union are recognized as the first Mestizos of Central America; theirs was the first Mayan liaison recorded by Bernal Diaz de Castillo in his memoir “The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,” written in 1568.

Guerrero defended his adopted homeland against conquest in 1531 when he helped Chief Na Chan Kan defeat the Spanish army in a battle near the Rio Hondo. Today the river is still Belize’s northern border with Mexico.  Spain never established any permanent settlements in Belize.  Gold and silver were discovered next door in Guatemala and Honduras. Belize was absorbed into the Spanish empire of Central America by its proximity to its larger neighbors, but was never colonized until the British subversively entered the territory.

The riches of the new world didn’t go unnoticed for long, but by the time English and Scottish pirates arrived on the scene in the mid-1600s, the treasure-laden flotillas destined for the Spanish crown from central America had been replaced by shipments of logwood.  Native to northern Central America, logwood or bloodwood was used by the indigenous tribes of the region to produce a vibrant red-orange dye. Mixed with other ingredients, a full spectrum of colors was possible. It grew abundantly and was exported to Spain where the cheap natural resource revolutionized the textile industry and afforded commoners a chance to have colorful wardrobes, which before was only afforded by the nobility. Gone were the days of fabrics dyed gray with soot. 

Gold or wood – it didn’t matter. Pirates were pirates and willing to steal your cargo regardless of its content, as long as there was a profit to be made, and the English textile mills were demanding logwood.  After plundering large Spanish merchant ships that sailed across the Gulf of Honduras, the pirates found safe refuge for their smaller vessels in the shallow waters behind the Belize Barrier Reef amidst its 450 cays and atolls, where they could hunt for food, get fresh water, and repair their boats.  In 1670 England and Spain signed a treaty banning piracy in the Caribbean.  The days of the infamous pirates of Belize, Edward Lowe, Captain Charles Johnson, Bartholomew Sharp, Captain Henry Morgan, and Blackbeard, were waning.  By this time English pirates had discovered Belize was full of logwood and many ex-privateers became legitimate and wealthy logwood cutters and exporters after buying African slaves to work in the miserable conditions of the mosquito-infested jungles.  Though Spain considered all of Central America as part of their empire and occasionally harassed the British logwood camps trying to evict them, the Spanish crown never established any settlements in Belize. 

In 1763 Spain signed another treaty allowing English subjects the “privilege of wood-cutting,” but still retained sovereignty over the region. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and Belize finally became the English colony of British Honduras in 1862. Mahogany had replaced logwood as the major export. Conflict with the Mayans escalated as settlers moved farther into the interior exploiting the regions mahogany forests, and forced the indigenous population from their lands by burning their villages and crops. The giant cut logs were floated down the country’s rivers to the coast and where rivers didn’t exist, small logging railroads were built to satisfy the European demand for this beautiful hardwood that was favored for fine cabinetry, furniture and shipbuilding.

Disenfranchised and oppressed, the Mayan revolted in what is called the Caste War against their colonizers. Led by Marcus Canul, a Mayan chief,  his people demanded the British pay for the crops they burnt and for the land they occupied.  In northern Belize, Canul’s freedom fighters attacked and occupied the garrison town of Corozal. The movement lost its momentum when Canul was killed during an unsuccessful assault on Orange Walk in 1872.  Long considered a rebel and criminal, he is now regarded as a Belizean hero who fought against ethnic cleansing. The deforested jungles were replaced by sugar cane, ranching and agriculture plantations.

Belize finally became independent in 1981, though The British Army still maintains a jungle warfare training facility in the country to help deter Guatemalan aggression in an unresolved border issue. Aldous Huxley once wrote, “If the world had any ends, British Honduras (Belize) would certainly be one of them. It is not on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. It has no strategic value. It is all but uninhabited.”

Today the tiny country of 400,000 supports a diverse culture descended from Mayans, Mestizos, African slaves, Garifunas, Europeans and more recently immigrants from Lebanon, Germany, the East Indies, Asia and North America with an economy centered on tourism and agriculture.  English is the official language of Belize, but it is not the first language of many with Spanish, Belizean Creole and Q’eqchi’ Maya primarily spoken, depending on what part of the country you are in.

The barrier Islands and cays where pirates might have hidden treasure now sport popular resorts on their white sand beaches. Scuba divers can explore shipwrecks, the Great Blue Hole (a marine sinkhole that is visible from space,) and the exceptional marine life found along the Belize Barrier Reef which is now a marine reserve and UNESCO World Heritage site.  Ashore the jungles and mountains continue to reveal the extent of the Mayan civilization in Belize with over 600 known archeological sites discovered so far, ranging from ceremonial caves to towering stone pyramids.

We are on the other end of the tourist spectrum and wanted something very lowkey, inexpensive and relaxing for a month. We headed to Corozal! Located on Chetumal Bay, it is the northern most city in Belize and only 16 miles from Chetumal, Mexico. It was founded in 1848 by Mestizo refugees from Mexico fleeing Mayan retribution from the Caste Wars there. It prospered exporting mahogany logs when there were still enough trees to support the timber industry. Sugarcane now fuels the economy. 

In 1955 Hurricane Janet, a category 5 storm with winds of 175mph, flattened ninety-five percent of Corozal and left 8,000 people homeless.  Surprisingly one of the few buildings left standing on the waterfront, fully intact, was the home of lumber baron John Carmichael.  It was built in the 1880’s using only mahogany.  The house is still used today as a Catholic mission. The pre-1955 wooden structures have been replaced with concrete block houses now, mostly two stories high, except the four-story Mirador Hotel, the tallest building in town.

Our ah-ha moment happened after the two-hour, inland drive from the airport, when we entered Corozal and saw the enticing turquoise waters of Corozal Bay on our way to our Airbnb rental. We drove a mile along a still bay bordered by a low battered seawall and numerous public parks dotted with palm trees.

Turning onto 2nd St. North our driver stopped in front of a flowering bougainvillea-covered wall, less than 200ft from the water, that hid the Villa Imperial Loft Apartment, our home for the next four weeks.  Our host Oscar wasn’t home at the time, but had made arrangements with Sue, another guest, who graciously led us through the flowering garden, complete with a resident mama cat and her kitten, and up the back stairs to our studio apartment. She enthusiastically answered our first questions about Corozal.

The large room was brightly painted and pleasantly decorated with an eclectic mix of antiques, reminiscent of visiting our grandparents.  A wall of windows facing east offered a glimpse of the bay, and any storms approaching, through the neighbor’s tree. Best was the kitchen across the landing at the top of the stairs. It was enclosed on three sides with just screened windows, covered with louvered shutters. In stark contrast to the apartment, it was very rustic with the feel of an old lake cabin. But we soon realized it was the perfect spot to observe the wide varieties of birds that visited the trees in the backyard, and we thoroughly enjoyed cooking and eating there.  Birding over the next month while walking along the waterfront was one of the highlights of our stay in Corozal. Spotting just a few of the 590 bird species in Belize, we saw sandpipers, great kiskadee, white-collared manakin, yellow-throated euphonia, tricolored heron, kingfisher, lineated woodpecker, great egrets, couch’s kingbird, crimson-collared tanager, black and white warbler, and the outrageously raucous plain chachalaca, which you’ll hear well before seeing them.

For many travelers visiting northern Belize, Corozal is just a brief stop on their way to or from Mexico or Guatemala, or a transfer point to catch the two-hour Thunderbolt Ferry or a flight on Tropic Air from the Corozal Airport (CZH) to San Pedro, on the barrier island, Ambergris Caye.  The town doesn’t have a beach, which has probably helped keep it off the beaten path for most tourists that visit Belize. Access to the shallow water is from stairs in the 1.5 mile long stone seawall that has not fared well against the surges of the ocean. We had read that the district has a sizeable expat community, that likes to avail themselves of all the big city options, mainly a Walmart and Sam’s Club that are across the border in Chetumal, Mexico.  But from our experiences we only encountered a handful of North Americans, surely not surging numbers that would indicate it was a sizzling hot spot for vacationing or retirement that would change the character of the town. And that’s a good thing. The joy of Corozal for us was its tranquility; there really was not much to do there aside from chilling and the occasional dip in the gentle waves of the bay.  The serenity of the seascapes compensated for the lack of activities.

We were enjoying the tropical 80-degree weather of Corozal and re-embracing our slow travel philosophy by immersing ourselves in the daily flow of life in this small coastal town. It was wonderful to see parents accompanying their uniform clad children to school every morning. Some parents drove, others walked along or bicycled with their kids. Routinely at the end of the school day an older couple pedaling a three-wheeler sold homemade popcorn to the kids or the youngsters lined up for ice cream on the porch of a home that doubled as an ice cream parlor. The kids waved to us if they noticed us bobbing in the bay across the street.

Our daily walks led to discoveries all across town, mostly culinary in nature. We were eager to find the best places to buy groceries, interesting places to eat and quench our thirst.  Most importantly, our craving for good coffee was easily satisfied directly across the street at the top of a colorful flight of tiled stairs. Here Oscar’s nephew Rudi runs the LVDM Coffee Stop on the porch of his home and makes what are easily the best cappuccinos in Corozal. He also rents two rustic villitas in his backyard. 

In town there were any number of Asian-owned grocery stores that all offered the same staples. We tended to prefer a shop called the Central Supermarket, because they were the closest place to carry our recyclable beer bottles. Diagonally across the street the city’s daily market had numerous fruit and vegetable stands, an open-air butcher, and clothing vendors. A twice weekly farmers market was held outside of town, across from the cemetery.  Fortunately, this location did not reflect negatively upon the quality of produce sold there. At a much greater walking distance, it didn’t offer any real advantage over the produce sold for the same price at the daily market. Shopping there was an early morning event and the atmosphere was very vibrant. It was here we got the first glimpse of the country’s Mennonite farming community, easily identifiable by their conservative dress and spoken Pennsylvania German. Since 1958 when they were invited to settle in Belize by the first Premiere of the country, George C. Price, the community has grown to 10,000, and they have contributed immensely to Belize’s agriculture self-reliance.

Surprisingly, even though Corozal is located right on the bay, we could not find fresh fish and had to purchase locally caught frozen fish, conch and lobster from Frank’s, a great butcher shop that makes their own sausage and offers a wide assortment of fresh beef, pork and poultry.  Directly across from Frank’s on the other side of the civic center field we found Vivi’s for wonderful meat pies.

On one of our walks, we did meet a young brother and sister team carrying a five-gallon bucket on the handlebar of their bicycle. It was full of lobster and conch, caught by their father earlier that morning.  They were going door to door in the neighborhood, selling it so they could buy their school uniforms.  Of course, we purchased some, and it was delicious.

The town does not have a marina for boats, but there are spots along the bay where fishermen pull out their ancient mahogany boats for repairs.  Called sandlighters, many of these traditional sailing vessels were built across the bay in the fishing community of Sarteneja and are over eighty years old.

There were several small bakeries in town, each offering different specialties.  The Y Not Bakery, to the detriment of our waistlines, was the closest and created the best temptations. Another favorite was Caramelo Bakery across from the high school and down the street from Belcuisine, a spice factory that produces flavorful Belizean Recados mixes.

Corozal really was a rewarding foodie’s destination with numerous small taquerias and enterprising folks offering roadside barbeque. Many businesses were operated from the windows of homes, like Ruby’s, who prepared delicous ceviche then sold it through her living room window for take-away.

The only option for eating out was casual dining. We found June’s Kitchen and Mar’s Caribbean Garden for homecooked meals.  Directly across from the bay, Scotty’s Crocodile Cove was a relaxing spot with thatched roofs; it was an enjoyable place for a refreshing Belizean brewed Belikin beer and large burritos that could easily feed three people.  The Tortuga Grill, across from the waterfront Rainbow Park, and the Wood House Restaurant, adjacent to Miami Beach, both offered good food and views of the bay.

Corozal enthusiastically supports its art community and one Saturday a month, in the town’s Central Park, holds the Art in the Park event where local artists and craftspeople display and sell their work. It was a fun time, with live music and delicous Belizean food. It’s held between 5pm – 9pm to avoid the heat of the day.  If City Hall is open make sure to check out the fantastic wall mural depicting the history of Corozal, painted by Belizean-Mexican artist Manual Villamor.

The blank concrete block walls of homes and businesses across from Miami Beach were the canvases for street artists invited to participate in the Corozal Graffiti Festival. In 2020 street mural artists from Belize, Cuba, El Salvador and Mexico were invited to enliven the walls with an “Ancient Chactemal” theme. It was a lively event with a music stage, art and crafts for sale, body painting and food vendors. On the beach, the Corozal sailing club was offering catamaran rides on the gentle waters of the bay.

There is an abundance of civic pride displayed in this small, well-kept community on Corozal Bay that is endearing. We barely scratched the surface of places to explore in Belize and were perfectly content “Snow Birds” with our choice of Corozal for a month’s worth of lazy rest and relaxation.  We’d definitely return to explore the surrounding area more fully.

Till next time, Craig & Donna