Trip Log – Day 15 – Transition Day to Seville

Queue up: Nursery Rhyme – The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

A polka dot pig and her baby (wild boar)

The weather once again dictated the terms of our day. Our last big hike of the hiking tour was canceled. I can’t even find a clever reason to tee up why, because you already know. We woke up to rain. Jerez de la Frontera is less than 30 minutes from the southern coast of Spain. So we piled into the van and headed there for a unique experience in one of Spain’s most unique National Parks, Doñana. And you might find this hard to believe, but the sun was shining. I think it’s some weird karma thing, when we planned to walk or hike, the sky opens up and dumps buckets. And when our unflappable tour leaders find an alternative that minimizes exposure to the elements, the sun shines.

To see Doñana, you take a boat across the river (the same one that Magellan and Columbus used to get to the sea), and then you board a bus. But not any bus, this bus could almost rival the one Hawk uses for his rugged excursions into Iceland’s interior. Once on board, the bus takes you to 4 different ecosystems on one small island, the beach, sand dunes, the forest, and the marsh.

The island isn’t so small, it has almost 15 miles of beach. The two tides a day, wash up large amounts of plastic trash, and abandoned drug runners boats. The tour guide described what happens to the plastic when consumed by fish, and then how it eventually ends up back in our bodies. As we sat down for a seafood lunch at a waterside restaurant, I kept thinking about that description wondering how many microplastics I was consuming in this one meal. But it was delicious, so there’s that.

The island used to be privately owned, and workers would come over from town, Sanlucar de Barrameda, to live and work. They lived in humble huts up until 1984. The owner of the island gave the park to Franco’s government for a national park in 1969. Franco said those who were living on the island could do so until they died…..but with many, many restrictions (where they can walk, who they can have over for dinner, etc). It’s hard to image people living like this up until 40 years ago. There are still two privately owned places in use on the island today.

Each home consisted of three of these huts, one for the living/cooking, one for the bedroom, one for the animals.

The inside – it’s almost pitch black in there.

Other interesting tidbits:

The island is in the bird migration path from Africa to the Europe. It’s a sanctuary for 500,000 birds and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Parts of the pine forest are almost all covered up by the encroaching sand dunes. You can see just the tree tops.

Tops of pine tree forest, we are standing on sand dunes and are eye level.

We arrived in Seville, and were eagerly anticipating our city walk with Jim. Once we completely unloaded from the van and Antonio drove away, the sky opened up and dumped buckets. As we walked to Plaza Nueva, the area he really wanted to show us, all the gates were locked. There were concerns about all the rainfall making the park unsafe. Double rats Batman, thwarted again.

I’ll wrap it up with pictures – a rare short-ish post. My dad would be proud.