It took a long time for the breeze to fill in and it never really gained enough strength for true sailing for more than a few hours at a time. We mostly motor sailed the leg down to Agua Dulce (lit. Fresh Water), 231nm SW from Ibiza. Fortunately we had a fair amount of favourable current, up to a knot at times. The entertaining bit was turning Cabo de Palos just near Cartagena. Lots of big fast ships forced us to slalom around in the middle of the night. It is actually quite frightening when one sees on the AIS that the Costa Favolosa (984 feet long and probably about 100,000 tonnes) has a Closest Point of Approach of 37 feet in 32 minutes and 41secs. That is, they are going to run over us at 20 knots. A quick call on the radio had the massive cruise liner altering course to avoid poor little Diomedea. Thank you, officer of the watch.
We had some sailing the next morning and afternoon into this nice marina which costs about 16euro a day. Much cheaper than Mallorca! There are virtually no decent anchorages anywhere along this coast. This region with the Cabo del Gata National Park, is the driest in Europe. The annual rainfall is a puny 200mm a year. Spread over the entire 26 days of precipitation per annum. Accordingly the place appears very arid.
With a day in port it was time to play tourist and visit the nearby city of Almeria. (Arabic for The Watchtower). It was founded in 955CE by a Moorish caliph who constructed the castle of Alcazaba. This is the second largest such fortress in Andalucia, after the Alhambra in Granada. The castle was besieged by and taken over by various Moorish factions (sound familiar?), briefly held by Crusaders in the 12th century, before finally falling to the Catholic monarchs, Fernando and Isabel in 1489 during the Reconquista. Today the Alcazaba castle is well preserved and definitely worth a visit. Not a minaret in sight but plenty of crucifix architecture of course. Lovely Cypress pine, lavender, hibiscus, oleander and bougainvillea gardens with dominant Arabesque water features cascaded down inside the extensive citadel. However, one could not help but be surprised by a towering blue gum eucalypt and numerous flowering jacarandas within the castle walls. I looked about for a koala. Even more surprising was a nearby paddock full of gazelles. Yes. There is a rescue program for endangered Saharian species here in this desert-like place. Lunch was taken at the Almedina restaurant (Moroccan/Arabic themed of course - cous cous, kebabs, mint lemonade, nice bread, Arabic cakes) before we wandered about the fairly unremarkable city. Amazingly we stumbled upon a building in which a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed. Also filmed in the city was a scene in Lawrence of Arabia. I believe that many spaghetti westerns have been filmed in the hinterland. Perhaps most importantly of all (Teaser Alert) a scene in Game of Thrones, Season 6, was filmed in the Alcazaba castle.