Day 145: Spain Day 38

Friday, October 14, 2016

Grebe banding was so interesting.  You wade into a shallow lake, about 20 people with you, all holding a very long, hip-height net.  You corral the flightless grebes into an enclosed area, then grab each one and put them into floating crates.  These crates are taken to a dry area, where you and all of the group start processing.  There are three groups: one to process grebes that had already been banded (there is an astonishing 60% recapture rate, since the grebes come back to the same salt lakes every winter), one to process unbanded grebes, and one group to verify the grebes' sex, age, and molt with the all-knowing Luis.  You were in the last group, since you were new to grebe banding and thus didn't directly process them.  You took the grebes that the two groups had finished with and got into the grebe line.  The grebe line ended with Luis, who took the bird and told you what age, sex, and molting stage the grebe was in.  You then remembered that information and went back to tell the processors.  They would fix anything that didn't add up to what Luis said.

Where we did the grebe banding was in Huelva, the capital of the southern region of Spain, Andalucía.  Huelva is an industrial city, and they filter ocean water out to create mountains of salt to use in industrial processes.  You were walking in a very salty, shallow lake, thus your legs were white when you came out of the water.  You rinsed off in a lake that was less concentrated in salt; a lake closer to the ocean.  Then you helped band for three hours, and went to lunch with several fellow banders.  It was great, and you felt like a part of something wonderful, regarding both the work done and the people you did it with.

My sister and I had Paco pick us up in El Rocío at 5.  It took three and a half hours to get to Alhaurin de la Torre, where our grandmother had prepared us a delicious dinner.  It was really nice to be back, chilling with Abuelita and eating yummy, homemade food.  The grebe banding and entirety of the Doñana trip was unforgettable.

These floating crates were brought to land full of grebes

The recapture-processing group collecting data on the grebes who had been banded before this year

This guy's about to go to the water again!

Day 144: Spain Day 37

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Private tour day.  We woke up at 6:30 and got ready, packing some ham sandwiches for lunch.  We were picked up by one of the tour guides, Antonio, and he commented on how we looked young.  Thanks dude, thanks.  It's okay though, we do look young.

Our actual tour guide for the private Donana tour was named Maria.  She started by speaking to us in English, but we explained to her that we would rather speak in Spanish for practice.  That turned out great!  We chatted about why Vanessa and I were there, what we were doing in our gap year, and learning foreign languages.  We had lunch with her afterwards too.

There are several different habitats in Donana.  The first was pinares, where pines dominated, and wide sand roads went through it, leading to Sevilla and Cadiz.  El Rocio, the horse and dry lake town, is a pilgrimage spot, we learned.  The church there holds La Virgen del Rocio, and in the summer, hundreds of people walk through the Donana roads to get to the church and do a procession at dawn.

We saw rabbits, heard Sardinian Warblers, and watched the forest turn gold with sunlight, morning dew glittering in the spider webs and pine needles.  Then there was the cork tree area leading to a huge field of tall, silvery bushes. also wet with dew.  Cork trees are big in this part of Spain and Portugal, though synthetic cork has done a lot of damage on this industry.  The cork trees have to be at least 40 years old before the outer layer of bark can be harvested in the perfect shape of a cork.  After the initial harvest, corks can be collected from the trees every 15 years.  The other habitats were maritime forest and rice fields.

The outer layer of a cork tree

Cranes flying over rice fields

A deer!

The tour was kind of stop-and-go to look at birds, and here are the best lifers (birds we had never seen before):

• Little Owl: there was a cork tree we stopped at briefly to see if there was a Little Owl there.  It was not, but later, Vanessa spotted one sitting on a sunny rock much later

http://www.owlpages.com/owls/species.php?s=2270

•  Cranes: hundreds of squawking cranes were on the ground in the rice fields, a V-shaped flock flying down to join them.  They were almost prehistoric, all gangly and strange, but amazing

http://visit-western-spain.com/the-crane-grus-grus-in-extremadura/

•  Hen Harrier: the British couple we had see the day before had seen several.  We finally saw one flying over the rice fields

http://www.rarebirdalert.co.uk/v2/Content/RSPB_Hen_Harriers_breed_at_RSPB_Geltsdale.aspx?s_id=184396157

When Maria learned of our experience bird banding, she mentioned that every Friday, there was a grebe banding in Huelva, a large city about 45 minutes away.  She asked the main guy Luis if we could join them the following day, and he said yes!  Maria's friend Laura would be able to pick us up from the hotel in the morning, and we would get a ride back to El Rocio when it ended.  Sounded good to us.

After the tour and the yummy lunch we ate with Maria, Vanessa and I chilled on a park bench overlooking the dry lake.  Then we walked to the sewage area, which the British Chris and Linda had said would be a good birding spot, but we didn't see much.  As we walked back a half-hour later to catch the bus back to Matalascanas, whaddayaknow, we saw Chris and Linda!  We discussed what we each saw on the tour earlier, and then Chris said they were going for a walk on some of the sandy roads, and if we wanted to join them.  Why not?  We didn't have anything to do at the hotel, and birding with these interesting people would be fun.  And fun it was.  We talked about literature, birds, and where we and they had traveled before.  We saw some lifers too.   After two hours of walking, we needed to catch the bus.  So, we said goodbye to Linda and Chris, and headed back to the hotel.

Day 143: Spain Day 36

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

We woke up at 8:30 and slowly got ready for the day.  We ate some delicious free breakfast, then chilled until 1.  It was gray and drizzly outside--not great for birding.

We went to El Rocio via bus and birded at the dry lake.  We had noticed a middle-aged couple birding the day before, and were happily surprised to see them out again.  We quickly realized that they were English, and began to talk about what birds we had been seeing.  They were taking a private tour on Thursday like we were planning to do too.  They were headed for La Rocina, the visitors' center we went to yesterday, so we parted ways.  Chris and Linda recommended a landfill area at the other end of the lake, where they had seen some waterfowl in the area where there was water.  Vanessa and I headed there, stopping to watch a Kestrel hovering over unseen prey, diving, failing to catch its meal, and looking for another rodent.

We reached the end of the lake an hour later, where we saw a huge group of deer in the shady side.  They were laying down, occasionally mooing (?), and standing and grazing.  A huge field was to our left (the lake and deer on our right), and from that we could see a very dark storm cloud, complete with rain column.  Well, until it was on top of us, we were fine.  We proceeded to look at the Wheatear and Crested Larks calling and playing.  Then, the rain came.

We ran back to town on that dirt road, covering our binoculars (we were so smart we didn't bring umbrellas), frantically looking for an open restaurant.  We walked into a nice, bright bar, cold and dripping, and asked the guy at the bar if they had cafe con leche.  The nice waiter smiled and said, "For you, yes."  We received some wonderful coffee and vegan pastries, and asked if they had a dinner menu.  The waiter explained that the kitchen was closed at this hour, but he could bring out some shrimp, jamon serrano, olives, bread.  It was fabulous.

Hi rain!

A deer foraging

The inside of the bar

Day 142: Spain Day 35

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

We woke up at 8:00 and slowly and lazily got ready for the day.  The breakfast was awesome again: I got 2 churros with Nocilla, an apple, a fried egg, bread with butter, and I tried the American coffee, which tasted like bitter crap, then guzzled down the cappuccino, which looked like a mix of hot chocolate, coffee, and milk from the hot drink machine.  Full from the big breakfast, we hopped on the bus that came right to the hotel entrance, and took it to the center of Matalascañas.  We had walked by the center the day before, and it was the strip of cafes and restaurants and other shops with the big main street separating it from the bus station.  The bus station had six or seven different areas for buses to come and pick up people.

We got onto the second bus to go to El Rocío and stepped off into the sand 20 minutes later.  We found out where we needed to go (just follow a road for a while, then the center would be on the right), so we began to walk.  When we reached the bus station again, and the edge of the dried lake perfect for birding, a group of horseback riders rode past.  Trailing along after them was a dog.

He was a medium-sized white dog with some black patches here and there, black, long, pricked-up ears, and small black spots that faded to brown on his legs.  He was really sweet, and once we petted him for a bit, he followed us.  We walked and birded along the dried lake as he sniffed around, sat, looked at us, or stood looking intently at something.  The best thing we saw on this walk was a pair of Woodchat Shrikes--large, carnivorous songbirds with a brown cap and sharp, hooked bill.  The female chilled and ate some seeds from some long grasses, while the male scouted out and attempted to catch a piece of meat.  We watched them for about ten minutes before heading on.

The center was beautiful, with Moorish designs in bright yellow and blue tiles and molding on the small white building.  Our faithful doggie was very nose-minded, thus trotted off and sniffed stuff.  Two landscaping guys warned us that dogs were not allowed on the trail, but we pleaded with them, saying that he wasn't ours and was just following us, so we didn't have a leash or anything.  The nice gardeners decided that it was fine as long as he didn't stray too far.

We took the Boca de Charco trail, and our doggie rocked.  He walked on the boardwalk trail with us, very occasionally straying away to sniff something.  We ate lunch at the first bird blind (a structure where birders go in and there are slots to see out into a field or the like), and gave some to the dog.  Then we walked for about 1.5 hours, unfortunately not seeing much.  The land was beautiful though--young green pines going into mature pine-fern forests going into an ivy-goldfinch area encircling a bridge and dry stream.  Then there was a copse of spread-out pines before a wide expanse of long, golden grasses, where we saw a few Crested Larks.

We turned around at a bird blind in the field, and walked unhindered back to town.  We arrived in El Rocío at 4:30, the doggie still following us.  We were starving, so we chose the closest restaurant to us, that had an excellent view of the "lake."  We went around back to avoid leaving our doggie, and he begged at other tables rudely as we stuffed ourselves.  Delicious food!!!  People really enjoyed the dog, which was good.

We said goodbye to the dog, who had been such a source of joy for the entire day.  He laid in the dirt road, catching some sun as we drove away on a bus back to the hotel.

The dry lake

Really cool lichen

The maritime horse indigenous to this area in Spain only

The female Woodchat Shrike eating seeds

Our dog for the day!

La Rocina visitor's center

He's such a good boy

Bread and and tiny crunchy bread things as the appetizer. . .

. . .Fried eggs, jamon serrano, and fries for the entree. . .

. . .and chocolate mousse cake for dessert!

He is trotting home I hope

Day 141: Spain Day 34

Monday, October 10, 2016

The alarm went off at 7, and my tired body said no.  I got up anyway, then went out to the balcony.  I saw that a) I couldn't see the ocean because it was still pitch black outside, meaning it wasn't time to get up yet and bird, and b) the stars were jaw-dropping.  I looked up and saw Orion with myriad stars making up his body, and the first glimpses of the starry ocean that was the Milky Way.  Satisfied with my astrological knowledge of approximately six constellations, I went to bed until 8.

We got dressed groggily and went out to the boardwalk to get to the beach.  The oceans was gorgeous in the sunrise: silver and glassy, with tiny waves crashing onto the sand.  Small shorebirds caught our attention, skittering on the beach, and we identified them as most likely being Little Stints.  As we walked the beach, passing into El Coto Doñana, the dunes melted into gold as the sun rose; the ocean from bits of silver to licks of fire.  We saw Common and Herring Gulls, a Raven who was curiously on the beach, and a mysterious shorebird we couldn't identify.

At 9 we were ready for breakfast.  The downstairs free breakfast is amazing: a buffet of pastries, breads, meat and cheese and fruit slices, jelly, a literal table full of different bottles of olive oil, cereal, fruit, coffee, and juice.  So a lot of food.  On our way from the Matalascañas beach, we saw a sign for a trail from the beach of a 6.5 km hike going west on the outskirts of Matalascañas then to the beach.  Sounds great!  So we ate, packed lunch, and were off by 10:40.

 We walked through some Doñana habitat for a while without actually being in the fenced-off area.  It was primarily sand dunes and pines in this region.  During this part of the walk, we saw Azure-winged Magpies (a beautiful, large-ish bird with a long tail and brilliant blue on the wings), Crested Larks (small birds that are brown and stripey), Sardinian Warblers (adorable warblers with an inquisitive red eye and black cap), and a gorgeous Hoopoe (a striking medium-sized bird with zebra-like stripes on the wings, a beautiful crest, and a loooong, curved bill).  Then the landscape turned into a sidewalk next to the highway :(.  There were a lot of nice, small birds flitting in the small pines that acted as a buffer.  There was also a golf course where we saw tons of blackbirds, starlings, Crested Larks, a Hoopoe foraging, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, a couple of cute grebes (small waterbirds that dive underwater for up to 2 minutes), and a Gray Heron.

After that long stretch of sidewalk, we turned left toward the beach, with the town to our left and some natural area to the right.  We got to the beach in 15 minutes, and were pretty tired. We had eaten our lunches of jamon serrano sandwiches and chips a couple hours earlier, so now it was time for a nice cold drink.  Or ice cream.  We found ice cream first :), so contentedly ate waffles cones with cookies and cream ice cream for me, Kit Kat for Vanessa.  Then we sped-walked to the hotel in order to shower and eat dinner.  It only took us 1.5 hours.  We chilled for the rest of the evening and went to bed, planning on taking the bus the next day to go to El Rocío, the town with the dirt roads and horses and huge church with the Virgin of El Rocío.  There was a visitor´s center near there that had promising trails to walk on.  Sounded like a plan.

A really interesting roundabout statue

A local sculptor has sculptures like this one all around Matalascañas

There is a big rock in the middle of that view

I scream for ice cream!!

Day 129-140: Spain Day 23 - 33

Thursday, September 29, 2016 - Monday, October 9, 2016

This 10-day period was the nice, relaxing time in our grandmother's house where Vanessa and I found a few weekly things to do.  I spent a lot of time reading (I finished Rook the day after we got to Alhaurin), and watching obscure but really good movies and Spanish shows with my grandmother.  Vanessa was working a lot on writing scholarship applications for college. We are both going to NC State University next fall, and I received the Goodnight Scholarship last spring :).  It pays for most of college tuition, so I only have to pay $2,500 a year.  And there are absolutely amazing science internship and job prep opportunities that come with it.  I am so grateful that I got the scholarship.  Now, it's Vanessa's turn to get an awesome scholarship!  She is absolutely amazing, so I am confident that she will receive one.

Our grandmother took us to a charity clothing store the first full day of our stay.  The owner of the "ABC Ropero" is Sarah, an extremely nice British woman who speaks Spanish very well.  We talked to her about volunteering, and she told us that she needed help on Fridays.  So, the two Fridays during this period we went to the ropero for three hours and helped sort clothes.  The clothes either have stains and thus go to the weight bags (a company in northern Africa pays money per kilo and used the worn clothing for rags and towels), the ropero, which is the free area for beneficiaries, or the sale area.  The other volunteers are so nice.  There's my best friend Mari Carmen, an absolutely fantastic woman who treats us like her children and talks to us about the Andalusian jizz that we all have; Karla, the very nice Belgian woman who works flawlessly in the ropero section; and Sarah of course.  There are some women who filter in and out volunteering too.  I have really enjoyed my time helping this wonderful charity, and it's so rewarding as people come in and exclaim about the beauty of a piece of clothing or the perfect toy for their child.

Another awesome activity that Vanessa and I did those two Fridays was the language exchange program in a bar called Carpe Diem.  Carpe Diem is literally a thirty-second walk from our grandma's house, and the language learning building that the program derives from is called e-Speak.  The owner David, is a British guy who speaks perfect Spanish and French.  He is so nice, and he introduced us to the dozen or so other people at the first meeting.  We talked in a mix of Spanish and English with people there that first day with the younger people there: Spanish Victoria and Lea, British Lydia (the daughter of David and his wife Jenny), and Lydia's Argentinian boyfriend Ramiro.  It was so fun just talking, and meeting people our age!  The next week was even more fun,because it was the trivia day.  We split into five groups with each group having at least one Spanish, French, and English/American person each.  The trivia questions were so random and sometimes really difficult, but it was great.

The Saturday, October 8, before Vanessa and I left to have another big adventure, we went with our awesome neighbors to El Torcal.  El Torcal de Antequera is a nature reserve about an hour away from Alhaurin.  The habitat is karst: limestone created millions of years ago that are very susceptible to weathering by water or wind.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Vanessa and I had been there before, but it was great to be with our friends.  Isabel is the wonderful mother, Dani the 15-year old quiet but funny boy, and Celia the joyful, talkative, adorable 9-year old girl.  We grew very close with them two years ago; we spent most of our time playing outside with them.  But now it's not summer: it's fall, thus school :(.  So they don't have free time until weekends.  I really enjoyed "hiking" with the three of them, walking pretty slowly on the rocks, admiring the views, V and I birding, and stopping for 15 minutes at a time to pick the delicious, wild blackberries from the enormous bushes scattered throughout the trails.  We hiked for a couple of hours on a 40-minute stretch of trail, but hey, we had fun and enjoyed each others' company, along with the company of the awe-inspiring rivuleted karsts.   We hiked back to the visitors' center and ate lunch at a sunny picnic table: tortilla de patata (Spanish omelette), jamon serrano sandwiches, chips, and water.

October 9th was the first day of Vanessa's and I's adventure to El Coto Doñana.  Doñana is the largest national park in Spain, and an incredibly popular spot for birds, thus birders.  September is the best month the last half of the year, because that´s when the bulk of birds migrate from Europe to Africa.  The spring is apparently the absolute best time to see migrating birds; this time from Africa to Europe.  Our grandmother´s friend Paco who does some plumbing and carpentry work for her, has been to Doñana several times, and he suggested El Gran Coto Hotel.  So, we booked a room in El Gran Coto for five days, from October 9 to October 14th.  Paco drove us the 2.5 hours there, and we made a pit stop in El Rocío, a famous town made for horses and their owners: all of the roads are dirt, and there are the wooden fences to tie up a horse all around the town.  It was surreal and awesome to see a modern car next to a horse, with the car driver and horse rider having a normal conversation.  The main reason El Rocío is so famous is because of the chapel they have honoring the Virgin of Rocío.  Many people make pilgrimages to this chapel in time for the summer Virgin of Rocío ritual:
people march with the statue of her around the town.  There´s also a separate house for candles/offerings to the virgin.  It was cool to see culturally.  South of the town is a part of the maritime area of Doñana.  It´s supposed to be a lake essentially, but right now it´s dry.  The flamingos and waterfowl come once the rains do, and there hasn´t been a drop of rain here in months.

So, we got to the hotel in Matalascañas, and the view from our room is unbelievable.  We are looking at the Atlantic Ocean in all of its glittering vastness (okay not all of it, but you get my drift...haha I made a pun :).  Doñana is on our left, the beach in front, and Matalascañas on our right.  It was the beginning of an amazing trip.

Day 128: Spain Day 22

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Paco woke up at 5:30 am.  Our alarm was set for 6, but we were woken up at 5:53.  We quickly got ready, already having packed the night before, then ate some yogurt and bread and fruit.  Paco left 20 before we actually had to leave to "get the car ready."  Really he was just ready to go haha.
 As we drove, Paco started to discuss with us how getting ready early was so much better than being late.  When early, you can drink cafe con leche with your colleagues before the work day starts.  We parked in the underground deck once we got to the train station.  Paco parked backing up like many other cars, and we could just barely open the trunk.  He tried re-parking, and it was hilarious.  He repeatedly almost hit the car parked behind him, and mind you he was trying to park so that it would be easier to close the trunk.  I had to get him to stop a couple times to avoid a collision.  It was so funny seeing the opened-trunk car backing up and parking worse than it had been.  Eventually, and with much laughter from the three of us, Paco succeeded.

We had some bitter (for me, thus like straight sugar for the rest of the coffee-drinking world) cafe con leche in the Renfe train station, and then walked to the line of checking baggage.  Paco waited until the train left before leaving, bless him.  He always waits until the train or plane leaves before leaving his family member--what if there is a delay or cancellation?

The ride was good: all I did was listen to music and read Rook.  We ate potato chips out of a big-ass bag that V noisily opened in, of course, a particularly silent part of the trip.  We laughed really hard.  Ab workout for the day: check.

We got to Málaga around 2:30.  Abuelita ( my grandmother), and Chari, her sister and our great-aunt, were there waiting for us.  After the great greeting, Chari went to her house in Málaga proper while the other three of us went to the bus station to take a bus to Alhaurín de la Torre.  Alhaurín is the town where my grandmother lives in a beautiful house.  We ate pollo asado (roasted chicken) bought from this awesome, tiny pollo asado place, immediately upon getting home.  Full, we chilled, read, watched a comedic show that I absolutely love called La Que Se Avecina, and a game show called Ahora Caigo.  Bed was early, as I was exhausted from the long day.

This adorable doggie is Lili.  She is the newest of the two-dog, four-cat pet family :)