2016-2017 Gap Year: 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.