The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Spaghetti Westerns

After our adventures on the farm, we headed East to Almeria by bus. The change in scenery was quite dramatic, with the seamingly endless blockade of beachfront hotels and resorts finally giving way to smaller villages and eventually some coastal cliffs.

Almeria and the sorrounding area is mostly famous for being used as the movie set for many Spaghetti Westerns (Western movies made very cheaply in the 60s and 70s), this being the main reason for us traveling here. So in that vain we´re going to present The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Almeria:

Firstly the Ugly. Although the city centre seems to be fairly nice, although slightly outdated in architecture, and has a vibrant cafe culture, the city surrounding the core streets is quite poor. Many buildings seem to have been under construction and stopped and there are entire areas where trash is literally flowing out of the houses. Nobody seemed particularly disturbed by this though.

Now the Bad. So finally the time had come to visit the sets of the westerns, so we hoped on a bus and were taken about 30 minutes out of the city. As the bus pulled away and we were left in an empty carpark with western music pumped through it, we got the feeling that all was not well in 'Mini Hollywood'. We walked into the corral of empty western streets and found ourselves surrounded... by school children. So we watched the midday extravaganza and left more than a little disappointed and heart broken that such an institution as the spaghetti western could be cheapened in this way.

But it's not all bad. After wandering through the maze of Almerian streets we came across the Alcazaba (fortress). The security guard at the gate mistook us for Austrians instead of Australians and as members of the EU we were let in for free. The confusion of the journey to the Alcazaba worked in our favour, as we had the immaculate gardens and amazing ancient architecture of this place almost to ourselves...we think the other tourists may have given up looking for it! This really was a hidden gem, and we were grateful in the end that our trip to Almeria was not completely in vain.

So after our spirits were ignited once again we prepared to continue our journey of Andalusia. We still had 3 cities to see in Southern Spain and 100's of kilometres to travel.

Next up... Granada, Sevilla and Tarifa.

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