Swallowed Whole?

---

Today we decide to get a glimpse of tourist-central Costa del Sol with a quick twenty minute train ride south-west down the coast to Torremolinos. I was a bit skeptical about this exercise - the whole place just looked like a mass of ugly high rise hotels from the bus on the way back from the Caminito del Rey a couple of days ago, but it’s clearly very popular so we decide it’s worthy of a second look. And it does indeed look a lot more attractive close up. We get off the train and make our way through cute alleyways lined with tourist shops, and then on down some steep slippery steps past yet more tourist traps onto the Playa la Caracola.

We thought sunlounges might be in short supply here, but no, we’re quickly offered a pair about halfway back in the pecking order. And we even manage to score a thatched “umbrella”; they’re the ones that are held down by blocks of concrete so they don’t go into orbit when the wind gets up … and ours has even got a cardboard cutout of a palm tree on top of it. We’re not quite sure exactly what this adds, but it looks very fancy nonetheless. OK so the downside is that we’re right next to a busy pedestrian walkway, and if we still want to be in the shade in a few hours our sunlounges will need to be in the middle of the walkway, which could potentially get a bit messy. There are a ridiculous number of people here, and it looks to be just as crowded for as far as we can see along the beach in both directions.

I head in for a dip. It’s a lot different to the El Palo beach we went to a few days ago - the water’s much cooler, it gets deep really quickly, and there are waves. Despite the latter there don’t seem to be any lifeguards on duty, but we do however spot a helicopter prowling overhead. Issy asks me if it’s looking for sharks. A fellow blogger told me overnight that the eight metre monster that was seen prowling the waters off Malaga a few days ago was indeed likely to be a toothless Basking Shark. I was feeling quite comfortable with that explanation until they added that that particular species catches its prey by swimming around with its mouth open. At eight metres I wouldn’t have thought it would have too much trouble swallowing one of us whole, which could potentially be quite a slow death. I’m suddenly thinking it might be preferable to be chomped in half by a real shark, one with teeth; that’d surely be over much more quickly. Time to head back to the safety of my sunlounge I think.

We read that until the 1950s Torremolinos was a quiet fishing village, but it then became the first Costa del Sol tourist destination to really take off. According to the ever-reliable, in the 1960s and 1970s it attracted “intellectuals, hippies, bohemians, artists, aristocrats (and) personalities from the jet-set“ which “created a liberal, permissive and cosmopolitan environment that set it apart from other areas of the Costa del Sol”.

The range of proportions of skin on display here is quite broad. It seems to extend from about 10% - that would be the Muslim woman in full burkini leaving only her face, hands and feet exposed - up to roughly 98% - there seem to be quite a few more examples up at that end of the range, topless young ladies in g-strings, not that I was taking all that much notice.

We’ve noticed that stag and hen parties seem to be quite a thing here - brides-to-be wearing sort of backwards facing veils accompanied by “friends”, often in uniform. I saw a stag party back in Malaga a few nights ago where the groom-to-be was dressed up as one of the Super Mario brothers. His “mates” were all armed with water pistols, and I think they were trying to shoot him … and they might have succeeded too if only their aim wasn’t quite so alcohol affected … lots of innocent bystanders seemed to be getting caught in the crossfire.

Back in Malaga and we head off in search of our final meal. We’re going to be very sad to be leaving tomorrow. Issy says that Malaga has now replaced San Sebastián as her favourite Spanish destination; she even muttered something about wanting to live here. And it’s hard to disagree, well aside perhaps from the bit about living here - perfect weather, compact historic centre complete with ancient edifices, fantastic food, good beaches within easy reach, great vibe; what’s not to like.

---