Almonds and Olives

---

14 -15th November

Pensicola
We finally got to go swimming and spend the day on the beach. We got the skim board out and made Mum laugh. We made dribble castles (not very successfully). Our family game of soccer turned inot another riot. We all got sunburnt but not by nz standards.

Everyone went swimming except mum and apart from the surgers in full wetsuits we were the only ones in the water. Come 1 o´clock we were the only people on the beach. Everyone came out again at about 3.30.

Our favourite parts
Blake- the beach was cool and I caught my first fish but ANton chucked it away.
Mason - the old town was my favourite because all the houses were built onto the rocks and it looked cool
ANton - I loved watching all the fishing boats come in in the afternoon and the birds swarming around them. THe all the old ladies sitting down mending the nets.
Dad - my favourite thing about Pensicola is that we stayed there for free and we didn´t get broken into. Three nights free accomodation. It was nice to find a real spanish fishing village.

16th Calatyud

We had planned to camp by a lake tonight but unfortunately the camp ground was closed so we ended up in Calatyud. I´m sure there´s things to do here but we´ve spent the afternoon cracking open and eating almonds. There were field upon field of almonds and olives on the roads here. THe colours have changed from the green of orange trees to the red soil and orange of the almond trees.

17th Tudela - Villafranco

Yesterday was a bright blue sky and this morning it´s just like a Hauriaki Plains fog. It was freezing last night. It was the first night of the whole trip the kids zipped up their sleeping bags, wrapped their blankets around them and stayed like that all night.

We drove to Tudela this morning in the search of information. Navarra (area) is beautiful so we wanted to know more about it.

Had lunch in Tudela. They didn´t speak a word of english and our spanish is extremely limited. I managed to order the kids a hot chocolate with churros which is strips of deep fried pastry to dunk in them. In the ended the waiter understood that we wanted something to eat so he just brought us food. We ended up with bowls of soup full of beans. DElicious. Then a plate of baked chicken and another of lamb shanks. The meal was delicious. We tipped the waiter.

Our next adventure was to a desert. Gareth was desperate for some exercise. It was a blue sky but extremely windy. We parked Hugo and ran 3.6 kms down a rough bumpy track inot a head wind. The scenery was strange. We had driven through fields of almonds and olives and today it felt like we were in a desert of the movies. It was bareen and surrounded by white hills. We ran out to Castildetierra. It is eroded to virtually nothing. It is simply a hill with rocks on the top - barely balancing there.

We dove from there to a lovely tidy camp ground with a restaurant and a bar. The bar was warm, with good beer and red wine. They served the drinks with roasted, salted almonds. We stayed there for several hours eating and drinking. Fantastic.

---