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Published: November 20th 2023
July 19
th - Another day, another destination to get us closer to Cartagena. This time we left Calpe at 9:40am – a treat to not have such an early start as we aren’t going that far today. We decided to stop at Villajoyosa as it looked like it had a good marina and it was in a good location for the remainder of our travels along the Spanish coast working our way west. We checked into Club Nautico Villajoyosa and found it was 53 euro per night ($57) and that included electricity and water. We weren’t sure if we’d want to stay another day, but decided to check. We asked at the marina about extending for a day and found out that they can only promise one day at a time so told us we’d have to check back at 9:30AM the next day to see if they have room for us for that night. Quite the crazy system as it doesn’t make it easy for planning. They also required a 50 euro deposit for their key for the showers. Guess they definitely want the keys back as most places, if they do require a deposit which not all do, it
is about 5 or 10 euro. With not knowing if we can stay tomorrow, as a safety net we made a booking for the next day at another marina with a cancellation policy of before 10AM. Will definitely be at this marina office at 9:30 AM to see where we will be staying tomorrow night as we’d rather stay here location-wise due to the weather predictions.
We needed a few things at the grocery store, but with the high temperatures and humidity we checked and found out that the stores are open until 10PM so left the boat about 7pm to find someplace to eat and then go shopping. The name of this town means Village of Joy. This town is known for its more colorful, traditional fishermen’s homes and can be found pictured on many post cards and in ads for this area. We wandered along the waterfront and through the narrow alleyways where these fishermen’s homes were. As for traditional, guess we were expecting small cottages, but they are 2 story structures that are right next to each other lining narrow alleyways. It definitely is “joyful”, color can make you smile!
Many places along the waterfront
only had outside dining so looked to find some place that might have AC as it was still quite warm in the evening. The high humidity is what really gets us here. In doing a google search for a restaurant we saw from the photos we knew at least they had dining inside so hiked up the hill to town. Seems that all towns here are “UP HILL”. We found the restaurant which served Lebanese food – we are in Spain, but why not Lebanese as we both enjoy it. As soon as we saw the restaurant and saw that the door was closed, we figured that was a good sign about the AC. They did have AC running as another couple we met there had asked them to turn it on. The AC didn’t work the best, but it sure was better than outside and the owner did keep trying to make it work with moderate success and a bonus was the food was very good as well.
You can tell we are in Spain now (and not in a Moslem country) as there were three (3) complete aisles of wine and liquor in the grocery store. We
will have to spend some time in the future investigating the Spanish wines – for now we are still trying to finish the stock we still have on the boat. Unfortunately, the store we went to didn’t have many of the things we needed so will have to try again another day.
One thing that really surprised us was that Villajoyosa is also home of the chocolate company, Valor. It started in 1881 in another town even though the family that started it had been chocolatiers decades before that. After getting back to the boat we did a google search on it to find out more as we didn’t take the time to go to their museum or factory. This heat and humidity definitely have cut down on our explorations of areas. We found that as the demands for chocolate grew, improvements were made to the production with the addition of electricity in 1935 and hiring of non-family members to help increase yield, they built a factory here in Villajoyosa. They continued to make improvements as well as never stopped using cocoa butter instead of vegetable fats like some other companies did. If you recognize the name, it may
be because Valor set up a USA division in 2002. When we were at the grocery store, we did buy a bar of Valor chocolate to try. Everyone has the chocolate they like the best and let’s say Valor did not make it into that category for us personally, but you can try for yourself! At first it was a surprise to see the long history of chocolate making in this area of Spain, but then you only had to think of the long history of trade done by sea which brought in the cocoa bean.
That evening when we got back to Tsamaya, Bob tried to get the 110V electrical system working in order to use our transformer to run some 110V fans that we have. Unfortunately, after a few tries it still didn’t work so stopped working on it about midnight and he will try again tomorrow.
The next morning, we were still struck by the heat and humidity. At 9:30 AM we found that we could stay at the marina another night so we just called the other marina and asked if we could change the date of our reservation by a day – they
gave us an answer very quickly that was fine with them so we know where we will be tonight and tomorrow. With the temperature being high already we headed to a different grocery store right away. With it being so hot, we stopped a few times during the day to get a cold drink and sit in an air-conditioned area. We even lingered in the grocery store and stopped into a couple other stores (if they had AC). We got the groceries we needed and stopped for lunch as it was already about 2pm. By eating our larger meal out, we won’t have to cook on the boat as we don’t want to start the stove in this heat.
We left Villajoyosa at 6:55AM and found that as soon as we got out of the protection of the marina there was quite a terrible surge with 4-foot waves and 13 knots of wind. It wasn’t going to be a long day, so dealt with the rolly conditions. It is always “interesting” when the winds aren’t that high, but the surge comes from a different direction which is not the most comfortable way to sail. By 12:15 pm we were
safely in the marina at Club Nautica Santa Pola and will stay here two nights due to the weather predictions. The biggest danger getting into the marina and winding our way through to our slip were all the kayaks, windsurfers and dinghy sailors within the marina itself! The office is upstairs from the Clubhouse which looked quite exclusive with quite a nice restaurant attached. The staff here were excellent and more than willing to help. The facilities are well taken care of – quite impressive. We did notice when walking through the parking lot that there were a number of Jaguars, Porsches, BMWs and numerous other high-end cars. It is obvious that this Club is an active one as you always saw people picking up their vessel – either kayaks, rowing scull or the club dragon boat.
With the heat that everyone is experiencing, southern Spain is no exception. As I’ve mentioned before we typically don’t leave the boat in the evenings until about 7 or 8pm to find a place for dinner and then take our evening walk around the town. The first night we broke with this however as found out that there is a castle in
the middle of town that also houses a historical museum which closes at 7pm. I was able to convince Bob to leave the boat at 5:30 as it was only a 15-minute walk to the castle and museum. It turned out to be worth going out early. It was a small museum, but the exhibits were well labeled in both Spanish and English which made it quite enjoyable. When we finished our tour of the museum, we saw a sign for happy hour until 8pm. We typically don’t have a drink before dinner, but we treated ourselves tonight. After enjoying the drink however, we realized that we hadn’t eaten much during the day so we definitely needed some food in us as soon as possible. Fortunately, we stumbled upon a small Mexican restaurant, Ojo de Agua, and had a delicious meal – just what the doctor ordered!
Staying here a second day gave us a chance to get a few things done – Bob changed the oil in the engine as it was needed and I did two loads of laundry. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the washer was only 2 euros and the drier the same.
That is the least expensive we’ve ever seen it! We hadn’t done laundry in a while, so decided to do two loads. That sounded like a good idea, but found that after 90 minutes in the drier, the clothes were not dry at all. Put it in for another 90 minutes and finally they dried. There was quite a line of people doing laundry this same day so having a drier that didn’t work well, didn’t help the situation. The second load of wash was sheets so this time we bypassed the drier and just hung them out on lines to dry. Looked like many others in the marina were doing the same.
It was good to get a few “housekeeping” chores done before heading to Cartagena next. We spent the next part of the day sitting in front of fans as there wasn’t a breeze at all to help cool things down. No cooking on the boat again this night so out we went again at 8pm. We were going to try some place new, but we both turned to each other pretty much at the same time and said we both enjoyed the Mexican restaurant so much,
why not go back, so we did. When we walked in the door all of the staff recognized us and we sat at the same table. We did at least order different main dishes and were pleased again. They didn’t have a wide menu, but everything was freshly made – we actually could see them cleaning out the avocados regularly and making guacamole up fresh for each order that came in. The rest of the dishes made were that way as well. Quite a lovely find!
Nearby there is a salt pan with a small museum about the processing of salt as well as numerous walking trails to observe the numerous birds here. We would have loved to have gone, but with the heat, we knew there wouldn’t be any shade out there and it wasn’t worth doing this time around. We have been to a couple of salt pans before so felt comfortable missing this attraction here.
The next morning, July 23
rd we left at 7AM with Cartagena our designation for the day. The winds were fine, but the surge was huge and of course hitting on the beam which made you roll from side to side
making for an uncomfortable ride for most of the trip. The surge seems to be quite common here in the Med (at least for this time of year and in this area). After we were able to change direction some, things settled down more so we were treated to a much more comfortable journey which we were hoping for our last of the season for us. We noticed that fish farms are quite prevalent along this coast and were quite active. Not sure what type of fish they are as we asked in one of the towns and no one we asked seemed to know. One thing that we are seeing here are lots of large brown jellyfish – never have seen so many in one place. It almost appeared as if we were going through “rivers” of jellyfish. With the increase of water temperature, we have definitely seen an increase in the number of jellyfish.
We made it to our destination for this season, Yacht Marina Cartagena by 4:15PM. It definitely is a nice feeling to know that we made it here with days to spare of our 90-day limit within the Schengen Zone. One bonus we had
on arrival was not only that the marineros are very helpful and full of useful information, but our friends, Dawn and Joe from SV Pixie Dust arrived here before us so they already knew the “lay of the land” so a great resource of information for us. Dawn met us at our slip to say hello and we agreed to meet up later when a little cooler! They were going to be leaving shortly so we made sure to have a couple of meals out with them before they left. Always great when we cross paths again with friends we have made in other locations.
One thing that we did want to do before we left the boat for the winter was to turn the boat around so we have our bow “out” and stern “in”. One reason for this is that it is actually easier to get off the stern as we can “walk our plank” making it much better for carrying things on and off the boat (such as luggage which we will be doing soon when we fly back to the US). We also knew that we would be putting up our sun shade before leaving
the boat which means lots of lines crossing back and forth, further hampering our ability to go off the boat at the bow.
We explained to the marina staff that Tsamaya doesn’t like to back up very well as our prop is not in the center of the boat, but off to the side. Don’t get me wrong, we have definitely backed up as well as backed into slips before, but definitely prefer not doing it. We saw that a boat was coming in without a workable engine and that one of the marina staff members in a dinghy was able to maneuver it around corners as well as back the boat into its slip. When we saw how professionally he did this, we found that he would be able to help us as well. He came over to our boat and he was a great assistance in allowing us to accomplish the goal of going into the slip stern first. Now we can get working on what needs to be done for leaving the boat for a period of time unattended.
We tried to get off the boat almost every day (make that evening!) to walk
around and get oriented to Cartagena, the winter home for Tsamaya. Right away you see that there are still remains of city walls, a Roman Amphitheatre and various forts/castles. We figure with the heat and humidity; we will save exploring them when we return to Spain in cooler weather. Our plan is to return to the US shortly, then in the winter we will return to Spain to escape some of the winter in upstate NY in the US.
The next few days we worked on pulling out the sunshade, sorting through things to take back to the US and just the normal activities of everyday life. We decided that maybe it would be good to take a couple of days and go on a trip to see some other place in Spain. We still have some time left before our flight back so I quickly did some checking and randomly pick “Toledo” to visit. Why not?! We love train travel so once I found that we could get from Cartagena to Toledo, found a place to stay centrally located in the city, it was coming together as a definite. One of our outings as a result was to
walk to the train station in Cartagena to see about buying tickets. I typically book train travel quite easily other places we have been, but was not finding this to be the case here for some reason. Also, as we had not walked to the area where the train station was decided it was a good enough reason to take a walk in that direction and buy the tickets. When we started the walk up the hill toward the station it didn’t seem too bad, but again the humidity really hits you and does not make for as pleasant an outing as I had hoped. We came upon a place that on the outside of the building said it was the bus and train station so we stopped there. We went there and found out that we were not in the right station. Surprisingly, there are two train stations in Cartagena. No one really spoke English very well so we are guessing that this one may be for a local train and the other station is for longer distance trains – not sure, but that is our guess for now. We will have to be sure to clarify sometime. As
The Centella House Built Betwen 1927-1930
for the owner of a large fish canning factoryfor now, we are glad we did walk up here and found this out. The train station we needed was just a little further. When we got closer to the train station, we saw that there was a Lidl grocery store so that was a bonus to find as we have found them to be a great place to shop within Europe.
The train station itself is one that was built between 1906-1907 and has many of the beautiful details remaining inside. The information and ticket area were within the station in a section by itself. When we opened the doors, the AC was amazing! Bob was a happy camper and told me I could take as long as I needed to ask as many questions as possible when buying the tickets as he could sit in the waiting area very comfortably! I had read that there is a card you can purchase to get a discount on your tickets as a senior citizen over 60 years old. I asked about it and found that it only cost 6 euros and is good for 1 year so purchased that which took some additional time (Bob was happy with that!)
In fact, as we needed to have two different tickets to make this journey it took more time than I would have thought, but we had no where else we were pressed to go. He finished printing out our tickets actually after their closing time but he very kindly worked an extra 20 minutes to get this accomplished. I was glad we didn’t decide to come to the train station any later in the day as didn’t realize they closed quite as early as they did. Mission accomplished so we stopped at the Lidl’s and found they were closed – guess, that will be another day’s outing.
The Underwater Archeology Museum is right next to the marina so we decided to visit. We were pleasantly surprised that the day we went the admission was free – what a bonus! It is not a large museum but we were impressed with how well laid out the displays were and very thankful for both Spanish and English signage. There have been many vessels that shipwrecked along this coast line due to a number of reasons from storms, poor navigation or battles. A large part of the exhibit talks about two Phoenician
The Garden Created From Plants Brought Back
from business trips for the Lloret & Llinares Co vessels that had sunk near Cartagena. The wrecks date from 650 BC. The vessels were found in 1988, but one wasn’t excavated and recovered until 1993-1995 while the other one was studied between 1999-2000. The second one was better preserved and they were able to build a structure over it to help protect it while it remains underwater. Much of the cargo was brought to shore and are on exhibit in the museum.
The exhibit explained that with explorations and archeological research one on sunken ships, it tells us much more than just about the physical structure of the vessels themselves. They are definitely providing more details on the construction methods used during that time. With the addition of the artifacts found on the ships, it also provides information on the goods that were being traded at that time in this area of the Mediterranean, as well as an insight into the standard items needed onboard for the daily activities such as cooking. From bones that they found it indicated that one of the crews last meals was lamb and the grinding stones were used to ground their own grain for porridge or bread. The items being traded provided
details about the origin for the goods giving more details on the trade routes at the time.
The second vessel, Mazarron II, is considered to be the oldest wreck from the western Med and the best preserved. The problem is that it is in shallow water so we did learn that they are considering raising it to the surface for better conservation as they are concerned with damage that could be caused by the various violent storms in this area. They are in the midst of planning this operation and actually hope to accomplish this by sometime in 2024.
For a small museum, it had a wealth of information laid out in a very organized and logical manner – well worth some time to visit (and in the summer the bonus was the AC was working well).
This brings us to August 1
st. The next day we headed to Toledo so will tell you about our travel there in the next blog entry.
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dolores higareda
non-member comment
Wow! Spain
One of these days hope to get to Spain. You are constantly on "an adventure"! That is wonderful. Be well. We are eating leftover turkey and its still yummy!