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Couple of mares with new foalsP1150961
Stallion being shown with her needlework, books, and a movie on TV.
We got up this morning and went to the dining room for breakfast. After the past 15 days cruising, the staff of waiters has been reassigned to different venues and the new crew seemed to be learning the ropes – the service was nice but noticeably slower this morning. The Eggs Benedict and Omelets were just a tasty though. Then Janet went to the new location for Knitters & Natters (now in the Crooner’s Bar) and spent the morning with about 8 needle friends. David went to the “port lecture presentation” on Cartagena, just to see what else there is – in case we come back still another time. One of the available excursions is a trip to Murcia where we went with the Sieberts in 2010. The pictures looked a lot like how David remembered from the first trip. Our ship arrived in port at 11:15 this morning (45 minutes early), so those folks who were going ashore independently were out of the way when the excursions left the ship. It was cloudy in the morning but the skies cleared by the P1150985
Horses running around the "track" around the pasture time we got to Cartagena, and the temperature was in the middle 70 during the afternoon. David’s tour started with a 30-min drive around town and he saw a number of sights from the bus. The guide told him there are roughly 330 days a year when it is sunny, so not much rain. This is an agricultural area and they call themselves the “Orchard of Europe” because they export a lot of food across Europe. 70%!o(MISSING)f what they grow is exported around Europe. Apparently McDonalds has designated lettuce from the province of Murcia (including Cartagena) as the only place to furnish lettuce for any of their European restaurants. However with so much sunshine they have very little rain, so they have to irrigate all their crops. To get water, back in the 1970s King Juan Carlos decided to build a massive canal from the Madrid area to this region (approximately half way across the country), which is how they get most of their water. David’s guide said the price of water here is the most expensive anywhere in Spain.
Cartagena was originally settled by the Carthaginians about 400 BC, which is where it got P1160005
Horses settled down inside the pasture its name. The Romans took over for 500 years and built lots of building (some of which are still able to be visited). Then the Moors and the Crusaders started battling here, and then there were lots of wars until Spain basically got itself organized with a monarchy in the 14
th or 15
th century. There’s lots of history which we are skipping, but basically this region has been one of Spain’s primary naval ports (military and shipping) since the 18
th century. Somewhere in the 1700s King Charles III built a high wall (in many places it is still there) around the city to protect their fledgling ship building industry instead of building them in Cuba and sailing the new ships back to Spain.
The province has a population of about 1.5 million, with about 220K living in Cartagena. Approximately 110 cruise ships dock here each year, so tourism is also an important industry here. Also this is the only naval port (of 3) where they can dock their 4 submarines. That is much of what is behind the large wall described a few days ago – called Arsenal. Near the Arsenal is a larger than life P1160025
Oh dear - David inside the pasture with the horses bronze statue of a naked man, which is supposed to symbolize the suffering of the people who were attacked in the Madrid terrorist bombing – we don’t see the exact line of logic, but it is an eye-catching figure.
The bus went about 15 minutes out of town to a horse ranch where they raise Andalusian horses. These days they refer to them as “Spanish Pure-Bred Horses”. This particular ranch has about 150 horses. These pure bred horses are a product of breeding Iberian Horses with Arabian Horses back during the Moorish period, but they are “pure” from that point forward. There are major record tracking activities for the past 600 years documenting the stallion and mare for every horse they raise – INCREDIBLE. These days they place microchips in the foals, record the geology and take DNA samples from every horse which is born. There were 3 mares and 3 new foals (between 2 weeks and 4 days old) in a paddock nearby. We got up close to them and the baby horses were surprisingly stable in the walking (even running). But they aren’t very energetic and had to settle down P1160057
6 horses working together for a nap before too long. But it was pointed out that the baby horse’s legs are almost as long as the mothers’ – as the horse grows then most of that occurs in the body and not much more in the length of the legs.
First they brought out an 8 year old stallion which they refer to as the “factory”. Along with a couple of other stallions they sire all the new horses. These poor guys have to work really hard (6 days a week) to keep the factory producing new products. By a trick of science they are able to assure that there are many more females produced than males. Anyway, we were able to get up close to this very tame horse and 3 or 4 passengers actually mounted up on the horse (bareback) to pose for pictures. The rest of us settled for just petting the horse – it is extremely well behaved. Next they exercised many of the 150 horses by driving a couple of dozen around a track and then turning the rest loose in a nearby pasture. After they stopped running, we were able P1160064
Oh double dear - David petting the horse to get pretty close and take pictures. Eventually we could even walk out in the pasture with the horses if we did so in small groups. They said that every horse would have its own price, but depending upon many factor they would range from 20K euros to 100K euros. So there were several million euros of horse in front of us (and that did not include the main stallions).
We went back to the central ranch house and had food and drink. They provided a collection of cheeses and prosciutto hams with crackers, chips, breads with various toppings, olives (they grow their own), something called a Spanish potato omelet, and gazpacho soup, along with beers, wines (red and white), soft drinks, and water. When the visit was over, they gave everyone a home grown orange to take away with us. After the food we were shown a demonstration of how they train horses to work side by side. In the old days they were hooked to threshing machines and these horses walked in a large circle turning a wheel which ground the grain. The horses had to have been trained P1160094
Dancing Lady & Rider to work continuously without someone being with them the whole time. Now it is done just for demonstration and show purposes. Again we were able to get pretty close to see them.
Finally there was a demonstration of a lady down authentic Spanish dancing. They explained that this was not actually flamenco dancing, but something related which was representative of this region. In any case, the dance is usually performed with a man and a woman. In this case, the man and a horse (sometimes riding and sometime dismounted), and the woman danced in synch with them. She was on a platform and the horse danced around the perimeter on the ground. It did not do any jumping but did a lot of high stepping and holding the foot in the air under direction from the rider. It was pretty amazing. In addition to many photos, David also took a number of movies, but they just cannot e posted to the blog via our satellite internet. We left about 4:00 and came back to the ship. David dropped the backpack in the cabin and then went to P1160104
Dancing Lady and horse the bank to get some more euros (since we’ve been spending some and at least knew where this bank was). Then he cleaned up and was ready to get started with the evening events.
Janet had been enjoying a quiet Mother’s Day. She got nice emails from the US wishing her a happy day. She had a small lunch at the International Café and then watched a movie (called Burnt) in the cabin. She also got to read and do some needlework, and basically had a day off from David. It was quite restful for her. We went to the Clu-6 Lounge and they were having special Cranberry Mojitos to celebrate Mother’s Day, so we each had one along with some snacks. Then we went to the dining room and they gave us another Mojito. We each had a glass of wine with dinner, which was Surf & Turf as the main entrée. Janet had Veal Sweetbreads and David had Cold Apple Soup. We each had a bowl of the special pasta this evening. By the time we got to dessert Janet could not each any more food and David only had a small bowl of ice cream. Janet tried Amaretto in her evening coffee which David had some Kahlua.
We went back to the cabin and decided to skip the evening show (the same Welsh comedian we had seen a couple of weeks ago). So we are finishing the day with a little TV in the room and then hopefully going to bed early tonight. That’s about all for today.
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