Last night we had to do some soul searching about what direction to go next. When we arrived 6 weeks seemed like a long time, but as we have progressed thru the trip we find we have to keep making hard decisions about next steps. After some discussion we decided to head back almost to Seville to hit some of the coast line and to visit Gibraltar. We picked a place called Rota to pick up the coast because Ron knew of it from the US Navy base located there.
We woke up to a pretty steady rain, but by the time we got organized to leave the rain had let up. The freeway system in Spain is quite good, and unlike France largely free. It was mostly developed in the 90’s and 00’s. As a consequence the old national roads which are two lanes and generally of good quality are almost empty except for local traffic. The gps for reasons unclear decided to route us most of the day on one of the national roads instead of the Autovia (freeway). We actually enjoyed it as we were able to see more of the countryside, and some of the White Pueblos of Andalusia.
We arrived in Rota and swung by the Naval Base to do some shopping. After that we headed to an aire located 100 yards from the beach. Ton whipped up a late lunch early supper. After we were done Ton declared siesta time for a couple of hours.
In the evening we walked down the beach towards town. It was a nice beach, and in addition to the ocean we could see the port of Cadiz in the distance with a cruise ship and a large ferry entering. The most interesting thing were several large man made rock walls that went into the ocean. They were obviously quite old, Ron guessed they were used for fishing and he was right. They are the fish corrals of Rota, and are a National Monument in Spain. They date back to the Roman times and were used until the 1950’s. They are designed so that they trap fish at low tide making it easier to catch them.
