11th January 2017. Cabos de Palos, Spain.

We woke to another nice day.  I was still feeling rough but spent a while people watching.  I never know what strange thing I’m going to see when I look out of this window and this morning was no exception.  Walking past the van was a man taking his cat for a walk on a lead.  It was a very well behaved cat, it didn’t pull on the lead at all.  I spent quite a long time watching the pair of them out for their morning constitutional (thank goodness) although the man did have to stand for ages on the hill while his cat just lazed in the shade of the undergrowth.

After I’d finished watching the cat man I decided it was time I got showered, not long after I’d got out there was a knock on the van door and I heard voices, it was our friends Kathryn and Alex along with Alex’s Mum.  They were on their way up to La Manga and thought they’d see if they could find this car park for future wild camping.  They recognised our van and came over for a quick chat.  I got dressed quickly but stood in the van and chatted through the doorway so as not to infect them with my germs.  We had a lovely chat with them before they carried on with their trip, it was such a nice surprise, we’d have missed them if I hadn’t been so slow getting ready this morning which would have been awful.

Not long after they’d left we got ourselves organised and went out for a walk.

This area has a lot of feral cats, it’s interesting to watch the hill beneath the lighthouse, where the cats slink around it, they pop out from the undergrowth and then disappear equally as quickly.  What I found especially surprising are the huge amount of birds in the same area, they must be constantly on their guard with the extreme threat of being cat chow!  On our walk up to the lighthouse we saw a flock of parakeets and numerous birds that I couldn’t recognise along with a kestrel (possibly) who sat and watched us from a ridge on the lighthouse.  He seemed to like it up there, he flew around the area for a while and then rested in the same spot again.  He had a beautiful face although I noticed the bird I was watching when we walked back down the hill made himself scarce extremely quickly when the kestrel took flight again.  It was all happening today, as we reached the parking area two trainer jets flew across the bay a few times.

In the evening we went for a walk round to the next bay as the sun streaked the sky with pinks and reds.  By the time we reached the bay the sun had set even further and was painted pink and dark blue and we were greeted by the sight of a full moon hanging in the pink sky.  I wish I had been able to capture it’s beauty but the moon looks quite tiny in my photos.  Across the tiny bay the sign for the restaurant had lit up, it was a bicycle festooned with fairy lights, it looked very pretty.

We were outside for ages as the moon continued to rise beside the lighthouse which was throwing its light across the water towards another smaller lighthouse in the distance and the lights from the buildings on the opposite shore twinkled like jewels.