Cats, flowers, and camper vans!

There are three things you find everywhere on the Cabo de Gata at the moment: the first are cats, the second wildflowers, and the third are camper vans. Cats, of course, you will find here all year round, whereas January and February seem to be the best time of year for wildflowers - also, almond blossom which has fully opened now. As for camper vans, in the summer I think they are more closely controlled and kept to the campsites, but now they are everywhere; on any piece of waste ground they can find, filling the village car parks, and even parking down at El Playazo and other beaches.

The majority of cats on the Cabo are among the most well-fed and sleek I have seen anywhere, possibly because of the amount of fresh fish here! In Rodalquilar, which is set 3 kms inland, they seem to live in a separate, if parallel, universe to the humans. They are friendly on the whole but not interested in people, going about their lives in relation to each other, occasionally agreeing to a stroke or a cuddle but seeming mostly rather bored by the human desire to make contact with them.

 There are exceptions - twice we have seen cats going for a walk with their humans; one walking around the olive grove with a man and a woman, and another walking down the main street with an elderly man. On our road there are just two (among many) who are sociable and enjoy it when we make a fuss of them.

In the fishing villages, Las Negras, La Isleta del Moro, San Jose,  the cats are a lot friendlier and the bars and cafes (especially, but not only, those on the seafront) all have an attendant cat or two going from table to table to share titbits with the customers.

We hadn't expected there to be so many wildflowers out, but they are everywhere in masses of stunning colour, along the side of the roads, all over the hillsides, the clifftops, even the beaches - on Monsul beach we found sand crocuses in vast numbers:

 By the sides of the road and in the meadows there are poppies, bermuda buttercups, daisies, and on the hills and the cliffs there are flowering thyme and rosemary, lavender, broom, asphodels - both common and white, bermuda buttercups, many kinds of daisies, succulents and cacti.  Here are just a few:

Bermuda buttercups:

Spectacular "common" asphodels which are certainly common here, coming up everywhere on the cliffs and the seashore:

Flowering broom:

One of the most iconic plants of Almeria province are the agaves, whose flower stalks can be as tall as trees! 

Finally, the almond blossom is spectacular at the moment:

The incursion of camper vans is another unexpected thing to find at this time of year.  There are campsites where they're supposed to stay, but as they have to pay for these many of them try to avoid it and park for free instead! I think there are more camper vans than usual this year because it has been such a terrible winter throughout Europe. While it has been colder here than I would have liked, it is still warmer and drier than anywhere else. Many of the camper vans carry plates from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, as well as Britain and Ireland. A few are Spanish but not many. They divide into two groups; the old shabby vans owned by young travellers (who we have christened the "alties") and the smart big comfortable ones owned mainly by the retired.  It seems rather mean of them to invade the car parks of these small villages, paying nothing for doing so and leaving the local townhall to pay for disposing of their rubbish, especially since this is such a poverty-stricken area.  I hope they contribute to the poor communities here by spending money in the village shops and bars!
One day we counted at least 20 parked in the car park at San Jose: