Jon & Julie's travels : Wind, Wheels & Whales (oh and a splash of Wine...!)

Hola,

We are still sunning ourselves here in beautiful Tarifa. It’s so nice here and unspoilt and isn’t at all touristy with hotels crammed along the coast which is partly because the beaches and dunes are in a protected nature reserve and also probably because it is so windy which is great for us for the kitesurfing but sometimes it would be nice to have an “on/off” switch as the last week it has just been relentless. We haven’t been able to have the awning out and cooking outside has been impossible and we are both exhausted from plenty of full-on kiting sessions, we must be getting old!! Thankfully the last few days the wind has dropped off so we have been able to get out on the mountain bikes and paddle boards for a change. We paddled up the Rio Jara again but further this time and as we were going along Julie said she saw a creature poke it’s head up and then on the river bank we saw things scuttling into the water and then realised that they were terrapins most of them were about the size of a cereal bowl so much bigger than those you see at home.

There are loads of mountain bike trails here too so we headed off the other afternoon up into the hills up towards one of the wind farms, again into a nature reserve area with loads of cows, sheep, goats & horses just roaming around. We came across a nice little stream for a photo opportunity but were later confronted by a rather large cow with huge horns who had come for a drink so we made a rather quick exit!!

We have also been exploring West along the coast too to see the dune at Valdevaqueros which is amazing, the road alongside is just pine trees and sand either side which we found out they have to clear weekly and from there you get an amazing view of the whole bay back towards Tarifa town. A little further round the West coast is Bolonia which is a smaller version of this bay with a smaller dune and some Roman ruins right on the beach, again very nice and unspoilt.

We went out on a boat trip whale & dolphin watching across the Strait of Gibraltar where you are guaranteed to see either whales or dolphins so they say. The trip was about 2 hours, an hour out into the Straits and then an hour back, it was as usual quite windy so there was quite a swell which Julie wasn’t that keen on but it settled down after a while. Common, Striped and Bottlenose dolphins live here all year along with Pilot Whales which are also part of the dolphin family and if you are very lucky Killer Whales & Sperm Whales can be seen at certain times of the year too. After about an hour the guys on the boat spotted something in the water through their binoculars so we headed towards them and the next minute all we could see were large black fins on the surface of the water, it was a pod of Pilot Whales. They were so close to the boat and quite big with a flat round head and they didn’t seem to bat an eyelid about the boat and as you can see from the pictures we were very close to them. The boat also had a glass hull so we were able to get pictures of them under the water too.

Then all of a sudden the boat headed off again as the crew had spotted something else in the distance, when we looked we could see water being spurted into the air from a much larger whale that was also visible on the surface but this time we approached carefully and could see the sheer size of it. It was a massive Sperm Whale which usually feed in deep dives of about an hour and then re-surface for about 10 minutes so we were really lucky to see it, after a while it arched it’s back and dived back under and I managed to capture it on my camera, it was an amazing experience.

I have been out on my surf board too but the moment I stepped foot in the water the swell seemed to double so it was hard going but it’s something I have been wanting to learn for a while so I will persevere with it as I don’t like things getting the better of me.