Caves & Chocolates

The weekend is here.  We slept in this morning and decided to pass on jogging.  Our legs needed a break.  Will probably do enough walking today anyway.

I had picked up a flyer on some caves about 1 ½ hour south of here.  We did the non-toll roads there.  It is so much prettier and interesting, driving thru the small towns and villages and not to mention cheaper on fuel, I hope.  The views driving up to the cave were spectacular, and once we arrived at the cave you could see from the mountains right through to the sea, I know the pictures will not do it justice, it was hazy and overcast today.  Actually today's weather high was the same here as home, +19, cold for here, warm for home.  We got to the caves which are called Cuevas del Canelobre\ around 11. On the way there we followed the same car for about 30 minutes.  It was pretty funny as we were sure we would lose him at every turn after we got off the main secondary road.  Going up to the caves, we drove by the largest greenhouse place we ever seen.  There were acres and acres of them.  Could not see what was being grown but sure lots of it.. The caves opened at 10:30.  You need to go in with a guide.  I think a father and son were the only ones  for the 10:30 tour.  We were the only ones  for the 11:30 tour until 11:25 when 3 cars pulled up with 10 Spaniards.  So much for our English only private tour.   It was almost like the movie lost in translation with Bill Murray when he goes to Japan.  A long explanation of something in Spanish gets translated in English in a few words.  Too bad but at least the guide could speak English and gave us enough to make it interesting.  Actually it was kind of nice not listening to the guide, it was so beautiful to just look around.  We were in the cave nearly one hour, lots of different shapes and forms to see.  We entered the cave nearly at the top, then went down over 200 steps to get to the bottom, then the climb back up. We nearly lost a couple of the Spaniards on the way back up, they really wanted to stop for a cigarette I think.  We had the option of walking up another 100 steps to the original entrance and we along with one of the Spaniards were the only ones that did it, not too exciting now, but it certainly must have been 100 years ago when the first person discovered this.  Only 5 caves out of the 100os that have been found so far in the Costa Blanca region are now opened to the public, they are spectacular to see, I had been to the one in Gibraltar last year, but Wendy had never been inside one.  This one is the largest in Spain and the pictures will not do it justice.

View from entrance to cave at Canelobre

 Inside cave, these pictures do not do it justice!

 

Original entrance

After the caves Wendy really wanted to go to the town of Villajoyosa, which is on the way home, and the home of a chocolate factory, wonder why she wanted to go here.  We arrived at 1:20 and the last tour for the day was at 1:00,  so we missed out on that.  But, I did ask the security guard if we could go into the shop and he gave us a badge and let us through.  Once nice thing about going in after all the tours they told us to eat as much of the chocolate samples as we wanted, we took full advantage. There were a few huge displays of chocolate carvings next to the shop, as well as the history of the plant which is over 130 years old, and this is all overlooking the plant floor so we were not allowed to take any pictures.  We did take a picture in the shop, the factory is Valor, the samples were very yummy, and we picked up a few bars as well.

Next we walked into town which we had seen in pictures was a very pretty costal town.  Like most places we have visited we had parked quite far from the main part and walked to where we wanted to go.  The beach here is very long, nice sand, and very pretty lined with many restaurants along a nice boardwalk.  We walked about 2 km to the other end of the beach to where old town is.  This is a very different old town that what we have seen before, tiny little streets, no cars at all, and the houses are all painted different  colours.  We spent a while just walking up and down these streets exploring, of course everything is built on a hill so you couldn`t really get lost, just head downhill and you will eventually hit the beach.  After exploring old town we went back along the beach and found a restaurant, it was quite late, maybe 3PM, but we had lots of chocolate in us to tide us over. 

Traffic circles always have something in the middle of them, we literally go through dozens of these a day when we are out touring around

Wendy's dream store, inside Valor chocolate factory

Villajoyosa, reminded us a little of St. John's NFLD with the coloured houses

Check out these kids playing in their "yard"

Poinsettia tree

Bar Lima was closed, unlike home where it is ALWAYS open, and like home you can get a takeaway drink, but the Wifi needs work!

Our first stop on our way home was Calpe.  Not a town we would probably stay in because of all the high-rises but it has a beautiful bay with a big rock sticking at one end.  Kinda shaped like the rock of Gibraltar but a lot smaller.  Beautiful beach here again and a lagoon on the back side of town.  As we were driving, we saw flamingos.  A quick spot to admire them.

Came across these flamingos on the drive today

City of Calpe with it's famous Penon rock formation

After Calpe, we followed a tiny shore road back to our apartment, stopping at some different viewpoints and towns we had not yet visited.  There are so many nice little towns along the way off these little roads.  We stopped a few times at lookouts.  Beautiful views and scenery.  We also stopped at 2 golf courses to have a look, one was a 9 hole that was expensive and didn`t look very nice, kinda like Wikiwak in Shediac, the other looked quite nice and is right outside our town, we may go tomorrow depending on how the day goes.  Wendy bought a new pair of golf shoes, so she was happy.

One of the golf courses we visited today, we may go golfing tomorrow

Driving range, this is what we need at Pine Needles, Doreen are you reading this???

Tonight we were tired so decided to head into town for some supper, planned in a pizza.  We walked along the whole beach front looking at the different restaurants and couldn`t decide, then spotted a Thai place at the top of a hill at the very end of the line of restaurants and Wendy decided she would really like some Pad Thai.  I am happy we decided on this instead of pizza, I had a fantastic Red Curry pork, the pad thai was great, and a nice change.  Ron and Nancy we could have used you here to add a couple more dishes for us to try.

Delicious Thai meal

Back home at about 11:00, were able to reach Joey by phone and Jacinthe and Lisa by Skype.  Watched a bit of golf, then off to bed.