Cortijada Los Gázquez is pleased to announce that we have had a small feature in Lonely Planet Magazine. Apart from seeing us in print it’s well worth purchasing as it’s a good read too.

OK so small is beautiful… but under closer inspection!

An innate sense of modesty prevailed last week which resulted in Los Gázquez not celebrating the good work of an exceptional PR.

But here we are in The Sunday Times - Travel section.

And we are delighted.

For those interested in taking a creative course with Los Gázquez you can find more information by clicking here

For those just wanting a holiday in the peace and seclusion of this natural wilderness you can see our rates by looking here

For those interested in the Joya residency you can find more information here

One of our top volunteers at Los Gazquez is now back in his native California getting ready for his next trip. Cycling from Bangkok to Beijing. He is just starting to raise funds for the journey working at ‘Borders’ and selling off his record collection etc.

I’ll use his words to describe his intentions…

If you are interested in participating with this trip, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’m looking for a bicycle sponsor, among other things, and am fairly easy to come to agreement with. In addition to that, if you are interested in participating personally (that being your time and companionship) I’m more than willing to tandem during your visit.

Now I know Land Rovers are not the most environmentally sensitive vehicles in the world but there are circumstances where they are necessary. We have one because year round no other vehicle will ford a flowing rambla or cut a swathe through winter snow drifts, and no other vehicle will double up as a farm tractor quite so easily. We will convert ours to bio-diesel when we can guarantee the efficacy of the product (see ‘Splash and Dash’ under category ‘environment’ in an earlier post).

Having just had a trip down to the ‘Cabo de Gata’ camping for three days, at the beginning of the school holidays, I must confess to my delight at seeing a convoy of other Land Rovers, all flashing their lights in filial delight at seeing another Land Rover, off on safari. Living in Andalucia you can get the feeling of being at some great crossroads between Europe and  Africa and seeing these desert bound folks just makes us want to follow.

This super equipped beast belongs to John and Claudia and is bound for the west African coast where it’s owners are deeply involved in turtle conservation, we wish them every success.

I was going to write ‘Happy Birthday Cecilia our number one fan from Brazil’, in Portuguese. However not speaking Portuguese I thought I would resort to Babelfish. This is what I got…

Feliz aniversario Cecilia nosso ventilador do número um de Brasil

I’m not sure ‘ventilador’ is the kind of fan I had in mind but, Many Happy Returns to you Cecilia.

Here at Los Gazquez we are delighted to announce that we are featured (by invitation only) on ‘Holiday Pad’. These people scour the earth for the unusual, the wonderful and the downright weird ideas for a holiday. Its a blog and we love it’s cool simplicity and we feel in great company when we look at the other ventures there.

Thank you Holiday Pad

Another gravitas performance from ‘Andalucia es de Cine’, this time in the Alpujarras. That’s the area on the south facing slopes of the Sierra Nevada bridging Almeria province with that of Granada and the last kingdom of the Moors in Spain.

What better way to spend a day on a cold wet October holiday than to go on an adventure. We had seen on the OS map a hermitage in a very remote corner of the Sierra del Oso. Given the lack of sign posts and the confusing array of tracks, i.e some being the road and others  farmer’s tracks to access  fields, it was a bit of a challenge for our map reader. Suprisingly Donna got us there quite easily and what a sweet place it was too.

The Ermita de Leria has long been without a hermit but even in this remote corner devotees make the effort to keep the building in good order. From here we carried on across the loggers’ tracks across the sierra going east until we came across the beautiful valley of Alcoluche. Apparently all Castillian words beginning in ‘Al’ are Arabic, from the Moors. And Moors would have farmed this land, terracing the hillsides, planting almonds and pomegranates (a fruit in Spain called granada).

Finding a track to take us home we encountered the inevitable traffic jam…

Passing a beautiful farm called El Alcaida, (who knows), we stopped by the waterfall of the Rio Caramel next to the old poplar (alamo in Spanish. And if that makes you think of Davy Crockett etc… the fort was probably made from poplar trunks hence the name Alamo).

This week the sun will shine again with little chance of rain until the spring. Days will be sunny and warm and evenings cold and starry. Perfect.