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FEBRUARY 2013 PAGE 32
DESTINATION SPAIN
Caravel culture
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t is no surprise that Spain’s south western coast, the bit on the Portuguese side of the strait, is much more restrained than their Costa Del Sol or Algarve equivalents. Somehow it went undetected during the big rush to the departure gates over recent years. It is a big hit with the Germans and Scandinavians. This year they want to tempt the Irish to come as well. Daniel Navarro explains why they decided to change the branding from Costa de Luz, the old name that has been tried in some Irish brochures such as Topflight’s down the years. The thinking behind Luz made sense: a different light, but it never caught the Irish imagination. So now it’s Huelva. The average of 156 days of sunshine give the area five times more sunny hours than the north of Europe, and the last sunset of Andalucia before Portugal, a factor that helps keep both green fees and hotel prices on Portuguese as well as Spanish price points. Huelva has had good beaches, good golf and the great bars that Irish people love in Spain. Alongside the 16 kilometres of virgin beach there are 80 kilometres of protected coastal area and 60pc of the area is woodland. The extras mean Huelva’s product is less seasonal than the beaches to the east, 65pc of off season clients are foreign. There are 25,800 hotel
Eoghan Corry ponders why Columbus left Huelva
The ravaged landscape of Rio Tinto beds, ensuring the competition to keep prices from spiking too outrageously and a wide choice of hotel type to tempt even the most demanding traveller.
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o is he right? Huelva suggests something more than the sunshine. The shrine of El Rocio pops up on satellite channel travel shows often enough to indicate that this is somewhere completely different. It is our first stop, what a sight. Devotional pilgrims at the shrine of El Rocio, praying and lighting candles in a cavern like building that fills
THINGS TO DO
n Donana Natural park, a wildlife habitat with the reputed site of the lost city of Atlantis in the Marisma de Hinojos in the centre of the park, n La Rábida Monaster, Gothic and Moorish revival architecture; their walls are decorated with frescos by the twentieth-century Spanish artist, Daniel Vázquez Diaz.
with eerie sanctified smoke. The village is straight from the wild west, with horse rails outside the taverns and sand in the streets. You can almost hear the Ennio Morricone film score as you walk down the street, except there is a “Dios te salve, María” humming away in the background instead of that Clint Eastwood spaghetti western theme that would go with a town like this. La Rábida monastery does not look like it has changed a bit since Chris Columbus got the nod here to meet the Queen of Spain. You can imagine him sitting a disk here drawing up his sales pitch for his Caribbean cash-
PLACES TO STAY n El Rompido Cartaya 196 rooms all suite hotel with two golf courses weaving their way around the marshlands (marismas) and down the coast. n Hotel Nuevo Portil, splendidly situated golf hotel on a beach facing out on to a lagoon www.nuevoportilgolf.es n There are 11 golf resorts in the Huelva region.
pile. We all learned at school that Christopher thought he was going to India and China and was convinced he had reached it until his deathbed. It is not the full story. Our guide drops a few hints that Columbus was being clever, telling tales to impress the venture capitalists before he could venture on his real mission. Nobody would pay for a voyage to an unknown new continent that held no means of paying back the debt. So he pretended he would get to the spicelands instead. It was a ruse to loosen the purse strings of the Spanish monarchy and pay for his dream. In Galway in 1579 he would have found out about St Brendan. He had access to navigational aides that he was a long way short of China than he pretended. And he was the rocket scientist of his era, the premier navigator
in an age ruled by the culture of caravel. In nearby Palos de la Frontera they have reconstructed the three ships. Visitors are not admitted on rainy days. We had to talk our way in, feeling a bit like Columbus looking for his voyage money. But the argument was worth winning. The ships are the size of a camper vehicle, without ANY of the mod cons, and these guys sailed west into the unknown on THESE?
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or more earthy wonders, drive north to peek into the Cave of Wonders in Aracena, imaginatively lit to highlight the colourful ponds beneath the surface. Then a train ride through the sculpted mining scars of the Rio Tinto valley, one of the oldest and best known mines in the world. The Romans left 15m tonnes of slag here and that was before the copper mining started. For years we have been ignoring our main product, golf, Daniel says. ‘That is crazy, especially when you are trying to attract business from Ireland.’ The pool in the sprawling golf resort of El Rompido is bracing and the hospitality is great, a big-ticket lobby, buffet laden with traditional fish and paella dishes and their western cousins, and a bar where the view back on to the greens reminds you of why you came. The main golf hotels are open throughout the year, and the bug commercial golf developments, El Compido, and Elsantila are emphatic that their product is better value than the competition. Green fees on their magnificent courses ranging from €30 to €45. Nor is there a handicap of distance. The most convenient access is through Faro, rather than Malaga.
You can visit replicas of Columbus’ three vessels
n Eoghan Corry travelled to Huelva as a guest of the Spanish and Andalusian Tourist Boards and stayed at El Rompido Cartaya.