This week we have been staying at Puerto de la Duquesa which is approximately 2 hours south-west of Malaga although if you aren’t in the habit of getting lost like I am then you might do the trip in just 1.5 hours. Duquesa seems to include a whole region along the coast and where our apartment is overlooks the marina so it’s a small port and thus the name Puerto, port of Duquesa. This place reminds me of the Sunshine Coast and the name they use here is Costa de la Sol which means “coast of the sun”. Our apartment has splendid views and the sun streams in from about 7:45am – it is winter but the weather is more like December summer in New Zealand but colder at night. Here are some photos of the marina and the building block where our apartment is.

I have drawn a black rectangle around the location of our apartment in this next photo.

There is a fantastic atmosphere here and the ground floor of the apartment blocks consist of cafes, bars and restaurants. Evidently this place is empty at the moment so I would not like to be here in the peak of summer as there would be crowds everywhere and no car parks. The quiet time during the day is around mid-afternoon when the locals tend to be off having a siesta. Unfortunately la Duquesa is a very popular tourist destination so every second person seems to speak English though not a New Zealand English. I am looking forward to moving on to a less tourist populated area. Still it is lovely here gazing out at the port in the sun while pretending to work at the same time as consuming Spanish coffee. I did say work but I haven’t quite got into real work yet as I seem to be the Cossey family traveling IT person spending all my time sorting out computers and the internet. Amazing even traveling around Europe the computer problems still follow me! I also spend a lot of time uploading our blogs and getting this blog site up and running.

The following photos were taken on a walk from our apartment along the beach about 10 minutes walking distance. Yes that is a basketball Amy is holding – we walked to a basketball court where I demonstrated to the kids my skills in shooting hoops. Daniel thinks he was better – of course!

Yesterday was an awesome day as we travelled inland about 1.5 hours to a place called Ronda. I will write about that in a different blog. It will be sad to say good bye to Duquesa but I am getting itchy feet and need to move on. Although the bed here is very comfortable the Karaoke Bar near us isn’t so comforting at 2 in the morning. Our next stop is about a 4 hour drive East of here along the coast near a place called Almeria. It’s owned by the same person, Fidel, who owned the house we stayed at in Rincon de la Victoria so it will be nice to see his family again.

(We stayed at Puerto de la Duquesa between Saturday 25^th to Saturday 3^rd March 2012.)