Read Online Following the Sun by John Hanson Mitchell - Free Book Online
Authors: John Hanson Mitchell
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Diego ValderÃa, a former bicycle racer, who happily assumed the role of personal escort. By now it was pitch dark, but the congress had decided my fate.
Calls were made ahead and a room was secured for me in the town of Pilas, about five miles down the road. But how to get me to this room in the bull-haunted black nights of rural Andalusia, when the duendes emerge from the hollows and the foxes bark from the dry hills?
Once again the alcalde arranged a conference, and a cavalcade of automobiles was organized to light the way. After much assembling, we set out, several cars in front of me, very many astern, and in this manner, riding along at my twelve-mile-an-hour pace, my escorts led me into the center of Pilas. Here I was bountifully received in the town plaza by another crowd, given dinner at a local restaurant, lubricated with much tinto and sherry, and then escorted to the only pension in town, a tiny room off an enclosed courtyard.
Near dawn I heard a hideous coughing and braying and thought the Devil himself, accompanied by a herd of red-eyed Romero bulls, had burst into the room. But it was only the family burro, enclosed in the courtyard outside my window, greeting the day.
The next morning, having bid farewell to my saviors, I rode on to Roccio and then headed for the coast and the town of Torre de la Higuera. The only place I could find near enough to the entrance to the Coto was a corrugated Quonset hut where workers constructing a new hotel (a sign of things to come) were staying.
The Coto DoÃana is made up of vegetated dunes, known as the cotos , interspersed with wide grassy marshland, and to the south a line of so-called âwalking dunesâ that move slowly northward each year. Wild boar, red deer, a few fallow deer, foxes, an odd weasel-like predator called the pharaohâs rat, and the dreaded Pardelle lynx inhabit the cotos . Vast collections of graylag geese, widgeon, stilts, spoonbills, coots, and gallinules feed in the marismas , or marshes, along with flocks of thousands of flamingos who settle here as they move between their nesting grounds and the Camargue in France. And above the whole region, almost any time you glance skyward, you can see kites, and vultures, marsh harriers, and even the rare Iberian eagle.
As it turned out, the road into the research center in the park was sandy and almost impossible to ride on, so I decided to hide my bicycle in the brush and hike in. After an hour of walking, this too grew tedious, so I headed into the brush to look for a high spot to take my lunch. The land was dry and characterized by sharp hilly dunes covered with juniper, Besom heath, and gorse, interspersed with bracken hollows and a few cork oaks and umbrella pines. It would have been very easy to get lost in the tangled thicket, and indeed within twenty minutes I wasnât sure where I was. I could see a particularly high dune south of my position, so I worked my way through the bracken hollows and the thickets. Halfway to the hill there was a sudden scrambling at my feet, coupled with hideous squealings and snortings, and a family of baby boar burst from the brush around my ankles and scurried into the thickets. This was followed by a deeper, more ominous squeal as the great mother trotted off behind them. I considered myself lucky. Far more dangerous than the resident Pardelle lynx, more to be dreaded even than the purported lions is the boar sow with young. I had heard terrible stories of slashings and gashes from the tusks of these things.
Safe at last, I climbed to the top of the hill, found a good outlook, and sat down for an alfresco repast.
Even here, well away from the marshes, I could see rising and falling flights of ducks in the distance, and above in the sky the slow drift of a marsh harrier or kite. There were warblers and unidentifiable sparrows in the thickets, and I could hear chips and chirps of other species sounding out all around the hill.
Migration in these
Calls were made ahead and a room was secured for me in the town of Pilas, about five miles down the road. But how to get me to this room in the bull-haunted black nights of rural Andalusia, when the duendes emerge from the hollows and the foxes bark from the dry hills?
Once again the alcalde arranged a conference, and a cavalcade of automobiles was organized to light the way. After much assembling, we set out, several cars in front of me, very many astern, and in this manner, riding along at my twelve-mile-an-hour pace, my escorts led me into the center of Pilas. Here I was bountifully received in the town plaza by another crowd, given dinner at a local restaurant, lubricated with much tinto and sherry, and then escorted to the only pension in town, a tiny room off an enclosed courtyard.
Near dawn I heard a hideous coughing and braying and thought the Devil himself, accompanied by a herd of red-eyed Romero bulls, had burst into the room. But it was only the family burro, enclosed in the courtyard outside my window, greeting the day.
The next morning, having bid farewell to my saviors, I rode on to Roccio and then headed for the coast and the town of Torre de la Higuera. The only place I could find near enough to the entrance to the Coto was a corrugated Quonset hut where workers constructing a new hotel (a sign of things to come) were staying.
The Coto DoÃana is made up of vegetated dunes, known as the cotos , interspersed with wide grassy marshland, and to the south a line of so-called âwalking dunesâ that move slowly northward each year. Wild boar, red deer, a few fallow deer, foxes, an odd weasel-like predator called the pharaohâs rat, and the dreaded Pardelle lynx inhabit the cotos . Vast collections of graylag geese, widgeon, stilts, spoonbills, coots, and gallinules feed in the marismas , or marshes, along with flocks of thousands of flamingos who settle here as they move between their nesting grounds and the Camargue in France. And above the whole region, almost any time you glance skyward, you can see kites, and vultures, marsh harriers, and even the rare Iberian eagle.
As it turned out, the road into the research center in the park was sandy and almost impossible to ride on, so I decided to hide my bicycle in the brush and hike in. After an hour of walking, this too grew tedious, so I headed into the brush to look for a high spot to take my lunch. The land was dry and characterized by sharp hilly dunes covered with juniper, Besom heath, and gorse, interspersed with bracken hollows and a few cork oaks and umbrella pines. It would have been very easy to get lost in the tangled thicket, and indeed within twenty minutes I wasnât sure where I was. I could see a particularly high dune south of my position, so I worked my way through the bracken hollows and the thickets. Halfway to the hill there was a sudden scrambling at my feet, coupled with hideous squealings and snortings, and a family of baby boar burst from the brush around my ankles and scurried into the thickets. This was followed by a deeper, more ominous squeal as the great mother trotted off behind them. I considered myself lucky. Far more dangerous than the resident Pardelle lynx, more to be dreaded even than the purported lions is the boar sow with young. I had heard terrible stories of slashings and gashes from the tusks of these things.
Safe at last, I climbed to the top of the hill, found a good outlook, and sat down for an alfresco repast.
Even here, well away from the marshes, I could see rising and falling flights of ducks in the distance, and above in the sky the slow drift of a marsh harrier or kite. There were warblers and unidentifiable sparrows in the thickets, and I could hear chips and chirps of other species sounding out all around the hill.
Migration in these
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