RICH'S NOTES-PARENTAL TOURISMMay 2, 1999
Parque Nacional del Coto Doņana
All Terrain Trip
It's 4:15pm and we have missed the exit to Doņana. There were no signs on the
AutoRoute and I ignored the exit for the closest city of Bollullos. It's funny how I have
come to assume that I am familiar enough with Andalusia to quickly and punctually arrive
anywhere within its borders. The next mistake is assuming I can take the following exit
and make my way back to the road I want.
Now we’re at Rociana del Condado. It's on the map. There’s a road exiting
town from the south which leads to the Doņana highway. We come to the first intersection
in town. The options are left, right or straight and the only sign points to the
Ayuntamiento (city hall). I could ask, but Christopher Columbus didn't need directions,
and neither do I. I head for city hall hoping for more signs along the way. Now I’m
following the only sign directing me back to Bollullos. And the road’s closed.
4:25pm. We have 35 minutes before our Doņana Jeep Tour departs. Time to forget about
reaching the Indies by sailing west.
Spanish is a lovely language. It is colourfully littered with vowels and musical
passages and rolling consonants. It goes well with the complexity of a thousand year old
town's narrow streets. It makes understanding the young man on the bicycle’s
directions about as easy as dissecting the tiny pueblo backwards in my head. He’s
telling me that the closed road is traversable. He’s telling me to go for it.
"Isn’t there some other way out of town?" I don’t want to push to Ford
Mondeo to its limits just yet. The off-road adventure is supposed to be at Doņana. I
persuade him to repeat three times, the directions to exit the city from the south.
"Here, to the left. A little ways and to the right. Straight for some time and
then another left. That road will end and you will have to go right. It's a left after
that."
4:50pm and the big jeeps are lined up like green caterpillars. Passengers, mostly
Spanish, wait to board. With haste we enter the office, pay and rent some binoculars. As
we return, the jeeps load and we’re off.
Sitting six feet off the ground the view is great. The convoy heads down the highway in
an ordered line and attracts the attention of all drivers on the road. We pass the last
town of Matalascaņas and the road turns from pavement to soft sand. The jeep lurches left
and right and we bounce up and down through the sandy tracks of previous trips. The convoy
breaks up and each driver heads down to his favourite track on the beach.
The 75 000 hectares of protected wetlands and sand dunes of Parque National del Coto
Doņana includes 30km of beachfront, a long stretch of white sand and umbrella pines.
Numbers of visitors are controlled strictly to ensure minimal environmental impact, and
this evening we are part of the official tour that off-roads into the areas of protected
park that are inaccessible by any other means. Fernando, our driver, tells us that the
shoreline is protected from onshore and offshore fishing. As he finishes the sentence we
pass three men and their poles. The jeep is buzzing with concern over these intruders.
"...protected from everyone but these families that have lived here for thousands of
years." In reality, many families still live along Doņana’s shoreline. Lesson
number four for Canadians in Europe - few parts of Spain are uninhabited and therefore
creating a national park (Doņana became officially protected in 1969) would displace
hundreds of people. The only compromise is to permit their continued habitation and in
return they obey the rules for preservation.
The drivers are experts at spotting the elusive wildlife. Fernando stops the jeep and
alerts his passengers to the Spanish Lynx, Fallow deer and the larger Red deer, wild
cattle and young wild boar. A midway stop allows us to get out and wander the dunes and
explore the lush valley of a subterranean Rio Guadalquivir tributary. The dunes tower over
the valley pines, sometimes reaching 30 metres high and covering the trees completely.
Ribbed by prevailing winds off the Atlantic, the sand is constantly shifting.
After three hours of touring through wetlands and forests and beaches we are back
within the dunes and racing along the shoreline, with long shadows and curious boar
piglets and sandpipers. Fernando leads the charge of jeeps and barrels along the soft
sand, scattering thousands of seagulls and driving us into the setting sun.
All that remains when we return to the car is to find a place to sleep tonight.
"We don't have a reservation?" inquires my mother. "What if all of the
hotels are booked?" "What if there is a conference in town?"
I'm too tired to explain today but am not myself worried. Sara and I always keep in
mind that if worse comes to worse we can sleep in Alfi. This car is surely three times the
size, and with air conditioning.
