Spain - La Garrofa.

The next night we found a beaut camping site at La Garrofa which is still there and is the beach where we enjoyed our first swim in the Mediterranean.

We met our first South African couple camping here at La Garrofa and we heard our first South African accent.  We'd met many young people in the Youth Hostels we'd stayed in but never a South African and we didn't meet any more, many Aussies, many Americans but not many from other countries. That first meeting sticks in my mind for some reason.

Also we learnt how to impress obnoxious Americans at this camping site, we only wanted to impress/annoy  the obnoxious ones not the majority who were just delightful.  David had an Uncle who lived in Carmel, California and we were planning to visit him sometime, all we knew of California was a little of L.A. and San Francisco,  we knew nothing of Carmel but we discovered if we dropped the 'Carmel' word those obnoxious ones eyes shot up and they were impressed... very impressed, impressed enough to shut up and to stop boasting about how much better everything was in the US :-)  So we were now armed with a powerful weapon  LOL  and dear reader I have to tell you... we used it whenever necessary.  (Of course it was almost two years before we found ourselves in Carmel to find out what all the fuss was about... if you haven't been there, it is indeed a beautiful classy and expensive part of California.)

 

Checking oil and water before leaving La Garrofa.
Below from Google Maps... it looks just the same as I remember except for the motorway maybe, actually there isn't much room for expansion here, not like most of the other towns near the sea.