Birds & volcanoes - Cabo de Gata

Cabo de Gata area today, starting at Las Amoladeras centro de visitantes where they were very helpful and we saw some interesting snails and a pair of copulating lizards. Then on to the bird hide to take advantage of Mick’s expertise identifying red legged stilts, avocets etc as well as some flamingos, before going on to the cape itself.

At Punto Bajo just to the east there is a lovely exposure of a columnar jointed dacite flow which used to be quarried for cobbles and has silica (agate = the ‘gata’ in Cabo de Gata) and some patches of very white, altered ignimbrite patches, the most splendid of which is the triangle of the Vela Blanca (white sail) ignimbrite exposed in the cliffs to the east.
After lunch and a group photo Mick decided he wanted to stay and take a closer look at the flowers whilst we went on round to coastal exposures to the north.

The beaches at Monsul are only a few km away but the cliff road has been closed to cars for a long time so you have to go make a big circuit round to the west to San José. Excellent graded track out to these popular beaches and the massive autobrecciated flows and dacite domes there were well worth seeing.

Then finally north to Los Escullos to see the aeolianite oolite dunes + root casts: these were formed during the last glacial when, presumably, oolite dunes on the sea floor were exposed as available for transport by stronger wind.