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.

Majada Redonda reccy

OK – lie in – got up 8 am UK time and then headed off down the coast to check out various field locations. We drove down through Mojácar and over the Sierra Cabrera (getting more built up all the time on the north side) and stopped in Sopalmo to check out the track down into the rambla which looks fairly OK. Hopefully we’ll have a few sturdy males with us when we drive down there in case of sticky bits.

Then on through Carboneras and checked out the beach south of the Puerto where we found the way to drive into the southern end – very helpful – and checked out that the rocks hadn’t changed. On towards Agua Amarga where we stopped but the old mineral line from Lucaiñena out to the embarcadero and had a pleasant walk out to the headland looking at the industrial archaeology.

The road past the Los Trancos bentonite works is now asphalt all the way but the quarry doesn’t look as though it is working much. Then through past Los Escullos, a brief stop at the bentonite quarry at Morron de Mateo – now has a pond in the bottom and up the lane to Las Presillas where, after the second half of lunch we made our way down into the rambla and wandered along into the Majada Redonda caldera. I’m not totally convinced. The geology map shows it all as Cinto Ignimbrite and although there is some hydrothermal alteration I’d need more than that to come up with a caldera... a ring fracture perhaps?!
We plodded on and on – the path was fine gravel, a bit like walking on a beach! – and must have gone a couple of miles at least on this rather warm afternoon. Eventually decided to call it a day – still not totally convinced – and wandered back again, past the carobs, agaves, pretty wild flower etc to Las Presillas and back up the autopista and home.
More Masterchef – nice Druve won but we wanted them all to win!