The Costa del Sol in Andalusia, Spain, is preparing for summer. The sunshine coast, reportedly re-named by Franco who believed tourists would flock to the call of sunny beaches but not to a windy (Costa del venta) shoreline, is feeling the tug of spring. The rainy days are fewer, flowers are multiplying, owners and staff are cleaning up the beach hut restaurants while municipal workers tidy the beach. Spanish is heard more than English. The wind blows hard and the waves crash noisily on the rocks.
I like to come to Spain to write quietly about wine, including Swiss wine, and to take long invigorating treks along the boardwalk, camera in hand. Click on the photos to see them uncropped, without captions.
Your flight is delayed 3 hours, you arrive well after the restaurants and shops are closed, and decide that a midnight feast of white wine, crackers, olives and sardines is just fine – until the tab on the tin comes off and can openers work only on round tins … 
Dawn gives us sun, but rain in on the way 
Dawn sunshine here, serious rain in the west, coming our way 
Beach bum, into the purple 
Bougainvillea in its first primal burst of colour 
The beach hut restaurants, chiringuiti, are repaired and oiled and cleaned, a buzz of activity along the waterfront 
Shoring up the waterfront, fighting beach erosion 
We’re doing more this year to save the whales – recycling bins every few hundred metres. You know where to put your plastic now. 
Mimosa trees (Acacia dealbata) are starting to come out 
Sea colour extremes 
Sunset fighting rain clouds 
Rarely does the moon rise from the horizon, which is where the clouds bank 
Fisherman throwing his line in the moonlight 
Moonrise over La Cala 
Moonshine on the tide rushing in 
The fisherman, the sea, the moonlight 
Solstice full moon just before midnight 21 March 2019 
Solstice full moon at its peak, 2:00am 22 March 2019
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