Bioparc Fuengirola

I expected this post to be longer. Fuengirola Bioparc was a highlight of my trip to Spain, and I kind of assumed I’d be able to make a pretty long post of it. And I could do, but it would be almost entirely listing animals. Which it is, but I realised that’s not the most interesting thing to read, so have reigned it in a bit. I’ve kept the animal rambling to the ones which came most readily to my mind.

So. The best description I’ve found of Fuengirola Bioparc is an ‘immersion zoo’, where the whole park is made to look like the animals’ habitat, rather than just the individual enclosures. It’s based off Asian and African habitats. Many of the barriers are made using water, trees, and height differences, instead of bricks, glass and metal. They do use those as well, but where they can make it more natural looking, they have. I’ve been to this sort of place before, but not on the same level as this one. The number I’ve found is 130 different species and over 1400 individual animals.

Benalmadena

As was probably clear from my last post, I recently took a holiday to Spain. And as the title of this post indicates, I stayed in a place called Benalmadena. It’s a town in Andalusia, on the Costa del Sol. Benalmadena covers a pretty large area, much larger than I was aware of when I was there.

From what I can tell, there are three main areas. Benalmadena Pueblo is the original village, Arroyo de la Miel was a separate one which I guess got absorbed into it. There are some attractions in these parts, but Benalmadena Costa is the really touristy area. That’s where I was, and where I stayed. I don’t think I even saw all that much of that part, if I’m honest.

There’s no proven explanation as to how the town got its name, though all of the possibilities are from Arabic. The most commonly accepted theory is that it means ‘son of the mines’ or ‘the construction of the mines’, due to iron and ochre found in the area. It could also mean ‘people between springs’ or ‘the state of the al-Madina’s family’, which would be in reference to a rich family who may have owned the area. The name has had a few variant forms over the centuries, but from what I can see it’s always been recognisable as being the same name.

Lanzorote

I was on holiday in Lanzorote in December. Over a month ago. But I’ll write about it anyway because it’s something vaguely interesting I did.

Not that interesting, really. It was just a standard holiday, doing standard tourist stuff, but there’s nothing wrong with that. So I did do interesting stuff, but the same interesting stuff everyone else does, but that’s why everyone does it of course.

I won’t give a full account, I’ll just write about the interesting parts. We stayed in Puerto Del Carmen. It’s a big place, packed to bursting with touristy shops, which was fine with me, because I love that sort of stuff, little trinkets, candles and keyrings and stuff. Cheap things, because I never have a lot of money, and I’ve always preferred having lots of different cheap things to one expensive thing. There are exceptions, but that’s how I am generally.

One of the beaches at Puerto Del Carmen, had to walk a fair way to get here from where we were staying.