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Almeria desert |
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About 30 kilometres from Almeria lies the only official desert of Europe, the Desierto de Tabernas. This dry area is completely surrounded by mountains and it doesn’t rain more than 4 days a year. This unique setting completely created its own flora and fauna. 3000 hours of sun and a temperature that can go up to 50 degrees make it a really good idea to avoid this area in summer… For the same reason though Spain's biggest solar energy plant has been built in Desierto de Tabernas. The area used to be well-known because of the many cowboy movies that have been filmed here ('The good, the bad and the ugly', 'A fist full of dollars' and 'Lawrence of Arabia'). To keep these times alive, they created two cowboy villages on the locations of the film sets. Tourists can visit the Wild West shows here. Mini-Hollywood (which also has a small zoo) is a little bigger than Mini-Texas.
In this area lie several more interesting towns: Tabernas with a ruin from a 14th century Moorish castle and the town of Cergal with its star watching centre ‘El Calar Alto’ on 2000 metres height. Sorbas is famous for its pottery and they also give demonstrations. Then there is also the ‘Parque Natural de Karts en Yesos’. This type of lime stone forms the biggest karts area in the world. You can make reservations on the 2 hour tour through the caves (0031 - 950 364 481).
By the way: the highway that runs from Almeria to Granada through the Alpujarra is marvellous. The coast road (340) is less attractive, because of all the plastic green houses for which this area is famous.
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