Coto Doñana, The Most Amazing National Park in Spain

On my last weekend before I was due to Fly to Equatorial Guinea, i decided to take Jenny and the little girl to the beach but also near a giant national Park called, Coto Doñana. it is a huge estuary and has many birds associated with Africa as it is so close, we had booked a large tourist hotel in the main town called Matalascañas basically translated as "Kill The Canes". Very odd for a place name. the weather was sunny but the wind was cold. We went for a walk to the beach and to find some food shops and bars and restaurants but soon found there are virtually none there, This is the most bizarre place i have been, the town was built around a golf course and as such all the homes are just for holidays, no people live there just holiday, so we had to go back to the hotel to book in for all inclusive, which was OK as i could drink myself silly for 3 days but after bird watching of course, The next morning we went out to drive to the visitor centre and found a fantastic set of walks around some small ponds and found the place was alive with Storks, nesting everywhere, on buildings and chimneys and every electric pylon the big pylons had 3 nests on them, fantastic, also many other birs which were all new to me. the walks were great and the place was full of flowers and was very peaceful and tranquil just perect for my rest before work. we then went drinking all afternoon and night not much happened in the hotel other than watching lots of other people get really drunk on the non stop pouring of drinks to people who didn't have to pay for each one.

The next morning we went to a local town where the Flamingoes were feeding, the lake was big but the town next to it was even bigger and full of old farts coming to look at the "birdies", i hate that mentality really, stupid people who dont know any better, why didn't they stay at home and stop making pollution just because they want to spend some money before they die. Die at home quietly and leave the "birdies" to us birders and stop getting in my way, They had a very interesting attitude in the town to the Swallows and House Martins, they actually did nothing to stop them form making their nests on the buildings, the nesting areas had nest 5 or 6 or 7 nests deep, amazing to see, it is probably what you need when you live in a swamp and need to keep the mosquitoes away and from biting you and giving you giant puss filled wounds like my buddy Slyght, how he managed to find every Dengue and plague infected mosquito i will never know.

So we were just driving away to the hotel and we saw a sign for more bird hides in the park, so we spun the car around and drove into a far better park than we saw the day before, it had Spoonbills and we saw even more storks and the hides and lakes we laid out just brilliantly, we had a great time and as we were driving away we saw another sign for a palace, so i had to just find out if it was a real one, it wasn't but on the 5 Kms to the place we saw maybe 20 of the most amazing Bee-eaters just sitting on bushes and catching bees probably and just looking like streaks of Rainbow flying about, the palace ws a 1960 attempt at a recreation of a rich persons house but the drive to see it was amazing,

The drive




From the Roof




It looked great but it was probably a ruined shell when the park took it over and it was far smaller than you think, maybe only space for 4-6 bedrooms upstairs honestly, Palacio Acebuche




The Gardens had gone wild but were interesting, Like the enchanted Garden




This is the Church near the Flamingo Lake and you can see all the Mud nests from the House Martins on it




Around the Flamingo Lake with the two Tinkers




This is the main Visitor centre and it was free and very good, plus it was free, did i mention that.




This is my hotel the one with a yellow line across the top, spoiling the view actually, somebody must have taken a huge bribe to allow a golf course and crappy toursit place to be built in a pristine national park, corruption gone mad.