A Postcard A Day - Friday 7 March 2025 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely peeps, Here we are again with our smiles and silver linings of this past week. I've had an interesting week as I've been on holiday to the south-west coast of Spain. But more about that later. 

Let me show you my postcard. It's not a card I received but one I bought recently on my holiday:

My apologies for the bad photo. I wasn't holding it straight. Anyway, this is Riotinto, a village we visited on an excursion. Riotinto means red river. And red it is:

This is a photo from the Internet as on my photo, a bit further down the blog post, the colour is more orange because of the torrential rains.

 The red colour indicates there is a lot of iron in the soil and as it happens a lot of other minerals. That attracted prospectors and there has been mining since pre-Roman times. In the 19th century mining rights were bought by the English who created an enormous open mine. It is just about visible in the middle of the postcard, just where the blue starts. 

Below is a map that indicates where Riotinto is:

I'm staying on the coast near the Portuguese border.

We visited the mining museum which I found very interesting. Unfortunately when you visit a museum with a coach party, you don't get to see much. I saw an aerial photo of the mine on the wall which I photographed:

What an awfully ugly hole in the landscape!

Inside the museum were some old trains and also this beautiful carriage. It was acquired to accomodate Queen Victoria, who was going to visit the mine (But in the end she never did.)

We took a train around the terrain. The train was the original train, complete with wooden carriages, that the workers used to be transported in.(The mine is no longer operational now) 

The trip was 45. minutes, then we had a stop where we could walk down to the river.

One can hardly see where the river starts and the shore ends. They're both the same colour. Then the train turned around and went back. And hour and a half in total.

We spent the whole morning at the mine and in the afternoon we went to Aracena, where we had lunch. Aracena is a cute little town:

It has beautiful caves:

It's called Gruta de las Maravillas, which means: Cave of Wonders.

Again I enjoyed this part a lot.

We were divided in groups with a time slot, which was good.

There was a guide who talked about how stalagtites and stalagmites were formed etc.

We were warned about the many stairways up and down into the different caves. Luckily I'm fit but my new friend Sally chose to wait outside.

That is it from me today. I'm writing this on Thursday morning but I will have arrived home late on Thursday night. 

Of course there will be some funnies at the end. 

Enjoy your weekend.

Lisca

It was Andalucia Day while I was on holiday and I missed all the festivities. But I'm including this image as it's such a bright happy image.