We managed to avoid the tolls for this leg of the trip, which brightened. Again we drove through a series of tunnels, coming out of a mountain range to a brand new landscape. Immediately, we saw kites and vultures and unidentified raptors wheeling in the sky. Stork nests on power poles and steeples, each with a stork perched on top. The famous black Iberian pigs (and future famous Iberian hams) foraging under oak trees. This is the dehesa, where cool birds like bustards (spellchecker thinks this is a dirty word, and keeps trying to delete it) hang out.
Our campsite is a bit of a letdown after the luxury of our last bungalow. Not only are they saving on who knows what by not providing toilet seats, but they are so miserly as to make you have to predetermine the length of toilet paper you will need by only providing it outside the stalls. But it's the cheapest campsite yet at €24 per night so I guess a toilet seat is worth €20 if compared to the campsite at Granada.
But there's lots of birds around, on our stroll before dark we saw 2 new birds (bird of the day is the stonechat) and a stork perched on a rooftop.
On the minus side there's an enclosure of hens and roosters right next to an enclosure with 3 greyhounds. It's 3 in the morning as I write this and I'm guessing the dogs will stop barking just as the roosters start crowing before dawn. Ah, rural life.
Merida is a nice small city with 60,000 inhabitants (seems smaller), and a whole truckload of Roman ruins. In a short walk after we arrived we stumbled across the impressive (and misnamed) Temple of Diana in the middle of downtown and then walked along the Guadiana river past the Roman Bridge and the Alcazar (Arab fort).
Janet will check out the ruins tomorrow, but Leo and I are heading out in search of bustards, black storks and pratincoles.
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