Costa del Sol

My last weekend in Spain, I took a trip to southern Spain, to the popular tourist location known as the Costa del Sol (the coast of the sun). It is on the Mediterranean Sea, and the area I visited has the largest ultra-mafic body (the Ronda peridotites) in the world.
I stayed in a very touritsty town on the coast, but the first place I visited was a small town in the mountains where I had good access to the lherzolites and dunites. This town, Istán, is one of the white hill towns of Andalucia, and it was very quaint.
The town is well-known for its artisian wells that are all over the town, and you can hear the water running under the streets from all of the fountains.

This sign says "Don't forget, behind a ball there is always a child."

Despite its closeness to the Mediterranean, this part of Spain is really dry, and the landscape looked very dessert-like.


This was a cave that was below the town. There were some of these caves that looked like tree houses.

I also say a pair of doves just outside of the town.

Marbella, the town I was staying in was full of resorts, and there were beautiful beaches. It was also perfect beach weather while I was there, so it was pleasant for studying.

The weather was wonderful, and it was surprisingly clear, and, I could actually see Africa.

They also had a bonsai museum in Marbella, and some of the trees were more than 500 years old. Marbella was interesting culturally, because it was so touristy. There was actually a really large Russian population there while I was, and I heard nearly as much Russian that weekend as I did Spanish.