We headed back to the boat, travelling via the coastal road from Malaga onwards and stopped at Marbella to have lunch and shop for food. I didn't want to wait until we reached La Linea to buy food because the unemployment rate for that town is 70% and I had noticed the consequences of this in the limited range of quality food in their supermarket and unfortunately the fresh food market would be closed by the time we arrived there. What a horrible place Marbella is - high rise apartments, too much traffic, crowded beaches and loads of British tourists (we only heard UK voices all around us in the cafe and supermarket). Probably this entire southern coast of Spain is the same so I am not sure how much we will enjoy the next part of our touring. We wasted too much time at Marbella so it was about 5.0 pm when we returned to the boat.
There was a power failure before we left the boat but fortunately it had been fixed while we were away so everything was still OK in the fridges etc. During the night the power failed two more times so perhaps this is a common problem with this marina. Another problem is the design of the marina, with the office at the entrance from the sea and then all of the facilities such as cafe (with wifi), laundry, showers etc. at the other extreme on the side nearest the road. We were placed on a finger nearer to the office so the other facilities were more than a km away and it was a long way to the road. The rates are unbelievably cheaper than other marinas but that probably means the maintenance is not good. The rubbish along the area fronting the road is deplorable, but all of the town area that we saw was just the same. Considering the tourists that have to pass through on their way to Gibraltar this is tragic because few would want to stop to spend money in La Linea and yet the town needs such support to help ease the financial and unemployment problems.