We caught the bus into El Ejido, which is now quite a prosperous city because of the massive amount of vegetables grown in this areas supplying more than half of western Europe. The weekly market (on the first three Wednesdays of each month) was mostly the usual stalls of clothing, shoes, underwear, kitchen gadgets, etc and then the was one row of fresh fruit and vegetables where we we able to buy excellent quality goods for extremely cheap prices, for example, 2 kilo of beans for €1, 3 containers of different kinds of olives and fresh nuts for €1.50, 1 kilo of fabulous dried figs for €1.50. Then we found our way to the daily market (Mercado Centrale) to buy fresh seafood and some other vegetables, where we bought cigalles (langoustines) and pagos (snapper). There were also butcher stalls and a couple of deli stalls, but we were surprised at the limited range of goods these had - I'll bet that the sniper markets are already having a huge impact on this market. Stupid people to let this happen as the quality of food at the market is much better. I find that after a couple of days we have to throw away 'fresh' food from the supermarket and it is not really cheaper than the market anyway,
We finally found a taxi at the major bus depot and made our way back to the marina and had a relaxing afternoon on the boat. Although there is a good beach each side of the marina we did not go swimming, but a walk around the area later in the day gave us a good idea of the effects of the recession as there are several entire multi-storey apartment complexes totally unsold and empty. Tragic! It is possible to buy a 3 bedroom apartment for €69,000 or a 1 bedroom for €39,000. There are two excellent golf courses a stone throw from the marina and there was no one playing on either of them as far as we could see. Of course it was very hot for playing golf!
Our dinner tonight was superb with our barbecued langoustines as entree and then our barbecued snapper and salad as our main course, followed by poached cherries and ice cream. We were lucky enough to still have a couple of bottles of Australian white wine on board to accompany our delicious food.