Today we travelled east to Almeria on the Autovia de Mediter- raneneo, a highway designed to partially smooth out the twists and turns made necessary by geography.On the trip from Nerja to Almeria along the Costa Tropical we saw some amazing road building; we crossed 15 viaductos (bridges) totalling 4628 meters in length and travelled through 12 tunels (tunnels) totalling 7434 meters. The longest tunnel was 2170 meters. The Autovia is not fully completed so we also careened through quite a few miles of winding secondary road.
We passed through miles and miles of greenhouses, covering tens of thousands of acres of land.
Many were idle, but we suspect that they are used season- ally to produce fruit, vege- tables and perhaps flowers for northern European tables during the winter months. These plastic-covered greenhouses totally dominate the landscape and are not at all attractive. 
Almeria is a seaside city (one can ferry from here to Morroc- co) dominated by the Moorish Alacazaba (fortress). It is very impressive and extensive -- the biggest Moorish fortress in Europe. In this city even the cathedral looks like a fort, a result of too many Berber pirate deprecations.
Almeria is off the beaten tourist track, so every- thing is in Spanish and they don't seem to feel the need to sign their streets. We spent a (semi) pleasant half hour trying to leave the city. One cannot really get lost because the city is built on a slope which ends up in the Mediterranean, so one can get one's bearings quite easily. However, as we didn't want to go to the Mediterranean, we found it a little challenging.On the way home we decided to eat out and stopped a a nice little town, Calahonda. It was 7:15 pm and the restaurants and bars were closed and/or were not prepared to serve dinner or tapas as it was too early. At one place we were told that the cook would not return for an hour. Others were closed until 8:30. So we returned to Frigiliana and dined on delicious leftovers from last night.
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