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The Beach at Playa Andaluza

jerseyfinn

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A lot has been said about the beach at Playa Andaluza being too rocky to swim in. That's certainly not the case, though one does indeed need to be an intrepid beach goer to navigate the rocks which cover the first 5 meters at the shore line before you finally find real sand. My wife and I prefer to watch these swimmers carefully make their way in and out of the water and we reserve our swimming for the resort pools.

I post a gallery of photos which give an idea of what it is like if one starts out at Playa's resort beach ( which is called Playa Isdabe and is a public beach ) and walks westward a couple of miles to a beach called Playa Bella. As you'll see, there's an assortment of beaches, some with more stone than sand, and others with sand.

Playa's beach is indeed a nice place to sunbathe from, and you'll also see that the nearby private chiringuito, Vela Azul, is also a nice place to watch the beach from. Don't be afraid to explore the beaches around Playa, as it's a nice walk with some nice photo ops along the way.

The beach gallery is found here. Hope you enjoy the images as much as we enjoyed the walks and time spent there.

Barry
 

vlapinta

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Marriott Ocean Watch at Grand Dunes
It looks beautiful! Thanks for taking the time to post the pictures. I really enjoyed looking at them.

Vicki
 

andrea t

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I just finished looking through your pics of Marbella. I'm definitely going to attempt to trade my 2010 week for a week there. It looks beautiful and I'm looking forward to touring the area. Thanks for posting them!
 

taffy19

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Thanks for showing your Marriott photos and I had a look at some other ones too. Very nice. :)

PS.
Some of your wave pictures around sunset at Costa del Sol are stunning. You may want to post a few in this thread here that has been going on for a long time already. The photo images are from everywhere and I just saw this one here. I love this thread and it explains how to do some of the editing too.
 
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jerseyfinn

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Iconnections, thanks for the TUG photo gallery suggestion. I've tried posting direct images before on TUG, but the tag scripting on TUG behaves unevenly. Kind of wierd as I'm able to post images on Flyer Talk using the ( presumably ) same syntax for scripting as TUG. BTW, being a photo-lover, I've perused your Maui gallery. Some nice images there which remind me of how long it's been since we've been in Maui. I'm looking forward to looking through your other galleries.

Andrea, I forgot about that other gallery of my (mostly) Marbella beach sunset pictures which belong to a seperate set of galleries which are apart from the direct link MVCI images I link in my signature. That Marbella gallery is called Waves & Mountains is found here. I've actually just updated it with some photos I take with a waterproof camera in the waves at the Playa Andaluza resort.

I'm glad that folks enjoy the images . . . Costa del Sol is a magical destination. Then again, lots of places that TUGGers travel to are magical, aren't they?

Barry
 

taffy19

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It works OK for me

I love this photo in your album! :)

89628122.JH1FLaOn.DSC05320A.jpg


Churning Water​
 
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jerseyfinn

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Thanks for your kind comments Iconnections, that photo brings back some nice memories of a trip from last fall. I'm also glad to see that you could direct link to the gallery . . . it makes me wonder if something in my browser is holding back my scripting :confused:

There's bit of a story to that gallery of sunset photos taken just up the beach from Marriott Marbella.

My wife and I visit Costa del Sol twice a year, once in the summer when we stay 2 weeks at Playa, and once in the fall when we do an owners week at Marbella and then return to Playa for a second week on a trade. That first week at Marbella, my wife could not make it out to Spain until later in the week, so I was on my own for a few days.

The weather is beautiful and summery and the only difference between this season and the summer is that the sun sets earlier ( around 7:30 PM ). So I would head up the beach a ways around 5PM each day and park myself on the beach watching the scores of beach strollers pass by while being mesmerized by the waves & those mountains on the horizon where the sun falls each evening.

As you see, I love photography, so I'm really just passing time until that final 30 minutes before sunset when the light becomes magical. That's when I fly into action camera in hand & grab pixels non-stop for the next 45 minutes. The waves were always dramatic but calm at this hour so I'd venture into the bath-tub warm waters and squat down shooting towards the falling sun while the waves slowly break astride me. I'm holding my trusty Sony P&S just a couple of inches off of the water when I shoot these images. Each time a wave saunters in, I snap at the last possible second before lifting the camera out of harm's way. I put that Sony in peril, but the waves and the mountains were so kind to me that aside from a few tiny drops of water, the camera remains safe.

People were standing on the shore watching me work . . . their faces convey that they think I was crazy. But sometimes you just "feel it" and that's what happens these several days I take those pictures.

I've since retired my Sony and bought a Canon G9 P&S (I've gotten spoiled carrying a smaller camera kit & don't want to return to a full-size SLR, even though it would capture pixels even better ). I also pick up a Pentax waterproof P&S camera which hopefully will take some of the anxiety out of this sort of photography. I try it out at Playa this past July with decent results. I'm looking forward to trying my luck again this fall at Marbella with the Pentax. Then again, photography is sometimes about luck, and I was certainly very lucky this past fall, but the pixel gods may not be so kind the second time around.

Thanks again, and I'll try posting on that TUG gallery again.

Barry
 

ocdb8r

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Hey Barry,

What tome of year was this taken? I assume this summer....

I was surprised at how mellow the beaches looked. I spent a couple of summers in Malaga and expected similar swarms of people...it looks quite relaxing and un-crowded. Was that indeed the case?

Is this the same for the Mariott Marbella Beach Resort?
 

jerseyfinn

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The sunset photos were taken in late September/early October 2007. Both the Marbella & Playa Andaluza resorts are pretty full at this time of year -- still holiday time for lots of Europeans.

The beach at Marbella is peopled, though not nearly as much as in the summer. The Don Carolos Hotel is also busy and sometimes there's a beach event going on there. I would walk some 10 minutes up beach from all of this and just plop down. Casual groups of people doing the beach walk thing, but things are basically quiet and peaceful & you have the waves and mountains to yourself.

Being a photographer, I have to say that hands down, Marbella has the better sunset beach because of where the sun drops to the horizon. Costa del Sol is a fantastic destination any time of the year. We feel very lucky to be able to get out there a couple of times a year to immerse ourselves in it's solitude & magic.

Barry
 
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