TRIP TO ALMERÍA. BY ALEJANDRO GARCÍA MUÑOZ (5ºD)

Trip to Almeria

First of all, this trip to Murcia (Almería) is set in education, in which technological science students learn about the industry and the processes that are taken to develop a series of products due to the abusive number of industries that are here.

First Day

We were all together on April 3 in the IES Calatalifa classroom at 08:00 am to catch the bus. The trip was about 4 hours, until we arrived in Cartagena, where we visited the Museum of Underwater Archeology where we could see a model of a Spanish gallery which had the purpose of transporting some gold and silver coins, but these were intercepted by Englishmen boats who stole these coins. For this reason we can observe in the museum the history of the coins and how Spain recovered them. When we finished with the museum we went to eat next to the harbor and ate hamburgers at McDonald's. After lunch and having a walk around Cartagena, we visited the Museum  the Roman Theater of Cartagena where we saw the history of Cartagena and, of course, Roman history and the Theater, which we visited afterwards.

To end our experience in Cartagena we had an ice cream and got on the bus to head over to the Hotel Marina Rey in Vera, where we had dinner, and watched the Champions League game played by Real Madrid against Youth, in which we all shouted the “chilena” of  CR7.

And to celebrate the overwhelming victory of Madrid, we went for a night swim to the beach.

After the beach we went to our rooms …

Second Day

The second day we got up at half past eight and we were freezing because we had forgotten to put the heat on so we had to take a shower to warm up. After breakfast we took the bus to go to the Carboneras Desalination Plant where we were taught throughout the morning the process that was done to clean the enormous amount of water that was obtained from the ocean.

When we finished the desalination visit, we received the terrible news that the best activity of the trip, diving, had been cancelled due to the water current that had moved all the sand from the ground and we could not dive. Instead, they let us stay on the beach for 4 hours where we were playing soccer, bathing, and tanning a little bit. Then we ate at a restaurant on the beach and went to the Caves of Sorbas which is a series of caves, canyons, sinkholes, geodes and other karst phenomena excavated by the water in a plaster deposit. We went inside and were able to observe these geological phenomena.

After the visit we returned to the hotel where we were resting in the pool and took a walk on the beach. We had dinner at 10 and went to the rooms…

 Third Day

We got up a little late and almost missed breakfast because we had not slept at all since the roof was falling down due to BoriMono, but we managed to get to breakfast and get onto the bus on time.

This day we visited the experimental farm Universidad de Almería - ANECOOP in which they experiment with plant genes, specifically with tropical fruits such as papaya and bananas or vegetables such as tomatoes and onions. After this visit we had a long afternoon in which we were on the beach of Cabo de Gata, after eating and having a good time, we visited the Salinas of Cabo de Gata in which they explained how they extracted salt from the sea water and we could see the heaps of salt that accumulated in the water and the mountains of salt outside of it. 

Then we went to the Volcanic Complex in Cabo de Gata where we took a walk and observed the types of rocks that were in the surroundings. We also saw how it was formed and had a competition to see who could collect the most minerals in the least amount of time. 

After the visit we went to the hotel, where we had dinner into the rooms...

Fourth Day

This day was basically spent on the bus as we woke up at half past eight like every day and collected our clothes in our bags and got onto the bus. We stopped in the Calar Alto astronomical observatory where we listened to a very boring man giving us lots of information which no one caught on as we were very tired. But after the talk, we visited the observatory which was a bit more interesting. After the visit to the observatory we finished the trip, went on the bus to have a meal, and went home. As we were so tired, everyone fell asleep…

The Almería trip has been one of the best trips I have taken with the high school, mainly, as you would have noticed, because of the good time we spent in our rooms, and the visits and the beaches were also incredibly amazing. I have to give my appreciation to our teacher who organized this incredible trip.