La Alcaidesa - the large imposing sign with a backlighting reads amidst a landscape of ornamental plants and trees welcoming us to what promised to be a summer paradise resort in the western end of Costa del Sol. It was November 2013 and we have just escaped the cold autumn weather in Britain for a week-long holiday under the glorious Spanish sun.
An endless row of palm trees soon guided the winding road to our hotel, a journey which took us three kilometers in the car to get to from the main road. There was a footpath underneath the trees and halfway down the gently sloping terrain towards the Mediterranean Sea the clusters of houses started to get visible but aside from an occassional car we have met on the road there were no other signs of life.
We stayed in Vista Real, one of the two hotel apartments catering to holidaymakers (the other one being Aldiana which caters exclusively to German market) that was part of this Spanish development that was started in the early 1990s.
The resort itself has a lot going for it: with impressive panoramic views of the long stretching beach going all the way to the Rock of Gibraltar and on clear bright days, the distant Atlas mountains of Morocco. It is well connected by roads and motorways to more popular travel destinations in Andalusia. It is home to one of the finest golf courses of the region.
It was the sort of place that would get featured in the Channel 4 programme 'A Place in the Sun' as it would certainly appeal to British expats desperate to escape to a warmer location. And there are plenty of residential homes around with a mixture of townhouses, apartments and villas designed to look like traditional pueblos to keep the appearance of a town.
But an ideal Spanish town it certainly did not feel like, rather an eerily empty and isolated neighbourhood typical of soulless western suburbia. With very few shops and lack of public transport, a car is an absolute necessity. And despite the beautifully landscaped tree-lined streets, there was no one around.
A travel review described it as tranquil and peaceful but that was not what I felt whilst driving around. The ghostly quiet made me think twice about coming back. If it is isolation you want, then La Alcaidesa is a perfect place for you but if you long for a real Spanish town, look elsewhere.
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