Donana National Park

We had an uneventful weekend in Spain with lots of rain. "All instruments are running fine" and no instrument needed to be reanimated. The evenings were also quite uneventful, because I bought no beer on Friday. Maybe the food will be enough for this evening and tomorrow morning, but we are extremely running out of food! (; Just about 15 yoghurts are left...
On Sunday morning 14 scientists went to Donana National Park to visit some rare animals. I could join the trip and was looking forward to see many animals and an interesting landscape. When we arrived at the national park our "bus" (a small green thing) was already there. Everybody had to pay 25€ for a tour of about 3 hours through the northern part of the park. The trip with this vehicle was as comfortable as flying with Ryanair and it was jumping through the sand like a rabbit... I nearly got seasick.
Our tour gide was not able to speak English, so the tour had to be in Spanish. That didn´t matter much, because there were only broccoli trees and sand and broccoli trees. Sometimes, we could the some birds or horses, but the rare animals were so rare, that we could not see one of them.






























After the tour we stayed in the "international city of horses" for one hour, where children learn to ride horses instead of bicycles. Every house has its stable and the village is crowded with horses. A typical spanish church is also located in this village and so (it was Sunday and an official holiday...) it was crowded by many visitors and churchgoers. The most interesting thing was a one thousand years old olive tree, which was really impressive. (The photo was taken from inside the bus...)















This morning Jovana went back to Germany and Thomas arrived in Spain. During the morning MoLa moved from the measurement site to the INTA for an intercomparison of the spanish aerosol measurements and our results.















After the relocation I showed Thomas the wonderful beach near the campsite while Frank was in a very interesting data meeting. Now our crew for the trip back to Mainz is completed and we are going to start tomorrow afternoon! Our plan for tomorrow is to reach the Ravioli Hotel, where Thomas had this gorgeous ravioli last time.
At the moment Thomas and Frank are doing an operation at the open heart of the AMS to install the new blower. I was not allowed to monitor the procedure, but I hope the AMS will be still alive afterwards...
This evening we will have another BBQ to kill some part of our food reservoir. Otherwise MoLa will be loaded with tons of food. (; Or I will leave the food for Bambi, who is always hungry...