This portal was begun by my wife Darsey Araneda, with work beginning around the summer of 2006. A web designer and programmer with over 10 years of experience, the project was begun as a way to both facilitate communication and information exchange between residents of the region, and also to serve as a handy source of information for the many visitors to the region. By way of background, Darsey is an American who moved to the Costa Tropical in early 2003. I, her husband Luis, am an Argentinean who spent much of my life in America. We discovered the Costa Tropical in 2002 during a holiday taken after a business conference in Barcelona.

We rented a car and drove down the coast from Barcelona, passed through the Costa Tropical, crossed over into Morocco and wrecked a car there (it’s never good to wreck a car, but especially not in Morocco), returned to Spain, and flew back to America. Needless to say, of all the wonderful places we visited on the trip, starting with Barcelona and visiting the illustrious cities of Valencia, Alicante, Almería, Malaga, Sevilla, Ronda, Fes, Cadiz, Madrid, and many smaller towns in between, the Costa Tropical was our favorite. After that terrific trip of discovery and adventure, I read the book Driving over Lemons which kept me reminiscing about the beauties and wonders of the region we had just visited.

In late 2002 we went to the UK to spend the Christmas holidays with Darsey’s family in London. We had a great time, visiting Scotland and enjoying a very festive London. After an unusual blast of cold wintery weather in January 2003, we hopped on one of the incredibly cheap flights from London to Malaga via easyJet, to spend some more time on the southern coast of Spain and to warm up a spell. With no particular destination in mind (remember that the US Dollar / Euro exchange rate was very reasonable at the time, from the perspective of an American) we drove up the coast and spent the night in Almuñécar. We really liked the town, decided to rent a house for a few weeks, and the rest is history.

We liked the area more and more the longer we stayed, as we discovered its finer points, and as we explored the area around it. But more personally, I felt a deep wholeness here. In a place so deeply rooted in history with evidence of the splendor of the bygone ages all around, in a place with so much breathtaking natural beauty, I felt delightedly small; I was in a place where I could finally begin to relax and simply let go. I felt that I had finally arrived at a place where you are no longer constantly measured and judged, and a place where people are simply happy to exist. A place where people are happy to wake up, eat, work some, have some fun, and then just go to bed at night. Nothing complicated, nothing silly, nothing twisted or perverse; just that simple. We also realized that it takes lots of time and exploration to truly appreciate any place and culture. It’s just not enough to travel through and spend a few days on a quick tour and information on the Costa Tropical was not easy to come by. Discovery was a matter of asking locals for recommendations, stopping by local tourist offices, reading travel books that touched on the area however briefly (Costa Tropical is not covered by travel books well because of its relatively low population and is outshined by the nearby cities of Granada and Malaga), and just walking and driving randomly and discovering another fascinating place. This web portal is designed to make that process of discovery and recommendation much easier for you as we have done all the hard work already.

My wife is the computer expert, with numerous Microsoft and Novell certifications. I’m a banker by trade but my wife has helped me learn some about computers to help out with this effort. Max , our son of two and a half years, is a precious little boy who we hope will greatly benefit from the experience of growing up in this wonderful area. He was born in Malaga in 2006, an experience in itself that was quite overwhelming at the time but also wonderful and magical. Just another of the experiences that we hope to be able to share and answer questions about on this site.

Please Enjoy!

If you have any suggestions for improving this site or making it more useful we would love to hear from you.