As a leaving gift, we were given a lovely handmade present from Christine and Rob Simmons. It is a cross stitch of an Indalo Man, or "rainbow warrior" with an explanation of its origin on the reverse. It is a truly unique, special and thoughtful gift that has travelled over our van door with us so far. We were reliably informed that he was an Iberian messenger of the gods, a lucky little charm similar to a St Christopher to bring us good luck and good fortune on our travels.
A few weeks ago, we were indeed in the Iberian region of Spain, and we drove through the province of Almeria. As promised, we saw the Indalo in lots of places, on buildings, road signs, roundabouts, walls.
On the road to Santa de Maria, we passed this in the middle of a roundabout!
And instantly thought of our Indalo. When we got to the site, we asked the owner Ivan about it, and he told us that the first paintings of the Indalo had been found in the caves by Velez Rubio, a town we had passed through enroute. The caves, known as 'La Cuevas de los Letreros' were found in 1868 and made into a national historic monument in 1924. Try as he might, he could not arrange for us to visit the caves, so with regret we haven't see the paintings first hand, but this is what they look like:
Just another point of interest that we happened to stumble across on our travels!
Clare
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