El Paso - Desert Springs €345.000

Desert Springs is a holiday resort, golf club, and residential development with plenty of personality. For all the right reasons it is not somewhere you can easily forget, nor confuse with any other new development in Spain. Any development that is unforgettable, and unmistakeable, in a positive sense, will always enjoy advantages over the mass of developments that aren’t.

When you visit Desert Springs for the first time, you know something is up when you turn off the main road from Cuevas del Almanzora into Desert Springs. The slightly scruffy, rustic charm of the area gives way to a perfect infrastructure, and an immaculate landscape. Even an un-trained eye can see that expensive, quality materials have been used for things like sidewalks and street lighting, and that the landscape is being carefully maintained. Such details are always a good sign, as they reveal a lot about the quality and values of the developer.

One of the reasons why Desert Springs is so unforgettable is because of the resort’s architecture & design. There is a wide choice of properties, but all of them are designed & built by the developer, which ensures a consistent architectural theme throughout the resort.

As a result, Desert Springs has an attractive Spanish colonial architecture that suits the landscape perfectly. To compliment this romantic architecture, homes are finished in earthy colours, with rustic materials, and stylish wrought iron work details and are sophisticated imbedded in the total scenery.

Properties at Desert Springs range from apartments & townhouses with communal gardens and pools, to spacious country cottages, country villas and country estates lining the fairway with individual gardens and pools.

The 72-par Indiana golf course at the heart of the development reinforces the unique identity of Desert Springs. It was inspired by the top quality desert courses of Arizona, and is a visually stunning affair. Vivid green fairways strike a vibrant contrast to the surrounding arid landscape of cactus, rock, and desert flowers. The desert golf course design, and the Spanish colonial architecture make an attractive combination. The golf course also has a golf academy, with the latest technology to help improve your game.

The Crocodile Club is set on a high point overlooking Desert Springs with views to the sea and the surrounding mountains, the Serrania Almeriense. The design of the club is based on an African game lodge and is created specifically with families in mind and has an amazing pool, lots of fun things for kids like a playground, games room, tennis court, Mini-golf and much more and you can enjoy your lunch or dinner at the pool bar or in the restaurant.

Then there is the Cave Bar, with its outlandish furniture, and for sophisticated, elegant dinning, the 'El Torrente' restaurant in the Club House. The Sierra Club provides tennis, paddle, beach volley-ball, a well-equipped gym, and various other sporting activities and the Beauty & Spa salon offers numerous of treatments.

Desert Springs is in Almeria, in South East Andalucia. This part of Spain has the warmest, sunniest, and driest winter climate of all mainland Europe. Millennia of endless sunshine and low humidity have created a rugged, desert landscape that is both austere and dramatic. Spectacular sierras (mountain) rise out of the desert behind the coast. ‘The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly’ and many other spaghetti westerns were filmed here because it resembles the deserts of the US Southwest.

Desert Springs has an unbeatable location on a plateau that rises above the Almanzora river plain, just a few kilometres inland from the beach resorts of Vera and Villaricos. This elevated location offers breathtaking views of the mountains from pretty much everywhere on the development. There are also sea views from the east side of the resort.

The nearest town is the market town of Cuevas del Almanzora and there are also shops in Palomares. The beach and the pretty harbour town of Villaricos, are just beyond Palomares, and have a wealth of good bars and restaurants, including an excellent beach bar.

Beyond relaxing at the resort, lying on the beach, or playing golf and other sports, there is plenty to explore in this beautiful, rugged region. If you are looking for ‘real Spain’ you will find it in Almeria. Fortunately, you can enjoy these traditional charms from the comfort of one of the most modern and luxurious resorts in Spain.

Oro del Desierto I - Country Cottages

The cottages are based on the precise shapes of the old individual field houses, the traditional “casas del campo”of The Almanzora Valley. There was a tremendous growth of these in the 19th century countryside to house the enormous increase field workers, working to feed the new mining communities. Sadly, many of these homes have now disappeared back into rubble and soil from which they were built, but if you look carefully you can see their ruins everywhere in the local landscape.

They started with a simple rectangular construction, with thick walls, buttressed corners and a flat roof. As the family grew, a mono-pitch roofed bedroom was added above, where it was cooler, and, if the money continued to come in, then another room was added above, with a roof “a cuatro aguas”.

Our modern field houses are of course built with all mod cons, with large terraces and pergolas in their own private gardens, but in clusters sharing beautiful individually landscaped gardens and swimming pools in semi-closed communities, with all the cost benefits implied. They are very tranquil and private.

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