Phew! It's hot here in Spain. I mean really hot and with very high humidity.

It makes it really difficult to get out and about during the day as it's quite uncomfortable. I went out for a walk one afternoon and I don't think I've ever sweated so much (outside of a sauna).

Still, we've had a little bit of rain and some cloudy days, even a bit of a thunderstorm, unfortunately not enough to clear the humidity though.

The start of this week was all about Tracy's mums 80th birthday. We had some celebrations to sort out and some gifts to hand over. I think she enjoyed herself despite the heat.

For most of the rest of the week we've been hiding in the air conditioning as much as possible. To be fair I believe that we are seeing abnormally high heat and humidity, based on the feedback from people who have lived here for years, and hopefully things will start to settle down soon.

Exploration wise we haven't done very much. My walk the other day was just along the beach area to the north where there are some rocky coves and beaches that may be worth exploring more when it's a bit cooler.

I've also been up to La Bassa De La Reine (the queens bathing pools) which is just past the marina and has presented some interesting opportunities for photography.

We've been swimming a couple of days and I've done a few early morning photo shoots but other than that it's been a lazy week, again because of the heat.

It's hard to believe that we've reached the end of July already (as I write this on the 31st). Soon we'll be preparing for the autumn which should see some cooler temperatures and less people about.

Still, as I said earlier we've had some cloud about and that makes for some interesting landscape images.

In fact, one morning this week, I looked off of the balcony about 20 minutes after sunrise and saw the way the clouds were moving out over the sea and I had to quickly grab by camera bag and tripod and run down to the beach.

Although there are also those times that I've planned to go out early and that includes a trip up to La Bassa De La Reine, which is about a 25 to 30 minute walk, where the sky was remarkably changeable.

I took this shot about 25 minutes before sunrise.

Just 35 minutes later and the scene looked like this.

Of course one of the great things about being here is that I can head out for a sunrise whenever I want to, and it's not even stupidly early. Today I went out just after 6AM to walk up to Rio Seco (the dry river) which is about 20 minutes walk away. It's not completely dry as there is a tiny stream. The sunrise was at about 7AM but actually the best time to be there was about 25 minutes before when there were some great clouds in the sky just starting to get light from the sun breaking through from below the horizon which was then being reflected down onto the water in the river.