After just a small 30 minute drive, we can skip urban activity and visit the towns of La Puebla and Coria del Rio, which are located almost at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. The lower course of the river before meeting the Atlantic Ocean creates marshes and lakes, composing an inhospitable landscape full of beauty. Blue and green colors are everywhere in this flat area of Doñana Natural Park’s surroundings.

We will meet a local expert in nature to discover Dehesa de Abajo and also the hundreds of acres of rice fields around. If you like bird-watching, this is definitively your tour. We are in one of the most important feeding and nesting areas for an enormous range of bird species.

Rice was introduced in the Iberian Peninsula during the Islamic period, and it completely changed an ecosystem of marshes that had probably been considered unusable before. The rice production in this region has provoked also a huge impact in the local cultural identity. Today, the province of Seville produces the 40% of the Spanish rice, a much higher quantity than in Valencia, paella’s place of origin.

In this tour, after exploring the Natural Park and the rice fields, we will go to a traditional restaurant in the countryside to try the delicious local dish arroz con pato or rice with duck. Because this tour is not about paella, it is about the real gastronomy and way of living of the region we are visiting.

 

Book this tour or contact Andalusian Traveller here