The corner of Spain where mangos, bananas and avocados grow

By Annie Bennett

Fancy sitting on a beach in the warm December sunshine, eating a prawn and mango salad and drinking locally made rum? The good news is that you don’t have to travel to the Caribbean to do so. Just take a short flight to Andalucia.

The Costa Tropical, in the province of Granada in southern Spain, is a coastline of coves and Moorish watchtowers where a quirk of climate means that dense groves of mangos, avocados, custard apples, bananas and other exotic crops flank the Mediterranean. The protection of the Sierra Nevada and the warm winds blowing over from north Africa create a subtropical microclimate with 320 days of sunshine a year and mild temperatures even in winter.

Stay in Salobreña, a pretty hilltop town with a long beach, where the castle was the summer residence of the Nasrid rulers of the Kingdom of Granada. Or base yourself in Almuñécar, where a Roman fish-salting factory is now part of the lush El Majuelo botanic garden.

Read full  The Telegraph article at this link