Orellana la Vieja

The reservoir appears without warning. One moment you're threading through endless dehesa—cork oak and holm oak scattered like an oversized orchard—then the cereal fields stop dead and a sheet of turquoise opens out, big enough to generate its own weather. This is not the Atlantic, though locals still call it la playa. Orellana La Vieja sits two kilometres back from the shore, its white houses arranged round a modest Plaza Mayor where the only midday movement is a pair of storks gliding between the chimneys.

Francisco de Orellana, the man who named the Amazon, was born somewhere near here in the early 1500s. The village has reconstructed his house on Calle Conquistador; opening hours are erratic—Saturday morning if the key-holder isn't fishing—so treat any visit as a bonus rather than a certainty. What you can rely on is the view from the Mudéjar tower of Nuestra Señora de la Consolación, the parish church that has watched over the settlement since the fifteenth century. Climb the spiral (free, but ask inside first) and you can see exactly why Extremaduran conquistadors eyed the horizon: in every direction the land rolls away, empty and purchasable, urging the restless to keep going.

These days the urge is satisfied by heading downhill to the water. The embalse de Orellana is a 1940s hydro-electric project that turned an agricultural backwater into inland Spain's largest freshwater playground. Two sandy coves have been groomed with picnic tables and pedal-boat hire; during July and August lifeguards whistle at swimmers who stray past the buoys. Outside those four weeks you can have a crescent of sand to yourself, provided you don't mind the odd piece of maize stalk washed down from the irrigated fields upstream. The water is warm enough for comfortable swimming from late May to early October, but it tastes of minerals—bring the five-litre bottles sold for 90 céntimos in the Día supermarket.

British voices are still scarce. TripAdvisor reviews come almost exclusively from Madrid and Seville, which means prices stay sensible. A plate of presa ibérica at La Viruta, the busiest restaurant on Plaza Mayor, costs €9 and could feed two if you order the media ración. The local pitarra wine—fermented in clay jars as Roman law once demanded—arrives in a plain glass, fruity and gulpable; ask for joven if you want something light rather than the darker crianza that arrives by default. English is rarely spoken, but the village runs on gestures and goodwill. Download the Spanish pack on Google Translate before leaving the airport; Wi-Fi is patchy once you leave the main square.

Getting here requires a car. The nearest main-line stations are Villanueva de la Serena and Monesterio, each fifty kilometres of winding country road away. From Madrid or Seville airports it's a straight blast west on the A-5, then forty minutes of empty EX-road where you meet more tractors than tourist coaches. Fill the tank in Mérida—petrol stations thin out afterwards—and don't rely on Google for the last stretch; one suggested "short cut" dissolves into an unmade farm track that will coat a hire car in beige dust.

Stay the night and you notice the temperature swing. At 550 metres above sea level, nights can drop to 8 °C in April even when the afternoon touched 24 °C. Conversely, August evenings hover around 28 °C; if your accommodation lacks air-conditioning, you'll sleep about as well as a chicken in a rotisserie. Most rental flats were built as second homes for Madrileños, so insulation is an afterthought. Spring and late-September are the sweet spots: warm days, cool sheets, and reservoirside car parks that don't resemble Tesco on 23 December.

Active visitors use the village as a base for the Ruta de los Conquistadores, a loose network of country lanes linking half-forgotten towns where Extremadura's empire-builders were born. Cyclists appreciate the lack of traffic; walkers can follow a signed six-kilometre circuit that climbs from the dam to a ridge of holm oaks and drops back past threshing circles last used in the 1970s. Ornithologists should bring a scope: ospreys fish the reservoir in winter, black storks migrate overhead in October, and the scrubby shoreline holds purple swamphen—an extravagant turquoise bird that looks Photoshopped even in the flesh.

Fishing licences are sold online (look for licencia de pesca Extremadura; €11 for a tourist day permit) but you'll need a printer; countryside cafés don't do email attachments. Black bass and carp attract weekend anglers from all over Spain, who gather at dawn by the petrol station for coffee strong enough to float a lure. If that sounds too energetic, rent a Canadian canoe from the hut behind Playa de Orellana and paddle to the drowned church tower that appears when water levels drop. It's a twenty-minute crossing; the breeze can whip up small waves, so weak swimmers should stay within 100 metres of shore.

The fiesta calendar is village-scale. Carnival in February means fancy-dress parades and chorizo sandwiches handed out by the local Lion's Club; August brings the patronal fair, three nights of fairground rides and outdoor dancing that finish with fireworks reflected in the reservoir. September's San Michael fair is more agricultural—prize rams tethered in the square, barrels of new wine broached at lunchtime, and old men comparing hoe handles as if they were Fabergé eggs. None of the events are staged for tourists; you attend as a temporary neighbour, not as a ticket-holder.

What you won't find is boutique shopping, cocktail bars or "hidden" coves. Mobile reception drops to a single bar on the beach, and the nearest cinema is forty minutes away in Don Benito. If that sounds like deprivation, best head north to Cáceres's boutique hotels. Orellana La Vieja offers instead the minor pleasure of watching Spain operate without the filter of international branding: old women sweeping their doorsteps before the sun hits, teenagers learning to drive in empty supermarket car parks, and fisherman rowing home under a sky so wide it makes even the Amazon feel crowded.