Basque cuisine in Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve

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Urdaibai cuisine

The Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve deserves a special side trip. Coast, inland landscapes, fjords and inlets: this paradise offers some of the finest examples of Basque geography and cuisine.

Mundaka is the guardian that looks out over the sandbar stretching out between the port and the neighbouring sands of Laida. Nowadays the streets of Mundaka brim with visitors who come to watch the waves as they crash into the sandbanks where surfers from around the globe enjoy their sport.

Inland, countless vegetable gardens thrive in the enclave’s microclimate, yielding delicious produce all year round. The Urdaibai estuary locals say that the sea is what makes their gardens so fertile: it tempers the air, acts as a mirror to reflect twice as much light and seasons the earth with its salty air.

This harbour of sailors and wayfarers reaped the benefits of the plants brought back from America, many of which became a staple of the local gardens: tomatoes, beans, maize and green peppers, the local jewel in the crown of Urdaibai.

At the far end of the estuary sits Gernika, the sacred town of the Basque people, where our ancestors gathered under an ancient oak tree to make important political decisions. And not far away, in Kortezubi, is the cave of Santimamiñe, its walls offering us signs of how the primitive dwellers of this land lived some six or seven thousand years ago.