The weeks are passing quickly. It may be because we are waiting for our shipment from the U.S. and each week we marvel that it still has not arrived. Or perhaps it is because we leave a week from today for a trip to Korea and have been mindful of all the things we want to get done before that trip.
Regardless, time really does fly when you are having fun!
Happy Sam
This week we had two rainy days. Rain is something that always brought a wave of depression for me when we lived in Oregon; I knew that once it started, it would not stop for nearly nine months. But here in La Alpujarra, rain is welcome after many months of sunshine. And so we rejoiced with the locals, and honestly, I loved it. It smelled like "home," and it was cozy in our little cortijo with the rain falling outside, and the next day when we were enveloped by the clouds that resisted leaving.
The view over the edge of our property on Thursday
When the clouds did lift we had the most wonderful view of the snow covered mountains. I have always loved snow and I could look at this view for hours without tiring. In fact, I spent several hours waiting for the clouds to lift because I knew what was waiting for me.
A view that will never get old
We had a day in Granada and an evening with friends new and old. A British man was here for a trek with our friends who run Spanish Highs Mountain Guides; we had met him in February when he was here for a winter climb and he was surprised to hear that we had moved here since we hadn't mentioned that to him in February - we explained that, in February we had not planned to move here!
And we have taken some lovely hikes. One of the things about hiking here is that we constantly discover ruins scattered about the hillsides. The house we live in was one of these ruins before it was restored several years ago. And each ruin has an Era, or threshing circle - a feature that I find especially charming about this part of Spain.
An Era from times past
Ruined window
Approaching a ruin on one of our hikes
I want to know about the woman who cooked with this oven
Pantry shelves
View from a ruin
Sometimes the ruin is a car!
And sometimes we find interesting bugs on our hikes. Today on the way home we spotted this Wolf spider on the road. I thought it was just a fuzzy spider but when we got home I shared the photo on the Wildlife in Southern Spain Facebook site and discovered that the "fuzz" is actually baby spiders, hundreds of babies!
Female Wolf spider with a back full of babies
We leave for Korea next Saturday so I probably won't blog for a week or two. Thanks for following and I'll be back in November.
As James Taylor sings... "Well the leaves have come to turning And the Goose has gone to fly, And bridges are for burning, So don't you let that yearning pass you by. Walking man, walking man walks."
If you live long enough you can think of a lyric for most any situation. We have mostly oak trees and their leaves don't really turn, except to brown, but the poplars are a nice yellow. And while there are no Geese, the Bee Eaters have flown to Africa for the winter.
Autumn has arrived here in Las Alpujarras. When you live in a brown landscape the transition from summer to autumn is more subtle than in New England, where James Taylor writes his songs.
New England leaves of autumn
Nevertheless, the season is changing and if you look closely the evidence is there. The sun doesn't pop over the mountain until nearly 9 o'clock in the morning, and it is dark now soon after 8pm. We are reaching for our fleece in the mornings and evenings, even though we are still wearing shorts and t-shirts during the day. It isn't as hot as it was in August and September, so we are doing a bit more hiking. Yesterday we went high in the hills above us and enjoyed several hours without seeing another human. We did see a fox running through the pine trees, and that was magical. Today we walked out our road for a bit and saw views that we miss from the car. Sam took his clippers and trimmed the briars that scrape the car as we drive in and out. I took my camera and tried to capture signs of autumn.
High in the hills above our house
From the high hills
The sun is coming up later each morning
Sam trimming the briars along the road
Thistles have turned from purple to brown
The blackberries are drying up
If you look hard you can find a bit of fall color in the leaves
The rose hips have ripened
Thistles
A Poplar leaf
Chestnuts are almost ready to fall
The pomegranates are getting larger
The baby geckos have grown large enough to climb
The olives have turned from green to purple
And figs have ripened
And at the Cami Hardware store in Orgiva, the fans and pool supplies have been replaced with wood stoves - all the signs are there. Winter is coming.
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Look closely for the lizard on one of our walls, built by Manuel
This poem has floated through my mind over and over during the past few weeks. You see, we have a good neighbor who makes good fences, or walls. But the mind is an odd thing.
Manuel has lived on the mountain for about 15 years. He and his wife, who he met when she was 14 and he was 20 live in a nearby cortijo with their black lab, "Blues." Manuel is learning how to play the blues guitar, and therefore the name. As one of our British neighbors told me, "none of us could survive up here without Manuel's help." He does odds and ends of jobs for various neighbors and we learned that wall building is a specialty of his.
Our property had many lovely walls when we arrived, but in making it our own, we wanted to add some. We met Manuel first at a social gathering and Sam mentioned that he had a few things he could use help with. A couple weeks went by and then one evening about 7 pm Manuel showed up and started working - it was August and the days were quite hot, so evening was best for this type of work. He has been coming 5 days a week ever since.
He arrives promptly at 8:00 and leaves by about 2:00, but he only ever charges for 5 hours. Blues comes along and occasionally wanders inside to see what I'm up to, but mostly he is a faithful companion at Manuel's side. Each day we prepare a cooler for him with a bottle of water and two beers, and I fix him coffee each morning - black with one sugar.
If you know Sam, you know that he rarely hires anyone to do anything because there is little chance that it will be done as well as Sam could do it himself. This is not the case with Manuel. Sam has been amazed to meet someone who works as hard as he does, and we have not had anything but total satisfaction with his work. He is definitely skilled with walls, and also with steps, and we are proud to live with the results of his work. Frequently Sam is outside working on a project as well; one day Manuel walked over and squeezed his arm commenting on how strong Sam is; he clearly respects Sam's work ethic as much as Sam respects Manuel's.
The lower wall was already here but we have had Manuel add the upper wall
Stairs, also by Manuel
In other news, we finally got our car back, on Wednesday, so only a few days later than anticipated. We learned a great deal during the 8 days we didn't have a car. We are now confident using the bus system between here and Granada, we have learned our way around Granada by walking all over, and we have hiked home from the bus on two different routes up the mountain. But it is good to have a car again.
And today we took a gorgeous hike. We drove further up the mountain for 15 km and then parked and hiked uphill for 90 minutes. We ended at about 8800 feet, or 2700 meter elevation and ate our lunch looking at the view. At one point I realized that we could see our property way below!
High on the hill, in the center of the photo, is a point; that's where we hiked to.
And this is looking back down from our lunch spot. It is too hard to describe, but our property is on the edge way down below.
The weeks are flying past and this week was measured by various trips up and down the mountain.
On Sunday I decided to take a longer hike while Sam worked on projects at home. I walked up the driveway, then the road, then onto a sheep path, across a barranco, then through a meadow until I came to an old ruin. At the ruin there is a marked trail that runs east and west (or uphill and downhill). I turned east and started downhill towards the Poqueira river. The views were stunning in every direction and I took many photos. I paused to eat the sweetest blackberries from bushes along the path. The trail is steep with many switchbacks and I went slowly. At one point a man with a heavy pack caught up and then passed me, but he was the only other person that I saw on this part of the walk. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get from our house to the bridge over the Poqueira river.
The trail to the river
Resting in the coolness of the river gorge
I stopped and ate some bread and cheese and dried fruit, enjoying the cool of the water and the shade in the narrow gorge. After my break I started back up the trail. In a short distance I decided to take a path that went along the mountain rather than back up the mountain; I knew where it would intersect with a trail we have taken before.
Ruins are scattered on these hillsides
The walk was pleasant even though the day was warmer than I'd expected. I passed one man and later a couple, but otherwise no one else. Eventually I came to the intersection where I could either go left towards Bubion or stay straight on towards home. I was ready to be home and walked on. The climb back to our house is quite steep, but I have done it before and with many rests I made it back home about 3 1/2 hours after starting out.
We had scheduled an appointment for Tuesday to have our car fixed (remember the concrete post incident?). So Monday was the day to get our errands taken care of. We needed to be in Pampaneira at 10:00 to catch Pepe the mailman. He is only there from 10-10:30 and this is where we will receive speeding tickets, if for some reason we get one, or other car and insurance related mailings. So we left our place about 9:15 to drive the 10 kms to town. As we made our way down the road we were passed by another vehicle that was racing down the mountain. I admit to driving cautiously on our steep, narrow, bumpy road, but I was amazed that someone needed to pass me. But when we got to the intersection with the paved road, the car that had passed me was parked next to another car and an elderly monk was being helped from the one car to the other. At first glance he looked like the Dalai Lama.
There is a Buddhist retreat center on our mountain and it has been visited by the Dalai Lama, but on second glance we decided that this was a different man. He was quite elderly and the transfer between cars took several minutes. Once he was installed in the second car, there were many bows and signs of affectionate respect from the women who had delivered him. Then the second car sped away and we were free to continue on our way.
After confirming that Pepe had no mail for us we made our way to Orgiva to pick up packages from our delivery point there, then to the hardware store and the post office box and the grocery store. The final piece of business for the day was to go to the ITV in Tablones to get our trailer hitch inspected.
We have learned that it is very important (and required) to have your trailer hitch inspected. When we purchased our car we were given documents for this purpose and we later discovered that the ITV is the place where this is accomplished. The ITV is much like the facilities in the States where cars go for emissions inspections. We were pleased to discover that there is an ITV in Tablones, which is just across the Seven-Eye Bridge from Orgiva. Tablones seems like a pueblo that has been overlooked, but there is a very large, new, shining facility that houses the ITV. Our first trip there was a few weeks ago and we learned then that we did not have all of the required documents for the trailer hitch inspection. We returned to the car dealer in Granada and were given additional documents. On Monday we presented our new documents to the man at the ITV but were told that we were missing a signature and a stamp on one of the documents. We scheduled an appointment to return next Tuesday at 10:32 for our inspection, with the plan that we would get the missing signature and stamp when we took our car in to to be repaired.
Tuesday morning we were up early and started our drive down the mountain at 7:00, long before the sky was showing any sign of daybreak. It was raining lightly, but the drive was uneventful with no speeding monks or other curiosities. We arrived at the car dealer in Granada promptly at 9:00 for our appointment. After a bit of roughly translated discussion with the woman in reception, that included her shrugging her shoulders and signing and stamping the trailer hitch document, we turned over our keys with the assurance that the car would be ready on Friday. We were then directed to a van for a courtesy ride. We needed to get to the bus station but from what we could understand, we were being taken elsewhere and we could get a bus from there to the bus station. We tried to learn more from our driver but he indicated that he was deaf.
Once we were delivered we got walking directions from a man at a nearby hotel and we started out to find the bus station. I was delighted to look up and see that we were on the Camino Mozarabe route towards Santiago. Each telephone pole had a shell and a yellow arrow painted on it and suddenly I was back on the Camino following the arrows. But alas, the way to the bus station led us off of the Camino route.
Camino Mozarabe from Granada to Santiago
We found the bus station and soon were on our way back to Pampaneira. It took about 2 hours to get to Pampaneira, delivering us just in time for lunch. After a pleasant meal of salad for me and a jamon bocadillo for Sam, we began the walk home from Pampaneira.
Beginning our walk to home from Pampaneira. Our house is somewhere high on the left.
Crossing the Poqueira river at the start of our hike home.
We had not walked this path before and were a bit unsure of how to go, but we had a good sense of where our house was and no matter what, we knew it was a steep uphill climb. We walked along the river for about a kilometer then crossed on a bridge and started the climb.
Closer to home - Pampaneira in the distance.
It took about an hour and a half before we were finally home.
On Thursday we contacted the car dealer to confirm that we could pick up the Jeep on Friday. We were told that it would be ready at 6:00 pm. We went online and bought bus tickets from Orgiva and then arranged with our neighbor Manuel for a ride to the bus stop. Friday morning Manuel picked us up at our gate at 9:00 am and kindly delivered us to the bus stop in Orgiva. Once on the bus and nearly half way to Granada we received an email indicating that they needed a part for the car and it would not be ready until Monday. And no, they did not have a car that we could use for the weekend. Fortunately we had other business in Granada; we needed to make a bank transfer of 225 euros to the shipping company that has had our stuff for over three months now - but that's another story for another blog post.
We made it to Granada, went to the bank and transferred the money to the shipping company then wondered what to do next. We stopped for a delicious lunch and then, once again, walked to the bus station. During lunch I sent a text to my friend Kiersten asking if she could give us a ride home if we got the bus to Lanjaron. She responded that we could use their truck for the weekend. Their truck was parked near the Hotel Espana, and we could just ask at the bar for their keys. How cool is that? So we got to the station and soon were back on the bus headed towards Lanjaron. The bus we were on had bad, or no shocks, and we bumped and swayed as we raced down the highway. We were relieved to finally step off the bus in Lanjaron. We got the keys from the bar and made our way back up the mountain in Kiersten and Richard's truck. As I wrote last week, we could not do this without the kindness and generosity of our new friends.
Monday we will deliver the truck back to Lanjaron, return the keys to the bar at the Hotel Espana, catch the bus back to Granada and hopefully retrieve our car so that we can keep our appointment for the trailer hitch inspection on Tuesday at 10:32 sharp.
On Monday, new friends Felipe and Juanmi came to have a look at our water heater. Several weeks ago I noticed a large burnt spot on the outside of the water heater and it was apparent from the dramatic sound coming from the heater each time we turned on the hot water that something was no longer working as it should. I mentioned this to my friend Kiersten and she told me that Felipe could fix, or replace, the heater.
This is not a good sign
Felipe doesn't have a 4x4 so we arranged to meet at the Ermita del Padre Eterno and I would drive him up the mountain. On my way down to get him I passed Andreas, a neighbor who hitchhikes up and down the mountain, and I picked him up. We managed to have a bit of conversation during our 20 minutes together although he has no English and my Spanish is beyond basic. When Felipe arrived at the Ermita he had Juanmi with him. Juanmi owns a shop in Lanjaron where he serves drinks and the best tapas around. I drove them up the mountain and they went to work on the water heater.
Juanmi and Felipe cleaning the old water heater
After a thorough cleaning of the heater they hooked it back up, but the flames were determined to come out in all the wrong places.
This is not what you want to see on the inside of your water heater box
Felipe told us that he would go to Granada and purchase a new water heater and return on Friday (in a friend's 4x4) to install it. We knew that we would not be around on Friday so we agreed on a hiding place for the keys, told him the combination to the lock on our gate and thanked him for his efforts.
We managed with cold water all week. This time of year the cold water is actually quite warm and it really was not much of an inconvenience.
On Friday afternoon we received a text from Felipe showing the newly installed water heater. We arranged to meet at a hotel bar in Lanjaron where we reimbursed him for his costs. He wasn't going to charge us for his work because we are his friends. A very kind gesture, but nevertheless we compensated him; he had two trips to our house as well as his trip to Granada and then the time involved in installing the new water heater - far more time and effort than we can accept as an act of friendship.
New Water Heater
In the meantime....We welcomed our first visitors from the States. Sam and Peter worked together at Bonneville Power Administration and we enjoyed visiting with Peter and Janice several times in Portland. Their friend, and now our friend, Amy was traveling with them and they scheduled several days in Andalucia following a trip to Portugal. They did not stay with us but instead rented a house in a village about an hour away.
On Wednesday we met Peter and Janice and Amy in Lanjaron and went to Juanmi's shop for his famous sangria and a fabulous selection of tapas.
At Juanmi's enjoying sangria and tapas
While we visited over drinks and delicious food, several others entered the shop, and we knew everyone! It started to seem staged as we introduced Felipe, then Richard, and finally Alison to our Portland friends. I think they had a false sense that we are far more connected here than we actually are, but it was fun to have them meet so many of our new friends.
On Thursday we met Peter and Janice and Amy at the Ermita del Padre Eterno and drove them up the mountain to our home.
Ermita del Padre Eterno, and convenient meeting place
There were some quiet moments from the backseat as we bumped along close to the edge of the winding road. But once we arrived home they expressed surprise at how nice our home and location are. It was affirming to share our new life with old friends and to feel as if they really understand why we are here. We wandered around our property and then took a short walk towards the barranco. On the way we encountered our neighbors, and new friends, Rich and Jules who were out walking their young horse.
After a snack of jamon, cheese, olives, fresh tomatoes, bread, almonds and dried fruit we piled in the car and drove to Ferreirola. This village is where Sam and I first stayed in 2008 and where we immediately fell in love with the area. There is a pleasant walk out of the village and down to the river. Everyone was having such a good time that we crossed the river and climbed for 25 minutes to the top of the other side where there are stunning views across to the white villages that are scattered on the hillside.
Janice looking across the valley towards La Taha
We stayed at the rental house with Peter and Janice and Amy on Thursday night and spent Friday together in Granada. This was our first trip to Granada without needing to accomplish any business and we enjoyed wandering around, stopping several times for drinks and tapas, and visiting. Finally we dropped them off at the Granada airport for their flight to Barcelona.
As we drove home we reflected on how fortunate we are to have so many great people in our lives. We could not make this work without the kindness of new friends and now we have the assurance that old friends really will visit! And although this is our choice, and no one needs to understand or support it, it was a treat to share it with Peter and Janice and Amy and to know that they totally "get it" and share in our joy.
It has been a week of SLOs; Significant Learning Opportunities.
Facebook friends already know about the afternoon I backed our new car into a concrete post. This was a significant event in many ways. Over the years we have driven thousands of kilometers throughout Europe, in various rental cars, without ever getting a scratch on a car. But the Jeep had less than 2000 kms on it when I, without any reason, backed into a post. I have tried to find an explanation, but I just looked over my left shoulder, stomped on the gas pedal and hit the post.
What initially seemed like a potentially huge issue quickly diminished to a more proper position in life's concerns. We recognized all the things that didn't happen; I did not hit another car, or a person; the post did not crumble bringing the entire grocery store down on top of us. My can't-be-explained lapse in driving talents did not happen while encountering a tour bus on a narrow hairpin turn, or while driving strangers up a 4x4 track on a mountainside. In other words, it could have been much worse.
On Friday we went to the car dealer in Granada for an estimate on the repair. The salesman who had helped us with our purchase met us and spent about two hours with us. He doesn't have any English, but he has incredible patience and while Sam used Google Translate on his phone and Miguel used Google Translate on his own phone, we were able to get it all figured out. The repair will cost several thousand less than we anticipated - in the end, less than 1000 euro for parts and labor, and Miguel convinced us to use our insurance policy to cover it. We were afraid that our 3-week old policy would be canceled if we filed a claim already, but Miguel assured us that we get 4 accidents before anything negative happens. So we will take the car back in on the 20th and it should be good-as-new three days later. We don't know if we are getting new parts or just repairs to our current parts, but Sam, who has always been a perfectionist, shrugged and said, "Whatever they do, it will be good enough."
"Good enough," is a phrase that I am hearing more and more from Sam, and it is a phrase that I never heard him use back in the States. This is a significant change. For years I have watched him do and re-do and then for good measure, re-do one more time. I would point out that "no one will ever see it," but that didn't matter. He would tell me, "but I'll know," and then he would work harder to get it "just right." But now we live in a home that doesn't have one straight line in any of the construction, where Saharan winds cover everything with a fine layer of dirt, where a drive to the store involves weeds and brambles scraping the sides of the car and then bouncing over rocks and ruts for 7 kms. Bugs and geckos come and go freely from the many small openings in our house and I am watching as Sam embraces the fact that none of it really matters. And so he has re-grouted a few spots, and put a layer of fresh paint on the walls; he pulls some weeds, when he feels like it, but in the end he steps back and says, "That's good enough." This ease is a gift of our life in the Alpujarras.
There is a philosophy here, rooted in poverty and restricted access, that you use what you have rather than buying something new. And so old doors are used as covers for the water control box, bathtubs are used as animal watering troughs; gates are constructed from any combination of odds and ends and a multitude of things are reused in a variety of ways. In that spirit, and because our shipment of things has not yet arrived from the states, I decided to use my vegetable peeler as a cheese peeler. I made one good swipe across the cheese rind and told Sam I had made a brilliant discovery as the rind came off in a paper thin strip. Then I repositioned the hunk of cheese and pulled the peeler towards me to try for a paper thin slice of cheese. The peeler slipped off the cheese and onto the lower portion of my thumb taking a thicker-than-paper slice of skin off of my hand. In that instant between the event and the resulting gush of blood I called out, "I don't think this was a good idea!" and then the profuse bleeding began. We both thought that we had packed gauze and first aid tape, but it was no where. Sam used scissors to snip off the dangling flap of skin and then we did our best to clean it up before wrapping it all with a pad of paper towel and masking tape.
Sometimes it is acceptable to buy the correct tool rather than using what you have.
My hand will be fine but this week we need to stop at the farmacia and stock up on first aid supplies. The car is fine, but for only a little inconvenience it will soon look good-enough and perhaps even good-as-new. I have named the geckos and this morning when a young gecko walked past me on the floor I just looked up and thought, "oh, he's a young one." Although none of the walls are straight, I do have a perfectly flat cook top for the first time ever. I stood there puzzling over the fact that when I crack an egg into a pan, it does not travel to one side of the pan like it always has. I mop the tile floors knowing that within minutes they will be covered with fine dust, but I know it won't be as dusty in the winter when the winds shift and the doors and windows are closed, and in the meantime, it just doesn't matter; to anyone.
We have found perfection in this life we have chosen, but it is a perfection of spirit that comes from the simple beauty of sunrises and sunsets, of clouds and shadows, of Bee Eaters swooping and calling to each other as they gather before their migration back to southern Africa. There is perfection in afternoons spent with friends and new acquaintances of various nationalities, laughing and talking over tinto de verano and beer while sharing plates of chips and grilled fish; where no one is in a hurry and time passes easily.
There is perfection in a task that ends with the comment "That's good enough." Because, really, good-enough is as close to perfect we will ever get.
Sunrise
Sunset
Clouds
Shadows
Bee Eater, Photo credit: Kiersten Rowland
Friends and acquaintances; most are just back from a 5 day hike in the mountains
