A Surprise

Autostop

Last time I was leaving San Pedro I got a lift to Campohermoso with a German guy. From Campohermoso I somehow got a ride all the way to Granada, a two-hour ride that saved me many hours mucking around with buses and waiting in Spanish bars. The fog was so thick we could only see ten meters as we climbed from sea level to Granada which lies at around 700 meters altutitude. Then we drove out of the wall of cloud and to our left was the wonderful sight of the snow-capped Sierra to our left, and the cave-town of Guadix up ahead.

Campofeo

Campohermoso is the nearest main-road town to San Pedro, and it is a hell of a misnomer. Campohermoso means beautiful field in Spanish. Nothing could be further from the truth. The area is semi-arid, and may well have once been a beautiful stark landscape had the locals not struck tomato gold. A few years ago somebody realised that tomatoes could be grown all year round under plastic in large, ugly greenhouses that stretch as far as the eye can see.

The dusty mainstreet has a few Mercedes belonging to farmers who suddenly became very rich when they could see their tomatoes at three euros a kilo in Germany during winter. And there are the ugly "marble houses" built with such funds. Apparently in this part of the world many people keep an immaculate living room that nobody is able to use, it was purely for show. Now that some have a lot more money this idea has been scaled up to an entire marble house, with the family living in the garage.

Killing Time

Now I am just whittling time away, waiting for March the 13th when I have a flight from Valencia to England. I am waiting on a refund of my Irish tax money, without which I am not able to go too crazy in the last couple of weeks here.

But at least I will have to tax money for when I get home, though it does feel a little bit wrong to return from a long journey and not be broke. From Valencia I am flying to Stanstead near London, then I will be getting a train to Heathrow (well, actually, a couple of trains). Then on to Singapore, Melbourne and Brisbane. I am not looking forward to the journey, it always tires me out... but I am looking forward to getting home!

I was just going to turn up and surprise everybody, but that was going to be a little tricky to organise -- I can imagine getting home and finding that everybody was off camping, washing their hair or baking. So instead I have put it in my blog, and we will see how long it takes people to find out. Krys reckons 5.6 hours, I think more like three days. First reply gets a jelly frog when I get home.

Update : Jelly frog goes to Briana, my darling sister. My parents had also guessed by reading my mail. My flight QF610 arrives in Brisbane on March 15 at 10:10am. And Cully also gets a frog.

San Pedro

Waiting For The Bus

We had one of those days the other day. One of those days where you misstime your arrival so that you have to wait the maximum amount of time before catching the next bus.

The objective of the day´s travel was to get from San Pedro to Granada. The walk from San Pedro to Las Negras took about an hour, and we took no time at all to hitch-hike from Las Negras (Litterally ¨The Black Women¨, a fishing village so named after most of the men from the village died at sea sometime around 1900 and all the women in town wore black in mourning) to Campo Hermoso.

From there it all went wrong. A three hour wait for the hour-long bus ride to Almeria. Then it was another two hour wait for a bus to Granada. We then had to waste an hour waiting for the bus to Monachil where Fred lives. In all we were travelling for 11 hours, and I was a bit grumpy by the time that we got home.

Paridise Without Shade

It was all worth it for the four nights that we spent in San Pedro, an abandoned fishing village on the desert coast of Cabo De Gata (Cape Cat). The decline of the village began with the aforementioned boat disaster, when the majority of the population moved to the village of Las Negras which had just been given road access.

By the 1950s the only inhabitants in town were the Garda Civil, Franco´s right-hand police. When the Garda Civil left hippies slowly started to move into town to have a go at building their own little paradise(Garda Civil and hippies are not compatable, not by a long shot).

The coast of Cabo De Gata is the driest place in Europe, and one of the hottest. The village exists due to two fresh water springs that pop up in a little valley the ends in a small beach. They flow all year around, and provide a little oasis in the middle of the dry rolling hills with nothing taller than your hips growing on them.

It was hot enough when we were there, and that was the middle of winter. In summer it must be very difficult to get through some of the days. There is a little bit of shade, but not much. Certainly staying in one´s tent would be impossible any time after sunrise. In fact, I didn´t sleep in the tent, preferring to roll my sleeping mat out on the ground so that I could enjoy the perfect startscape in the desert.

Where Is The Community?

Of course a bunch of hippies building a little town basically translates into a bunch of folk doing their own things with a minimal amount of coordination or communication. One thing I have learnt from living in such places, it is that community can be a euphimism. More like squatter´s rights, and a great place for prison leavers, mental patients and drug addicts to hide from the greater world.

That said, there is always a core group of interesting folk who have a different take on life. Unlike El Chorrito where I spent a month during the summer, the police have very little interest in what goes on in San Pedro. In El Chorrito the police came by every couple of days to kick out anybody who was camping in the forest above the beach. This made it impossible to set up even any semi-permentant dwellings.

In San Pedro people are left to create whatever structures they please, and they also have the skeletons of the original town buildings to work with. As a result there is all manner of dwellings, and also a panaderia (bread shop), and bars serving cold beer (solar panels and generators provide the power).

The most impressive place that I saw was by far the cave house built by a German guy named Tilo. He had lived in San Pedro eight years, and had spent the last two years constructing his cave. It was a three minute scrample up a very steep rocky slope halfway up a cliff overlooking the bay. If the rock face he had carved out a cave using a chisel. He had built terraces, and steps chiseled into the rock lead from one level to another. The crowing touch was a stone BBQ that had probably the best view from a kitchen anywhere in the world. To top it off the house was completely invisible from below and one would only know about it if they were invited up.

Another character named Rubin, had recently left jail, where he had spent the last eight years. He was twenty eight, but he told me when I met him that in fact he was twenty years old as far as he was concerned. Krys and I enjoyed many a cup of coffee in his little hut, and grew to be good friends. Krys is a tattooist by trade, and has an impressive collection of tattoos on herself. Rubin revealed that he was a tattooist in jail, and told us how he made his own tattoo machines from pens and walkman batteries.

Characters like Rubin and Tilo are a highlite of places like San Pedro. But there are also people who keep you on your toes (I have met some jail-leavers and the like in such places that I would run a mile to avoid). Whoever you meet, it is bound to be interesting and educational.

Hola!

The English - A Definition

Sign spotted on the Chester-Liverpool Merseyrail train

Railway Bye-Laws : FEET ON SEETS

Feedback from our customers shows us that people putting their feet on train seats is a habit they find particularly annoying.

This also includes framework sections between, and either side of, the seat cushions.

Enforcement officers are on the Merseyrail network and may film and interview people who put their feet on seats, and any part of the seat structure, as evidence for prosecution.

Feet on seats falls within Merseyrail Electric 2002 Ltd. Railway Bye-Laws. Failure to comply with these instrucitons may lead to prosecution.

Which sums the English up quite neatly. I spent twenty minutes straining myself to resist an overwhelming urge to put my feet on the framework sections between, and either side of, the seat cushions.

The New Year

I spent New Year´s in Dublin. We had an Argentinian BBQ at my house, with my Argentine flatmate´s Argentian friends and guests. Some latin timing ensured that we were halfway between the house and the city centre when the fireworks went off. I had a quiet one, because I had to catch a ferry to Liverpool the next day.

Confusion

Well, I thought that I was getting the ferry to Liverpool. When I got off the ferry at Hollyhead I noticed that the signs in the terminal were in two languages, and that one of the languages looked particularly odd. I figured that it was an indictation of how many Polish people lived and worked in England these days.

Then I left the building and noticed styleised dragons everywhere. I checked the signs again and noticed the far-too-high ratio of constenants to vowels. Bugger, I was in Wales. Of course, if I hadn´t had to take a two hour train journey to Liverpool I would have missed out on seeing the aforementioned sign, which amused me more than you would reckon.

I was in town to watch Liverpool play at Anfield. To be honest, it was a poor display against Wigan, that ended in a draw and got some boos from the fans at the end of the game. But it was great to be in the stadium and watch the players I have always watched on the telly up close and personal.

Spain, Again

I have returned to Spain for a couple of months familiarising myself with the Spanish ways. My Spanish is improving all the time, but the more I learn the more it seems that I have to learn. Conversations are making more sense, and I don´t have any problems in shops, buses and with public transport. I now have to get the hang of the much subtle art of conversation... and making jokes.

I popped up to Portugal very briefly to see my buddy Krys (a girl´s name), though I can´t really say that I have been to Portugal. She was staying with some Irish friends in The Algarve, which is the Portugese equivilant of the Gold Coast. Lots of tourists, everybody spoke English, the beer was English, her Irish buddies just played pool in the pub all day, the beaches were cleaned daily by machines. Not exactly Portugal, though it was easy to find a half-decent English fry-up for brekkie!

This weekend Krys and I are going camping at Cabo De Gata (Cape Cat), on a beach that is surrounded by dessert. Then next weekend Fred (my buddy in Granada) and I will be going to the carnival in Cadiz, which promises to be over the top.