“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!” asks our devoted blog reader. “It has been almost a month, and NOTHING!” Well, reader(s… which we hope includes more than just our families), the computer has been broken! And also, we’re in Spain in the spring! Give us a break!
So yes, we’re back in Aracena, home of pata negra jamon, and more importantly, the wonderful Chestertons. We arrived the night after the first day of Semana Santa, which is the week leading up to Easter. It’s a pretty big deal around here, what with the strong Catholic history they’ve got, and for anyone who has seen pictures of Spaniards dressed up colorful KKK outfits, this is that celebration. Somehow, though this attire is very shocking for us Americans the first time we lay eyes on it, it takes only a very short time for it to start to seem rather endearing. The way that they have to hold on to the bottom of their great, sinister, pointy hoods so that the eye-holes stay lined up with their eyes as they shuffle through the streets holding enormous crosses, candles, or gilded staves makes them seem somewhat harmless and clumsy, and one begins to wonder why the KKK thought these outfits would be so scary. I mean, as long as they are dressed in those robes, they certainly aren’t going to be very effective chasing after anyone!
We had a week of watching processions, some which began at 5a.m., which consisted of enormous pasos (big passion of the Christ themed floats) being carted through the streets by forty or so costaleros (anybody from the town with broad shoulders and a desire to hump their 50 kilo share of the paso through the streets for 5 hours or so) and preceded by long parades of pointy-hooded nazarines (penitents). Occasionally the floats stop in the street, and from above a volunteer from the town proceeds to sing a saeta (a religious flamenco lament, which usually goes something like “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, cuuuuuaaaaaantooooo doooooooooloooooooorrrrrrr” drawn out for about 5 minutes). The whole thing was an immense amount of fun, although completely exhausting at the same time, and we weren’t even carrying the gilded floats.
Another relatively new feature to our stay has been the presence of guests at the B&B, which after our very quiet stay here in December makes for an interesting change in pace. With guests the finca is a decidedly different place, with three course meals every night for dinner, constant bustling about to serve up tapas and coffee and tea and cakes, and stoking up the fireplace at just the right time of day so that the guests can sit beside a “leaping flame”. After a few nights of this, Sam Chesterton said to me, “this is what having a B&B is all about, it’s all theat-tah!”
Since we last updated, another momentous event has transpired: Aubrey Nelson has aged another year. She finally caught up to yours truly, and joined the ranks of the 24-year-olds (nearly 25! Crap!). For her birthday, I found her some replacement Crocs (or Hobekys as it were- doubly appreciated as the puppy here has managed to steal and shred her Chaco sandals, may they rest in pieces), and made her a home-made version of the tiramisu ice-cream cake that we devoured for my birthday in the Pyrenees. We also had a delightful dinner with Juan from the Jabugo Jamon factory, and some random Dutch travel agent.
Another noticia is that we did a couple of days of painting on the roof terrace of a friend of the Chesterton’s and earned a few Eurobucks, which we used to take a trip to Granada to celebrate Aubrey’s birthday. Granada is home to La Alhambra, which is an enormous Moorish city/castle, that is probably Spain’s number one tourist attraction (and for good reason… it’s beautiful). Every day 6,000 people are allowed to visit, and tickets to visit are sold in advance. When I went to make our reservation, I discovered that the entire week that we were planning to visit was already sold out. Upon arriving in Granada, however, the proprietors of the hostel where we were staying told us that the Alhambra is always sold out, but that they keep 500 tickets on reserve for people who don’t plan ahead. In order to get one of these tickets, it is best to queue up an hour or 45 minutes before the ticket windows open. So after our first night in Granada, having been up listen to Flamenco in a little dive in a back alley until some odd hour of the morning, we hauled ourselves out of bed and got out the door by 6:45 a.m., and were in line at the Alhambra by 7:05. “Alright!” we thought “We’re nearly at the front of the line! We’re sure to get one of those 500 tickets.” Then along came a security guard. “Hoy, no hay visita,” he intoned, today the Alhambra is closed. What? They can’t do this to us! Why? “I don’t know, there’s someone here…” he mumbled, “it has something to do with Carlos V” (a long dead Spanish king). We were skeptical, and hung around until we were sure that he wasn’t just making this up to thin out the line, but it turned out to indeed be closed, and for some reason we weren’t invited to this special event.
So we needed a plan B. Fortunately, it was still only 8 a.m. and we had plenty of time to formulate plan B, which is how, by noon, we found ourselves in the little town of Güejar Sierra, only a 2 euro round-trip bus fare outside of Granada, and directly at the base of the beautiful Sierra Nevada. They even had free candies and hiking maps at the town-hall, and by following one of the trails indicated on the map we ended up at a Spanish Civil War bunker, perched high atop a mountain, overlooking a beautiful reservoir below. We felt on top of the world, quipping about how nature’s splendor outshone any dumb Moorish palace, as we reached the far end of the hiking loop which was so neatly marked out on the map. So… there’s the road we see on the map, and here’s the trail we just came from, and so the return part of this trail should be…. straight through those spiny bushes, around the bulls, across the 12 razor-wire fences and…. we chose to walk back on a road. We stopped at one point to show the map to some locals and ask where we went wrong, but they were just as puzzled as us: “There aren’t any trails there, es todo privado.” We sighed, shook our travel-weary heads, and figured that it probably had something to do with Carlos V, as well. Spain is lovely, but as hiking enthusiasts, it will be nice to be back home where “trail crew” is a choice for a summer job.
We returned to the hotel, had a dinner of tapas out on the town, and got ready for another early morning. Luckily, on our second attempt, we got into the Alhambra, only to see that we weren’t allowed to visit the palace until 1pm, and our “morning” ticket was only good until 2pm. As we approached what appeared to be the junction between the palace gardens and the palace itself, a guard checked our ticket, saying “Ahh, not until 1 o’clock,” and ushered us toward the gardens. We looked at our map, puzzled, as it seemed absurd that while we would have a good 5 hours to walk around about an acre of gardens, the walled castle, which seemed at least 4 times the size, would need to be explored in under an hour. Once again cursing Spanish planning, after a couple hours of playing tag in the hedge mazes, we decided to leave the Alhambra for an early lunch, and then come back later for our palace time-slot. We were feeling very proud of our time management as we slipped across the bridge toward the palace at 12:50pm… only to immediately discover that the palace was only one very small element of the walled city on that side of the bridge, and that we could have accessed any of the various other buildings, museums and exhibits all morning if we had only crossed over! So, as seems to be our style this year, we decided to overstay the expiration hour on our tickets, and just continue walking around post-2pm hoping we wouldn’t be deported discovered. Somehow, our tickets still worked at most of the exhibits, and in retrospect, despite Aubrey’s nervousness each time we saw a museum guard, this was the perfect time to be touring the Alhambra, because most of the “morning” ticket people had already left, and even the speediest (read: Chinese) tour groups from the afternoon hadn’t yet caught up. This meant two things: first, we had the place mostly to ourselves, and could take our time without feeling claustrophobic, and secondly, our photo quality was greatly enhanced by the lack of 12 or 17 ladies in pink raincoats contributing themselves to the vista.
Our final night in Granada was topped off by a delicious dinner in a Lebanese restaurant, and the next day we headed back to Aracena, stopping to see the Feria of Sevilla (basically like a giant county fair, Spanish style, which means lots of women dress up, or at least dressing their children up, in Flamenco dresses) on the way. We were rather disappointed with the Feria in Sevilla, but promised we were “just there at the wrong time,” (i.e. we missed out on the hour when everyone’s drunk and dancing), but not to worry, there are plenty more festivals to come.
In fact, it’s the beginning of festival season in Spain, and for those who are so inclined (as many Spaniards are) there is at least one Romeria or fiesta every weekend from now until the end of August. We were informed by the Chestertons that you tend to arrive at one of these celebrations, and you are immediately invited to picnics with every Spanish family you pass, offered wine and beer, and basically made one of the gang. We arrived at the romeria of Valdelarco after having biked/walked from Buenvino equipped with a picnic, but it became immediately clear that we were not to be made feel like one of the gang. Maybe it was our smiling faces or our little backpacks (or most likely our blindingly blond hair and plaid shirt, respectively), but it was apparently just a bit too obvious that we weren’t Spanish, and we received only dubious looks, and grudging “Holas.” But we took our picnic regardless, and enjoyed the ambiance of flamenco wailing, drum and fife players, and people on horseback circling about offering young girls rides on the rumps of their animals. Maybe next time I’ll borrow someone’s bullfighter outfit, and we’ll find Aubrey a flamenco dress; that will probably make at least me fit in better!
All in all things have sort of held an even keel here in Andalucia this past month. The wildflowers and the sunsets (around 9:30pm) have brought spectacular bursts of color to our days, and although it was cold and rainy for a big chunk of April, now it’s suddenly August, and we’ve been swimming almost every evening this week. We’ve been cooking quite frequently, making lots of desserts and bread mostly, but also had Jewish (but actually Morrocan, it turns out) and Mexican nights where we cooked three course meals for the family, and tried out new recipes.
As far as work it has been the usual assortment of odd jobs, but the major project so far has been pool renovation. We’ve been getting the “Infinity Pool” changing rooms and showers scraped and painted in anticipation of the summer season and starting the process of the restoring a spring-fed pool that was the first structure that the family built on the property 20 some-odd years ago. Despite lots of good times, we’re starting to get very excited to go home, as it has been a long few months whizzing around Europe. And, assuming that Iceland doesn’t belch out another cloud of smoke and ash, we might be doing that in only a few (five, to be precise) weeks. I’m certainly ready. Miss you all, and see you soon(ish)!
sambrey
