Kicked out

After our first Pueblo Ingles week we headed south to an area that we thought would hold great promise for us called the Alpujarras. In fact, several Pueblo Ingles participants had even suggested that we check out this region as one which might meet many of our criteria. The Alpujarras region is a series of valleys on the south side of the Sierra Nevada range, which is home to the highest mountain peak in Spain, the Mulhacen. The valleys in this region are dotted with small, white villages (pueblos blancos) which are huddled together to protect from the cold winters and painted white to reflect the extreme heat of the summer sun. One village in particular was well-known as being a bit of a haven for alternative expats and our HelpX resource listed dozens of hosts looking for assistance.

We chose a host who offered good food and comfortable, separate accommodation(at least that's what the reviewers said) in this "hippy" white village surrounded by mountains. Upon arrival, our Indian (by way of England) host served us a lovely Indian food lunch and we discussed the importance of "open and honest" communication in order for our host/helper arrangement to work out. She also asked whether we had liability insurance as we would be responsible for paying for any damage we incurred. This was a bit of a surprise as we had not encountered this sort of attitude or comment from any prior hosts. Furthermore, that evening she asked to have our passports so that she would have some "collateral" in the event that any tools go "walkies" (which apparently happened with a new weed-wacker). Aside from the fact that it is apparently illegal for a foreigner to walk around without a passport while in Spain, we were flabbergasted by the total lack of trust.

The next day, we started work on a difficult job doing traditional mud plastering over stone walls. Her generally crotchety husband did all of the training, but he barely spoke any English, so she did the translating and when they disagreed we had to wait for them to work things out. It was extremely hot in this part of Spain in late September but we were working inside a shed so we had some shade. We stopped work to have lunch, which was one and a half white bread sandwiches with a thin layer of tomato, a thick layer of mayo and one slice of meat and some potato chips. At one point during the work day, Michiel asked if we could have a snack of some fruit. She hesitated and said, "well, I guess you haven't had any time to go to town to buy and snacks so I suppose I could give you something" before bringing us some sugary biscuits.

Traditional mud plastering involves flinging trowel-fulls of sand and cement at a wall.


On the third day, the hard work, white bread sandwiches, grumpy interactions with the husband, no-snack policy and the total lack of trust ("you did lock the gate, didn't you?"..."why didn't you put the tools away during lunch. I told you to do that, didn't I?") forced us to test out her desire to have "open and honest communications". We told her that we were very uncomfortable with having our passports taken from us and that every other host had provided us with sufficient food to get through the day. She was pretty taken aback and claimed that none of her other volunteers ever complained about these things. In fact, there was another volunteer (a young British guy) who had no complaints about anything (not surprising, really, as most Brits are not comfortable with confrontation or complaining in person).

We finished our conversation, went to our room and 15 minutes later were visited by her with the message that "we just don't have enough time to sit around and talk about these issues, so we think it would be best if you leave." We were relieved that they had forced our hand and made the decision for us. We had spent both evenings discussing whether we should move on but hadn't made the decision to do so, now we had to get on the phone and make some calls to other hosts.

Luckily, we had already contacted a lady in the next town over and she was able to take us a week and a half early. Even more fortunately, we had decided in our 3 days in this alternative town, that we didn't like the feel of it at all.

The town - it looks nice enough, but we didn't take any photos of the dumpster-divers or the raggedy, skeletal and unwashed people.