Our Saviour

Our saviour came in the form of a 60 year old British woman (thus the British spelling of savior), with whom we had already made contact through HelpX. We had planned on volunteering with her after 2 weeks with the previous hosts, but the circumstances required a frantic phone call to move our arrival date forward.

She quickly agreed and we took the bus just 20 minutes down the road to a much nicer little spa town, known for its bottled water. We were greeted by a whirlwind of energy, warm kisses on both cheeks and lots of chatter. As she drove us up the winding track to her lodging establishment perched high above the white-washed town, we began to breathe a sigh of relief.

The view

Her compound was an oasis of flowers and green in the desert (we soon learned that this oasis required 1.5 hours per day of watering!!!!) complete with 5 little, stand-alone houses (casitas). Each casita had a small kitchen, a bed and bathroom and a terrace or patio. The real gem of the place was the swimming pool and pool bar, stocked with soft drinks, beer and wine that were completely free for our consumption. Almost every night we ate dinner beneath the grape vines alongside the pool.

She often cooked dinner for her guests, who were mainly clients of local companies offering biking, horse riding or hiking tours and we were always invited to join. We were expected to assist with the prep and cleaning after these meals, but we were always treated like family and were free to enjoy our adult beverages while "working". Our hostess was very fair about the hours so that if we worked with clients at night (for example, Michiel and I cooked a Moroccan meal for her guests one night) then we could have a "lie in" the next morning.

We did a variety of tasks here and learned quite a bit about making and canning jams and chutneys, harvesting almonds and walnuts, and cleaning pools amongst other things. The hours were a bit longer than at other hosts, but the accommodation was great (once we moved out of her back bedroom and into a casita) and our hostess was incredibly generous with food and drink. We had coffee breaks and snack time and she was a big proponent of cooling off with a "tinto de verano" before dinner (chilled red wine mixed with lemon soda and lots of lemon slices).

Not only was our hostess generous with drink, she was also generous with her time. She knew that we were looking for places to live so she took us to look at various properties and land for sale. To top it all off, she took both of us out on our respective birthdays to enjoy the local tradition of free tapas with drink orders. (Do you get the sense that there was a lot of wine drinking here?)

On our two days off per week, we took the bus to the famous white villages in the mountains, did some hiking, explored the the little town, swam in the pool and did a lot of reading. There were other volunteers working here, as well as family and friends of our hostess and guests, so there was no lack of socializing opportunity.

Photos from the White Villages

We had originally planned to stay for 2 weeks, but we ended up returning here after Pueblo Ingles (the English Immersion program for Spaniards that we volunteered for). All together, we ended up staying for nearly 5 weeks and had a hard time leaving. In fact, we were even tempted to lodge-sit over the holidays while our hostess returned to the UK.

What made it possible to leave was the fact that we determined that the area was just too dry and extreme for us. The heat of summer lasted well into October and daytime temperatures could still easily reach into the 90s (35 plus degrees C). When we left, nighttime temperatures were falling below freezing and we could feel the bitter cold air flowing off the mountains.

We also had a hard time seeing ourselves thriving in this very traditional Spanish village. We didn´t see that we had much in common with the other expats (mostly older Brits who were into drinking and socializing and had lots of money) and we didn´t find the locals to be particularly intriguing, so we set off to the western region of Andalucia.