Fun in the Pyrenees-Orientales

Collioure

Even though we had difficulty finding a suitable host and then dealing with the hosts we ended up choosing, we DID have some great outings in the Pyrenees-Orientales and made the most of our free time to explore.  After all, this was the entire point of using HelpX as our (low cost) way of discovering the region.

Our last host was located close to Céret, a charming, if not touristy, spot known for its cherries and annual Cherry Festival, complete with cherry pitting and pit spitting contests. Céret was also a popular spot of several artists, notably Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Chagall, and Soutine, who did many street scenes of Céret. Replicas of these and other artists' works are posted throughout the town in the exact spot where the artist might have stood.  They make a wonderful little walking tour. Here's an example:

Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943)
Les platanes à Céret

Cherry Festival

    We were just a short drive to the beaches of the Mediterranean and the (very) touristy town of Collioure.

But the real highlight of the region was crossing over into Spain and, finally, visiting the Salvador Dali Museum in Figueras.  It was absurdly crowded but that didn't dampen Michiel's delight (I wish I could say the same.) .  These are just a small sample of the photos he took there and in the town.

     
 
   

El Bueno, El Malo y El Feo

We had reached the end of our six month journey of discovery in Spain and it was time to retreat back to the comfort of "home" in the Netherlands to get some distance and perspective.  We´d met some wonderful people and visited some beautiful places but we we weren´t tourists - we were looking at the country with a more critical eye.  Could we live there happily?  Could we find people we could call real friends?  Could we picture a successful future for ourselves there?

We made our lists:

The Good (El Bueno)

• Cheap food (the menu del dia!) and wine (and MUCH better Spanish wine than what you get outside the country!)
• Free tapas in certain parts of the country
• Warm, generous and friendly people who love to have fun and provide assistance
  Several times, when asking for directions or just looking at a map, people would actually walk us to  where we needed to go.  We also spent many nights staying in the homes of wonderful people we´d met at our Pueblo Ingles programs.
• Lots of sunshine (very handy since we´d like to use solar panels to produce electricity)
• Charming and picturesque white-washed villages that would make excellent tourist destinations (should we decide to start a tour company - which is one of our possible ideas)
• Lots of opportunities for English teachers (another possible job idea)
• Stunning mountain scenery in the north of the country
• A beautiful and useful (in the world) language - but with MANY regional dialects
• Because Spaniards are so socially focused, they consider living remotely and quietly in the country as something only poor peasants do.  Therefore, the demand for property is mostly within the villages.  Land in the countryside (outside of Catalonia) is relatively cheap (unless the prior owner is a foreigner!) 

The Bad (El Malo) - otherwise known as The Irritating

• If I had to use one word to describe Spanish culture, it would be "adolescent".  We got the sense that drinking, smoking, being with friends (and family), making lots of noise, ignoring laws and restrictions, being overly dramatic, and focusing on one´s appearance (or talking about the appearance of others) were the hallmarks of life in Spain.
  
  [Of course, not all Spaniards are "adolescents".  We certainly met some thoughtful, intellectual, mature, introspective, well-travelled and well-informed Spaniards who certainly don´t fit the cultural observations we´ve made here.  To those special people (and they´re probably reading this!), we hope you understand that we are making generalizations based on our interactions all over the country.]
  
  
• Lack of world view.  Travel abroad is a fairly new concept to Spaniards and many haven´t even seen much of their own country.  There seems to be little interest in knowing what goes on in the rest of the world unless it´s to be able to say that Spain does it better.
• In a similar vein, insular, regional pride that in some areas has led to separatist movements and violence.
• The lack of foreign travel means that there is a corresponding lack of interest in foreign food.  Even large supermarkets in most places have a meager selection of food items.  For example, since they don´t use fresh basil or cilantro in their cooking, there´s no demand for it and, therefore, the farmers don´t grow it. It is also nearly impossible to find ingredients to make "ethnic" foods in any place other than the big cities or in expat enclaves (and I´m not just talking about coconut milk, but also something as simple as pesto).  
• Rigid compliance with the way things have always been done (ex. meal times, recipes, taking the evening promenade).
• The lack of customer service in just about all business situations.  Spaniards haven´t learned the art of dealing with customers, but instead see them as a nuisance and interruption.
• Automatic timers on the lights in restaurant/bar bathrooms that are ALWAYS too short! (this is merely an observation, not a real issue...but strange nonetheless)

The Ugly (El Feo) - otherwise known as The Things that Really Make Us Think Twice

• Corruption in some political offices especially with regard to land and property
• Lousy economy.  With 1.5 million empty new homes and close to 20% unemployment in some areas, is this a country we want to make our future in?
• Extreme climate.  The summers are really too hot and the land too dry in most of the country.  In what we think is the most beautiful part of the country, we could expect to experience as much rain and as many cloudy days as England.  In the rest of the country, getting enough water is or will be a real issue.
• Much of the countryside isn´t very attractive.  The interior of the country is a high, dry and dusty plateau.  In the south, much of the land has been overgrazed by goats and has very few trees, with the exception of rows upon rows of olive trees. And on the coasts, rampant overdevelopment has resulted in communities of soulless concrete apartment blocks.

In a nutshell, we wholeheartedly recommend Spain as a place for your next vacation.  It has a fascinating history, beautiful cities and villages, friendly people, cheap food and wine and (in most places) lots of sunshine.  However, when we look at the lists above and consult our hearts, we don´t feel like we found what we are looking for.  This isn´t to say that we won´t revisit the idea of living in Spain, but we know that if we DO choose Spain, we will struggle daily against the irritations of Los Malos and the real issues of  Los Feos.

In the meantime, we´ve decided to continue our search for our perfect place in mid- and southern France.   After a brief hiatus, we´ll be back on the hunt.

The Inspiration

With a sigh of relief, we left the institution and made our way back to Madrid and beyond to stay with our last hosts. They were a Spanish/American man and his Finnish wife who were just about the same age as us. They had had a busy summer with volunteers and weren't looking to take on anyone but they read our profile and email and were intrigued enough to take us on for 10 days. It worked out perfectly for us as they were just an 1.5 hour bus ride west of Madrid, where we were to fly out of on the 10th of December.

The couple lived outside of a small town down an unpaved road. Like us, five years prior, they had been searching for a perfect spot to live lightly on the land and embark on the road to self-sustainability and off-grid living. This particular part of Spain appealed to them because the land was cheap and there were a good number of trees (something that is hard to find in the high plateau of central Spain) and, perhaps equally important, it was close enough to mom and dad to use their washing machine once a week.

They designed and built their own house, used solar panels for electricity and pumping water and had a small wind turbine to supplement the solar panels. They used mobile phone technology for internet access and harvested vegetables from their garden. Heat for the house came from a super-efficient Tulikivi soapstone stove which kept the majority of the house warm with just two fires per day with a total of 6 kilograms (13 pounds) of wood.

  

Our host was working hard digging a partially below-ground greenhouse but we did less strenuous work clearing out the raised garden bed for winter, chipping wood, treating trees for caterpillars, pruning, collecting wood and prepping downed wood for either the stove or the wood chipper. The work wasn't particularly exciting but the discussions and meal times certainly were. Our hosts were absolutely wonderful people with a great sense of humor. Our hostess was particularly sweet, caring and charming and our host was a walking encyclopedia of self-sufficiency.

  

When we weren´t learning from our host, talking about the world or doing our volunteer tasks, we enjoyed borrowing from their extensive library, checking out the surrounding countryside and trying to win the trust of their four big and lovable dogs.

   

Sadly, our time here passed far too quickly but it was absolutely inspirational to see two people doing what we hope to be doing in the future and living quite comfortably on about €6,000.00 ($8,000.00) per year. We left Spain on a high with new friends and new-found hope.

The Institution

While we were in the deep south of the country, we came upon our next host´s posting.  The details of the site were intriguing:  a former thermal spa that has been transformed into a health education and sustainable living project in the Spanish Pyrenees.  The location is exactly what we were looking for:  nestled in the Cerdanya of the Pyrenees, a unique east-west oriented valley that receives over 3000 hours of sunshine per year.  The project was less than an hour from Andorra and very close to excellent mountain hiking terrain.  Furthermore, the very attractive website for the project made it sound like there was a functioning community - with a medical professional, a groundskeeper and a vision for like-minded individuals to buy into the cooperative.

Even the application process seemed to be professionally managed.  We were required to fill out a two page form asking about our skills, interests and philosophies.  No other host had such an in-depth process and we were impressed at the organization and also optimistic about this being a possible home for us.

Soon after our applications were approved, we received an email requesting that we phone immediately.  The host wanted to let us know that due to the fragile mental condition of his wife (who had recently been diagnosed as bi-polar), we might make the trip to his home and find that she would not accept us.  Apparently, she had recently gone through a "bad spell" and was quite volatile.  A long term volunteer had just decided to leave and it was possible that she would not accept the disturbance in the household that we would cause.

As there were no other hosts in the direct area, we worried that our long and costly travels would be for naught.  We arrived late in the evening and our host, a 70 year old British man, picked us up at the bus stop in town.  He informed us in his rambling, mumbling, unintelligible way that his "dear wife" had left the house and wanted nothing more to do with him - at least that´s what we think he said.  Over the course of the two weeks, we grew so exasperated with his unclear manner of speaking (and this was even after explaining to him that we were having difficulties understanding him) that we fought amongst ourselves to not sit across from him at dinner or in the front seat of the car so we could feign deafness.  Before you decide that we are really intolerant, let me point out that the majority of his "talking" was actually a sort of sing-songy repetition of words like "buuuuueno, bueno, bueno, bueno, buuuueno".

With his poor hearing, lack of listening skills, mumbly Spanish and total absorption with the idea that he was going to cure his wife with the use of foods with proper enzymes, we found meal times (which were required to be family style) to be unbearable.  A long-time volunteer (6 months?) joined us only for lunch and dinner.  This volunteer was a 60-something year old Italian, who was on the run from the mafia for testifying against them in a court case.  I swear I don´t make this stuff up.  This guy was trying to make a new life for himself in Spain as a cook but hadn´t had any luck finding work in Barcelona.  He was a terrifically difficult person who also mumbled when he spoke, smoked like a chimney, did whatever work he felt like doing and didn´t do any work when the boss was away.  He spoke no English so meal times were a ridiculous attempt to try to understand each other.

You´d think that a guy who wanted to be a cook would be eager to cook for us, but we couldn´t get him to agree to a cooking schedule.  He could only prepare food when he had "inspiration".  This meant that neither Michiel nor I (who absolutely CANNOT cook by inspiration) could plan on cooking a certain meal and if we had planned on doing something, we would come into the kitchen to find him marinating a rabbit or who knows what.  Yes, we ate well and enjoyed his hand-picked mushrooms, but, unfortunately, he often used too much salt and ruined the food.  At times when we did cook, the host informed us during the meal that we should leave some food over for some guests he had neglected to tell us about.  Needless to say, nothing ran as professionally as the website or application process led us to expect.

We lived in the old hotel of the thermal resort, which had big holes in the roof and a top floor that was structurally unstable.  The hotel had been restored to the point that the ground and first floors were inhabitable and neat but very, very cold.  The hotel had no heating and very little, if any, insulation, so we were enormously grateful for the terrific orientation of the building to the south.  The glorious sunshine (and there was lots!) warmed up our room during the day and the many solar panels out back ensured that we could take nice warm baths maybe 60 percent of the days.  Since it was November, though, the sun dipped early behind the mountains and we had a few days of beautiful (but cold!) frost and snow.  Thank goodness for the electric heaters (I know....not very sustainable but much needed before bed and in the morning).

The view from our bedroom

Speaking of sustainability, there was not much sustainable about this project except for the solar hot water and the wood stove.  The host complained of very high electric bills but didn´t want to take the steps to identify the problem appliances. Food came completely from the supermarket or from health food stores in Barcelona (over an hour away), though there were still some herbs and potatoes in the nearly frozen soil. Sadly, the thermal waters were far cooler than advertised on the website and the pool was far too cold to swim or soak comfortably.

But despite all of this, the landscape was gorgeous and the work was generally fun.  We had great views of a small mountain range to the south and the Pyrenees to the north.  Our work hours were spent with a paid employee, a local man, who managed the property.  He was a terrific guy with a great sense of humor, a ridiculous amount of energy and total patience with our Spanish.  We worked with him cutting down trees, removing fallen leaves, putting manure in the garden beds, and building a rustic fence from tree branches.  He and the beautiful views and sunshine were the only reasons we were able to last the two weeks we had committed to.

 

When we arrived at this host, we were asked to read and sign a sheet of house rules.  Amongst them was the expectation that if we stayed for less than two weeks, we might be asked to contribute money for our weekend food consumption.  We were also notified that we were not permitted to have coffee from the espresso maker except on weekends and that we had to ask permission before eating anything as the food might be for the restaurant (which received almost no guests at this time of year).  When we followed the rules and asked permission, our host looked incredulous.  We realized that he had no intentions of actually enforcing these rules.

Outings:  hiking to Andorra and biking in the neighborhood



 

Our time at this host was often very trying.  When dining with the host and the other volunteer, we kept our sanity by telling ourselves "this will be funny...later".  We had to leave as soon as possible. Physically, the place reminded me of one of those old tuberculosis recovery spas and mentally, well, I couldn´t escape the feeling that we had landed in a mental institution.   As the two weeks crawled by, we frantically searched for one last Spanish host who could re-affirm our lifestyle choice and help us get over our disappointment.

As for the area, we had some interaction with the locals in the small town below the "spa" but found the whole region to be dedicated to the summer tourists from Barcelona.  Many of the small towns were mostly deserted as they are made up primarily of summer houses for wealthy Barcelonans.  Also, as promised, the locals spoke Catalan with each other and all signs were only in Catalan.  It felt like we had crossed over into a new country - a country that felt a little abandoned but with here and there touristy ski resort towns.  This new country had land prices way beyond our reach.    So despite the exceptionally attractive mountains and sunshine, we had to cross this region off our list.

My all-time-favorite vending machine:  fresh cow´s milk.  The machine on the left dispenses clean bottles. The people are standing in front of a machine that dispenses full or half bottles of local milk

At our next host we find inspiration....

Barcelona

It takes 16 hours by bus to get from Cadiz in the far southwest corner of the country to Barcelona in the northeast.  Fortunately our stop in Madrid broke up the journey perfectly in half.  Refreshed from our family visit and ready for something new, we made the long journey to the capital city of the province of Catalonia - Barcelona. The long distance seemed fitting as a symbol of how different the cities of Barcelona and Madrid are.

A view of Barcelona from Park Guell


Before I write about Barcelona, I should say that we were never planning on coming to this part of Spain.  Much that we had read about Catalonia gave us pause especially the high prices and the use of Catalan (a completely different language from Castillian Spanish) as their main language.  We originally chose Spain partly because of a desire to learn a language that would be useful in many parts of the world.  Catalan is spoken only in a few parts of Spain, Andorra and some areas in the French Pyrenees and is not learned or understood in the rest of the country.

The language isn´t the only thing that separates the Catalonians from much of the rest of Spain.  Catalonians tend to think of themselves as more "European" than Spanish and are viewed by many Castillians as more businesslike (or money-hungry, depending on your perspective).  This "differentness" has grown to be such a polarizing political issue that there is now an avid separatist movement.

Many of our Spanish friends from Pueblo Ingles told us that though Barcelona is great, they did not feel very welcomed there as they could only communicate with the locals in Castillian.  They expressed their sense that Spaniards from other parts of Spain were less accepted than foreigners who only spoke English.  We can´t say whether or not this is true, but our experience was that eveyone could communicate with us in Castillian and we were treated politely.

More importantly, we immediately felt that European-ness.  Barcelona was unlike any other Spanish city.  There was a distinct air of internationalism, a wide diversity of people, a mix of languages (especially on menus and shop signs) and a serious capitalistic intention.  Barcelona knows how to be customer oriented (i.e. offering dinner BEFORE 10 p.m.) and seems focused on making money at it.  It has a unique combination of Mediterranean beach town, historic central quarter, funky neighborhoods and chic (and ethnic) restaurants.  All of this makes it a great place to visit - and people do that in DROVES!  It is packed with tourisits and a stroll on the famous Las Ramblas is almost impossible due to the crush of people.  But it´s easy enough to get away from the crowd and wander the streets and parks, occasionally stumbling upon another stunning Gaudi-designed building.

Casa Battló - designed by Antonio Gaudì (1905-7)



La Pedrera or Casa Milà - also by Gaudì (1906-10)
This apartment building had a wonderful roof "garden" filled with fascinating chimneys and one really great guy

Despite my 24 hour stomach flu, we had a fun time being tourists and thoroughly enjoyed the staggeringly incredible Sagrada Familia cathedral, the most amazing fruit and veg market I´ve ever seen (they say it´s the largest in Europe), the beach, the colorful street performers on the Ramblas and stolling through the historic Gothic quarter.  Sadly, my stomach wasn´t up to sampling the cuisine that is supposed to be superior to that of the rest of Spain (our wallets were happy, though).

Las Ramblas street performers
 

La Sagrada Familia Cathedral has been under construction since 1882.  There´s at least another century of work to be done.  In the meantime, a visit is still awe-inspiring.

Next stop:  the institution.

Ah...family support

With spirits and energy levels flagging, a visit from my beloved Aunt and Uncle from California could not have come at a better time.  We met them in Madrid on their way to France and on our way to Barcelona.  Together, we re-explored Madrid (but this time without the peace of the summer holiday time) and enjoyed showing them around the city we had come to know and appreciate.  Autumn had arrived and with it, cold and windy weather, but also lovely fall scenes in Retiro Park.



We also had a chance to visit another recommended city, Toledo.  We spent a day as real tourists and made our way up and down the hills of the city, stopping at every place that boasted an El Greco painting inside (including his completely disappointing burial site - visible through a roughly-made hole through the wooden floor of an old church).  It was an attractive but exceedingly touristy place.
    

Thanks so much, Harry and Ellie, for taking such good care of us and allowing us to be your guides in Spain.  We also want to send a special thank you to our wonderful Spanish friends, José, Teresa and Sebastian for their wonderful hospitality in Madrid.  It´s always better to stay with friends!

Go West

Another location that topped the lists of Spaniards´ suggestions for our continued search for the "perfect place" was the area around Cadiz. Cadiz lies on the windy Atlantic coast of Spain and was recommended to us for its combination of warm sun and cooling wind. Furthermore, the people of Cadiz, the Gaditanos, are known for their irreverent humor and fun-loving nature (could Gaditanos be even MORE fun-loving than the less-than-serious Spaniards we had met almost everywhere else???)

We couldn´t find any hosts in Cadiz and we´re not looking to live in a big city anyway, so we contacted the owner of a boutique hotel (read: candles, incense and strong blocks of color) in a small, white village (please note that when I say "white village" I am referring to the color of the uniformly white-washed buildings). The guide books in English didn´t have much to say about the village, so we were quite surprised when we got off the bus to find a really charming and lovely place perched atop a small hill.

We spent the two weeks here painting (and I became a steam-iron professional). The hotel is for sale and the owner, whose attention was mostly spent on preparing for her new phase of life as a yoga instructor, wanted to spruce it up without spending too much money. She gave us a list of painting and cleaning tasks and left us to do our thing. It was enjoyable to be in charge of our own planning and to spend hours on the wonderful roof terrace but it was a challenge to rely on her to provide us with food provisions as it wasn´t high on her list of priorities.

It was fun to be in a little town and I must admit that I really enjoyed the freedom of walking down the street for supplies or just taking a stroll to the grocery store. For me, this was the most viable location in Spain so far. The town was close to beautiful, unspoiled beaches; there were lots of interesting activities on offer (I attended a day-long meditation seminar and an Astanga yoga class); there were incredible views of the mountains of Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar from the rooftop terraces and I made a couple of really nice expat friends.

The highlight of our time there was spending time with Annie B, a Scottish expat who runs Annie B´s Spanish Kitchen cooking school from her home. Check out her website HERE. Her enthusiasm for all things was absolutely contagious and it was a delight to be with her. She even took us out for a day of driving around the mountains to see if there were interesting towns there.

So...why didn´t we stop looking and park ourselves there? Most importantly, Michiel wasn´t as enthusiastic about it as I was. What we are really looking for is a small home with a bit of land. In Spain, if you live in the town, you don´t have any land at all. Buildings are right next to one another and chances are very good that you won´t be able to escape the noise that Spaniards are so fond of. Additionally, the countryside around our town wasn´t very enticing - especially after we learned more about what how the famous Levanter and the lesser known Poniente winds make farming and fruit trees impossible to grow without some kind of serious protection.

We ended up having a great experience in this part of Spain and are very grateful that our Spanish friends recommended it to us, but the search for our perfect place had to continue. Next stop....Catalonia.

Granada and the Alhambra

As I mentioned, we left our "saviour hostess" for a bit and then returned. Upon returning to the area, we finally had an opportunity to spend a weekend in Granada. Many Spaniards had recommended this city to us and I had studied the Alhambra palace and fortress in Architecture School, so we had high expectations. Indeed, the city is incredibly vibrant - most notably because it is FULL of university students and tourists. It is also quite lovely, especially the old Arab Quarter.

The logistics of visiting this amazing Moorish wonder and the surrounding gardens (Generalife) are a bit tricky and guests are only allowed to visit the palace areas at a specified time but this ensures that the rooms are only crowded instead of incredibly crowded.  I´m sure that it would be a terrific experience to have the place to yourself on a warm evening.

One of the great draws of Granada are the free tapas. Every single bar that serves drinks offers a free snack with each glass of alcoholic beverage. The tradition comes from the desire to keep insects out of your drink so a little nibble on a plate would serve as a lid or "tapa" for your glass. These days, they don't serve the tapa on top of the glass, but they are still free in some parts of Spain. If this is the case, as in Granada and the Alpujarras, you can make a meal out of a pub crawl. Each round of drinks at a bar comes with a different tapa, so even if you stay in the same bar all night, you could have a variety of hams, cheeses, potatoes, olives or other items.

The other wonderful thing about Granada is that it is large and diverse enough to have some ethnic restaurants (other than Italian or Chinese - the extent of foreign cuisine in most of Spain). We took full advantage of this and after many months of Spanish cuisine, dove with gusto into a (disappointingly mediocre) Thai restaurant and a really good Moroccan place.

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.