Are we bored?

I'd like a dollar for the number of times I have been asked that. The answer, no - not resoundingly as there were moments after we first got here that we were a little friendless and a tad lonely. The kids, especially Angus, would charge up to people on the first hint of an english word, and it often was a good icebreaker - particularly the one day that he started chatting to a rather attractive bikini clad English woman on the beach. He was far more interested in her gorgeous blonde 5 year old daughter but as they say 'thats my boy!'

Nowadays time rushes past, our friends are from a potpourri of backgrounds and cultures. What actually led us here I don't know but our story is not uncommon...people just seem to land here and not leave - the town is universally acknowledged as grotty but the magnetism is undeniable.

People talk of 'energy' - we have never been in touch with things that way, maybe there is something in it...I'm not sure but every passing day leads me to wonder. The most interesting thing of all is that there are many searchers - a term I have heard here more than once. I am not sure anything is actually found, but the searching is universal and gives people a belief...it is not a utopian thing I am talking about, the highs and lows, heartbreak and ecstacy still fills lives but there is a reality here and its palpable. Somehow you get embrioled in people lives and that takes you to unexpected places. Yeah, yeah you say, has he lost the plot or been smoking Morroco's most lucrative export? - no I just think that we landed right in the midst of such a breadth of people that the days bring something new and let us see a rawer side of humanity....and that is interesting so we don't get bored. Oh and as an aside, and beer and wine are rather inexpensive here too. Salut!

Olives

At the heart of Orgiva lies la acietuna (the olive). The town is set in a valley besieged by olive trees, not the short stumpy mechanically harvested olives that are further north, but the ancient olives with thick knarly trunks and high branches. So at this time of year the valley reverberates with the sound of bamboo sticks smacking branches and olives raining down into tarps. Its been done this way a long time.

So I got an invite from Piluka, our Spanish teacher, to help her partner and his friends harvest olives for the organic mill. Sounded like fun. I met them and was quickly armed with a bamboo pole and started bashing the high branches. Incidentally, I recommend sunglasses for beginners as its hard to dodge the 500 olives plummeting down from directly above. So we started at 9.30am, sticks down for the first refreshment at 10 - and a carton of beer came out. The frequency remained metronomic throughout the day and I came home very pleased with my first day - apparently.

The team consisted of a Basque, German, Dutchman, Belgian, Spaniard and myself (Amber and the boys did some stick work as well)...so it was truly multinational. Conversation was in a mixture of Spanish, Flemish and English, sentences often containing all three. Anyway it was great practice for our Spanish which, though not brilliant, is progressing.

After a week we went into the mill (molina) run by a guy known locally as 'once huevos' pronounced onsay hwayvos (11 eggs) ...for obvious reasons!

There were celebrations aplenty and an afternoon bar session when we got 250 litres of golden oil (aciete) out of our tonne of olives. So I learned a whole lot about olives and oil...extra virgin is not necessarily green, colour doesn't necessarily imply flavour and I can strongly recommend drinking organic oil after seeing what goes into the standard oil! I also found that Spanish families consume at least 60 litres a year, one I heard drank 250 litres...and there are plenty of oldies about!

Travelling with the kids

I guess one of the concerns when we were planning this trip was how the kids would cope on the road, the general consensus seemed to be that structure meant happiness...and that structure was just about to be shattered. The early part of the trip was in and out of hotels, bungalows, cabins and aside from Thailand lots of time in the car. We have done 12500 kms since September, 12499 accompanied by the 17 tracks of ABC kids (subsequently destroyed). I have to admit that I (Andrew) got a little (Amber would say a lot) unnerved at times by driving through town and cities, the street are incredibly narrow and parking very limited - and trying to stop beside hotels to check for accommodation often meant driving around trying to navigate back whilst Amber checked the pad. Fifty five million people means a lot of traffic and ye olde cities mean narrow unidirectional streets.

The kids learned to swear.

Thankfully Ambers calm demeanour saved us mostly and we got settled into our new 'home' as the kids called it. Often there were only 2 beds, or one room, or noisy neighbours or bread for dinner (as dinner doesn't get going until at least 8pm) but incredibly the kids just adapted. So in a nutshell all they needed was us.

It took all this for us to discover this simple thing.

This is us on a certain bridge mentioned in a book some may have read, and below is a little movie that Archie and I made the other day

Fiesta de Los Reyes

The big day of Christmas here is on the 5th of January when three of the council trucks are decorated with balloons and streamers, filled with caramellos (sweets), local kids and one of the three kings. The procession comes up the hill to Orgiva to the masses of kids and parents waiting with open bags. Kids scramble everywhere to collect the mélange of confectionary and the procession grows to thousands before reaching the town hall. Never have I seen such excitment. The boys did fairly well in the scrounge and ended with at least 100 caramellos, a packet of chips and about 20 balloons. The caramellos are now sitting on a high shelf (despite numerous scaling attempts) and are prime bribe material.

It was great to see everybody out and about, these community gatherings are something that the Spanish people seem to do well and do often.

I can't help thinking that maybe we should do more of this at home.