Walking Andalusia

Something hits me like a comet, a tingling uplifting feeling that a young Italian psychologist delivers, just arrived from her travel to Thailand, she’s now trying to help me.

When she, the Italian young woman, sees me being stuck between the metro gates, she wants to lift the trailer over the barrier. She talks to me like travelers talk to each other and I feel delighted by her young sparkle. She makes me instantly reconnect with emotions that aren’t available in rural Hungary, the kind that are an essential part of humanity. The fact that I am seen, recognized and talked to in a way that fits my personality must be exactly what homeless, alcoholics and outcasts lack. It is what I miss in Hungary.

The airport of Budapest was only an extension of escaping wintry Hungary. In trying to sleep the night at the airport I occupy two seats, to the chagrin of a Russian speaking woman. She looks scornful at me, saying something unfriendly, wanting me to stop filling up two seats. Moving to a quieter spot I try sleeping on the cold floor until I find myself in the metro system of Spain where suntanned faces, friendliness and more talking travelers come my way.

Coughed up like a crawly beetle from a dry throat I tumble on the pavement of the Málaga central station. Lots of traffic, neatly made-up ladies, bright light and sun mixed with a lot of noise. Feeling a drowning man who reaches shore after years on open water I notice how no one looks thoughtful at me, in contrast to where we live. Friendliness floats, a lovely feeling bubbles on the surface. Without the Hungarian reserved hesitance the city feels like a brothel filled with shiny smiles. I like it. I think of Geo and feel pity. He residing in the dark, in the cold and grayness, in seclusion. As if in a deep, narrow borehole without faces far up above asking you how you are. Luckily, he doesn’t feel what I do.

This winter I am gonna defeat the clouds and gray colors. Bye Hungary. Hello Spain!

The cries of seagulls startle me and parrots munching bread that they steadily hold in their tiny claws fascinates me. I spot a Dali mustache on a young man’s face and I wonder how he keeps it stiff? Most startling from being in the city is the butt augmentation on an otherwise shapeless young woman. What got into her, I wonder (except a displacement of her own body fat)?

It is 20ºC degrees and a blue sky welcomes me on my third day in Spain, ready to walk with my trailer stuffed half full with food. Why do I haul a trailer and not a backpack like everyone else who walks? The reason is simple: with my less than 50 kilogram general guidelines suggest I could carry 20% of my body weight. Which would be 10 kilogram. Something I am impossible of achieving. Besides the fact that I eat a lot and my comfort being in embroidery and photography, chai and cooking, I much rather haul or push a cart and have my body free. Not carrying a backpack makes it impossible to go over the smallest trails but the discomfort of the striated straps around my shoulders and hips make up for it.

Having failed to draw enough water I come to a conclusion that I write in my diary but somehow can never keep when it comes to work at my garden: over extortion is worse than little water and no rest worse than getting to a tap. I am able to stop when my body tells me now.

The morning where I overlook the tiny buildings stacked on top of each other, like an artful anthill that is Málaga, I enjoy the buzz of excitement tangible within me. A tingle goes through my body, like the wind does to the pine needles overhead. And the succulent looking persimmon I had placed for breakfast, rolls down the hill.

‘This is the campo! The farmer won’t mind you sleeping here. He might even say “welcome, stay at my land”, since this is the campo, where else can you go?’ says a Spaniard who walks past my camp spot that is fully exposed.

I am not following a camino or trail, instead I walk towards the mountains and it’s beauty. I try to avoid built up parts but many tiny farm sheds are transformed into a cortijo that functions as a holiday home. I want to walk in the mountains where no cortijo’s are.

I walk because I want to feel alive. Alive is what I feel. The uphill is of such a gradient that it surprises a local why I walk here? ‘Where do you sleep?’ the old man asks me. I answer: ‘In the olive grove. Is that allowed?’ The old man replies with: ‘Yes, but it is dangerous,’ he owns some olive groves himself and continues with: ‘you better go down the hill, there lives an Irish woman, she looks a bit like you, you can sleep at her place. There are no hotels in town. The olive groves are dangerous because at night young men come and rob you. Because they use drugs. You surely don’t want that? A girl you are at that!’ I stay two nights at the olive grove where we just talked to each other. After I rushed to Coviran, the bakery and Dia to load up on a lot of food.

In the average town no longer a bakery exist but an ambulant one who of course never is there when I am. After asking around I found a dark smelly bar where fresh sourdough baguettes were baked. For one euro each I was extremely happy with this finding.

I walk basically from Coviran convenience store to Coviran convenience store, opened from early morning to 2.00 PM and in the evening again from 5.00 PM. These timings are not handy for me but luckily I can carry enough to skip days of shopping. Water is hardly ever a problem, with it’s many fuentes and taps in most towns.

I don’t take such words very serious. I know older people watch television and Spanish television is very sensationalized. Besides, experience goes a long way. The elderly of Spain are good old fashioned very friendly and forthcoming. They harbor no shyness to talk to me.

It is humbling to walk. It makes me feel a true pilgrim, a fool, a naturalist, a weirdo. Especially when I push the trailer. People look at me to see what my appearance is. Some wave, some offer a lift. I am far from the hippie or homeless they might have expected, or so I hope.

Why do I walk alone and not together with my husband. Just like the wife tagging uphill on an E-bike far behind her husband on an unsupported race bicycle. Or the wife sitting on the back of the motorbike, stiff like a taxidermist cat in a leather suit. Or the girlfriend outfitted in a colorful legging because her boyfriend is so sporty and she isn’t but needs to align. And here I am, not fitting the usual. Sitting at the side of the road, drying my tent and having breakfast, I overthink all I did together with my husband: he always, by far, outruns me. What ever it is we do, I always end up with severe hurts in trying to keep up with Geo strong pace.

Thoughtfully enjoying the warmth of the sun, a ranger in his car stops in front of me: ‘You may not camp here, neither in a 20 kilometer radius. This is a protected area,’ the friendly looking man in green outdoor clothes tells me. I do not say the truth: ‘I know, since all is fenced but I found a flimsy gate that I closed better than it was, I take my toilet paper soiled with poop with me, unlike others and I didn’t add one bit of trash to the whole pile in this protected area’. Instead I answer: ‘I do not camp here, I only dry my tent.’ The ranger clearly does not recognize my Optimus stove and asks: ‘Are you making a fire?’ No, I am not. He is fine with me, and so am I. Fully charged, chai’d up, tent dried, fertilized the soil and tummy fueled I am off. All done just in front of the gate where I went in and out to camp. I technically slept in a huge sheep enclosure surrounded by stunning nature and a few degrees below zero.

I feel pulled towards this snow covered mountain top and will have it’s view many days in my eye sight. I make this my waypoint and walk wherever I stay close enough to it’s view.

The new Belenka shoes I bought for this walk are falling apart. The camera shows signs of malfunction in the freezing cold. I start seriously smelling. My back hurt from the uneven, sloped places I sleep on. But the sky is ever so blue and the sun warms me each frosty morning. I came here for the sun and sun is what I get. When I see a chance I dip in the Embolse de los Bemejales. I feel like a nudist for washing myself in only underwear and shirt on, others are fishing or strolling. I feel new born fresh.

The shepherds are disappearing. The forest slowly declining, more olive groves being planted. The signature of Spain isn’t anymore. Over the course of just one generation all of it becomes one form. One mass. Little culture. A lot has become less Spanish and general European Unionized. One mold fits all. Still, I smell Spain and I am enthralled by its endless beauty.

Shepherds are few, and old. I think they’re only shepherding out of nostalgia, just as I walk they are with sheep. Admirable, holding back on what gave peace of mind. Nature becomes more majestic when scaling it by foot. No, I am not looking for adventure or excitement but for variety. Diffuse light down below a promising feeling.

To see the land stretching out in front of me. The route that I have walked. Standing higher than what is below me and looking at what I saw back in time. The energy that I have, to give it into the walk that feeds my mind.

The evenings are always threaded careful. I don’t want to be seen. Mornings are freer. More erect. Brighter. At night a car drove around with his trailer full of olive branches. Even when I sleep in olive groves near town that have actively surveillance I am unseen. Now, having erected my tent under a wind turbine, which was a long standing wish, I am rather visible. The fact however is that it is remarkable easy to find camp spots and that hardly anyone is out where I appear to be.

I choose a wind turbine that wasn’t turning and as many others weren’t, the morning saw a technician coming to repair the beasts towering around me. Luckily not mine.

I see the first wild goats. And the first hippies. Whatever a hippie actually is? Dreadlocks. Woolen hats. Motley crew of old, dirty clothes. Tibetan prayer flags. Yin yang symbols. Om signs, at my own wrist too. Remarkable friendly people. Foreigners unattractively looking, as if always cold, too long unwashed and alcohol sustaining them. Walking on the road from Lanjaron to Órgiva isn’t inspiring but the fact that I am searching a particular place is (a place bordering the Beneficio no less). I pass a cheap tent tucked under eucalyptus trees, a herd of dogs at it and a collection of things, plastic bags and trash. When I turn into a gravel path I say hello to a guy with facial adornments, trying not to look too intense, I see a horizontal nose-bridge piercing and matching tattoos under the eyes. He sure is artful.

The only decent bakery in town is ‘Nur’, a Moroccan run shop, where they sell the quality you would find only in homes of local Moroccans. And when the baker isn’t sick there are perfect loaves of sourdough. Extremely expensive but worth it.

I arrive at Maria, she is a German lady whom Geo and I met traveling with our Iveco truck. She lives in Órgiva and runs a little finca, with an impressive amount of work to do. I kind of invited myself and now I am sitting at a wood fire, talking until I sweat, drinking lemon water and eating avocado salad with olive oil. All from her own soil.

Walking with a dog is so much more pleasant than alone. Dog China made my walks with Maria full of wonder and smiles.

I leave this town eagerly yet with mixed feelings: it’s a town with friendly people, alive and very diverse but a much higher amount of especially North European outcasts than anywhere else.

I will come back as Geo and I have arranged to cut trees on Maria’s finca. I walk out in the pouring rain and with a record of 20 kilometers I made sure I am nowhere near random and cheap looking tent encampments.

Pouch Blackberry leaf was worked on while at Maria’s finca farm. When you want to purchase this carob hand dyed, hemp cotton pouch with an old chair cover as lining and glass beads as decoration click here I haven’t set an amount yet, as that is your decision on this one. Surprise me!