Despedidas y Experiencias Compartidas: Goodbye to Spain

I am watching the sun fade on my last days in Motril, my home town away from home. As always happens at the end of any good period of time, events seem to speed up and condense. Since my spring trip, I have been entirely Andalucian in my travels. In 3 consecutive weekends, I was lucky enough to be able to visit 3 of the region’s important parks. First, in a camping trip with friends to Cabo de Gata in Almeria, a nature preserve that includes kilometers of coastline and some of the most pristine beaches I’ve ever seen. Next was the adventure of a lifetime in the Sierra Nevada, a mere 3 days of backpacking that included washed out trails, trespassing, bushwacking, stray dog companions, camping above the snowline, and hiking several hours in the snow in jeans, khakis, and non-waterproof shoes to summit the highest mountain in continental Spain, Mulhacen. For a fuller and more evocative account, read what Jasmina has to say http://stumblesthroughtime.blogspot.com/2010/05/summiting-mount-mulhacen-with-dog-named.html. Finally, we visited the province of Cadiz on a municipal government-sponsored youth excursion to the Parque Donana and nearby towns.

Time in general has been full and fast lately, with busy workweeks and packed weekends. The Mediterranean climate has finally showed its true colors, and we’ve had no rain for over a month. The rhythm of food, language, and pastimes here has long been just hovering on the edge of my reach, and the past weeks have felt like the final and complete immersion into this place’s life. The cruel irony, as my flatmate and colleague Alisha put it, is that everything always seems to be coming together perfectly right as you’re about to leave. Assuming that that feeling is inevitable, I will say that I am lucky to have had the time I’ve had here, to have shared it with the people I’ve known, to have seen the places and done the activities and lived the experiences and learned the things that have made this year so rich for me.

Returning to the United States from a year working and living and traveling abroad will undoubtedly bring some mild culture shock, as well as the stark realization that I am returning to a world where I am one of many idealistic, worldly, moderately accomplished recent graduates looking for work. A dose of realism awaits me, without a doubt. But first, I get to delay that inevitability with the best remedy for these types of concerns… travel, of course.

I am in currently on a break between two starkly different trips, north and south. I recently finished a 10 day solo exploration of the North of Spain, an area I have long wanted to discover and a different side of Spain from the one I have gotten to know so well here in Andalucia. In Asturias, the cradle of the reconquista and the only zone not influenced by the Moorish empire, I learned to pour cider in the traditional way at a small town fiesta, bottle overhead and the glass tilted a meter below, and hiked in the Picos de Europa with an Asturian hiking club.

In Bilbao, I explored the magical Basque coastline and wandered a city full of incredible architecture. In San Sebastian, I stayed in a pueblo where only Euskera (the language of the Basque Country) was spoken in cafes and plazas, crossed the border into France, and wandered the countryside on trails through deep green mountain forests that surely are sisters to my Blue Ridge. Both Basque Country and Asturias enchanted with their distinct traditions, history, and attitudes. The Basques, especially, surprised me with their political passion and antipathy towards the Spanish state, which even after over 600 years of integration they still see as an oppressor. A really inspiring and eye-opening journey for a lone traveller, full of good people and beautiful places and many new things.

Now I am ordering my affairs and saying goodbye to the friends and town of Motril, my home this year. Very soon, I am heading to Morocco again. This time, on a 10 day road trip that will have me packed in an old land rover along with Jasmina, a Belgian farmer, 2 Spaniards, and a Swiss student. I cannot even begin to imagine what that trip will have in store, but it is certain to be interesting. From there, the journey home, greater in its significance even than in its long distance.

I appreciate anyone and everyone who has kept up with me this year, via photos or my blog or emails. It has been an important 9 months for me, containing a lifetime’s worth of living in some ways. So, thank you all and I look forward to our next conversation in person. Best wishes, Andrew.

Ramble in Morocco (Travel blog vol. 2)

My most recent vagabond travel undertaking was an independent and somewhat haphazard voyage across the strait to Africa. A group of 2 boys and 3 girls, none speaking the national languages of French and Arabic, we nonetheless set off for Morocco with no hotel reservations, guides, maps, or concrete plans. We had a 5 day weekend, 4 cities in mind, and a lot of faith in the mantra that fate favors those who trust it. From the port city of Algeciras, we ferried over the Mediterranean to our first destination, the morning sun-washed city of Tangier. A cultural, artistic, and geographical crossroads, Tangier greeted us with the bustle and clamor of its port and the resident hangers-on. Once deeper into the city, however, we discovered the quiet beauty of the city with the help of an unofficial guide named Mustafa. He led us through the ancient winding streets of the hilltop medina and Casbah, or castle complex, where such mystical historical figures as Marlon Brando, Jimi Hendrix, and Bon Jovi have lived. Already pleasantly surprised by our relative good fortune thus far, we began the next stage of our journey in the company of new friends.

Thanks to the travel networking site CouchSurfing, we met up with 2 Moroccans who hosted us in their small coastal town of Assilah. In addition to a free place to stay, they also offered us a local’s view of the city, complete with conversations about Islamic culture and Arab youth as well as a tour of the seaside medina. Later, we had the unforgettable experience of riding on a flat 2-wheeled horse-drawn cart along busy highways and across rolling fields to a beautiful secluded beach (Paradise beach, in fact) set among high coastal bluffs. That night, we had the unique and incredible opportunity to go to a traditional Arab bath house located behind an unmarked dour at the end of a dark alley in the medina. The baths consisted of a dressing room, warm buffer room, and a completely tiled steam room where we washed ourselves with buckets of hot water from a continuously refilling reservoir. Morocco was surprisingly cold, especially at night, and the deep warmth of 2 ½ hours in a steam room was a welcome change.

Most excitingly, we had the chance to receive a traditional Hamman massage from the best masseuse in town. The wiry middle-aged Moroccan joined us in the steam room and proceeded to blow our minds with his strength and endurance as he conducted intense full body massages for 7 people in a row. The massage itself was much more than a backrub, and involved yoga-like stretch positions, synchronized inversions, and insane twists and lifts. The masseuse used his body as a tool for opening up our joints and muscles, and the heat, echoing noise, and rhythmic breathing made me lose all sense of relative time or space or position during the intense 15 minutes that I was under his control. The refreshing clean and physical vitality that I felt afterwards stayed with me for days.

From Assilah, we took a train to the bigger city of Fez, overcoming language barriers and transportation setback along the way. With less than 24 hours in the most important city in Morocco (culturally and historically speaking), we made the most of our time. We stayed in a hostel in the heart of the medina, and got a tour from a couple of American Fulbright scholars staying in Fez. They showed us the crowded main streets, winding alleys, markets and mosques of the medina, as well as the un-touristed residential neighborhoods that they had explored. Fez’s medina is the largest intact medieval Arab city, as well as the epicenter of Islamic philosophy and religion for much of its history. The hum of life there, of people and commerce and spirituality, was intoxicating and overwhelming, packed as it was into Fez’s warren of narrow streets and covered alleys.

Our last destination was the small mountain town of Chefchaouen, where we had barely 18 hours to enjoy one of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen. Built against the side of a mountain and on the edge of a wilderness preserve, Chaouen’s steep streets led to wall after wall of every shade of blue, with blue doors set in them. Known as the “blue city,” Chaouen’s mosaic of whitewashed and painted streets, alleys, and doorsteps made for a mystical ambiance, somewhere between a traditional pueblo blanco of Andalucia and the extraterrestrial feel of rounded buildings and streets that seemed carved out of the mountain. While our haphazard itinerary actually worked out, and we visited all the towns we aimed for and even made (barely) our ferry on time, I seriously regret that we had so little time in this town.

So, 4 nights and 5 days of vagabond travel in Morocco came to an end with a strange blend of satisfaction with the wonders of the experience, gratitude for our good fortune, physical fatigue from the intensity of the trip, and an aching wish that the amazing trip did not have to end. The beauty of the landscape and cities of Morocco amazed me, as it did when I went there with a tour group in the past. The deepest impression, however, was left by the Moroccan people. Their generosity, positivity, and openness, contrary to their common reputation in Europe, repeatedly moved me. Their devotion, to God and Islam and family and health and traditions, was readily apparent. Their patience, too, with poverty and hardship and each other, was a marked contrast to American attitudes. Finally, the single quality that I admired the most and wish was not so alien to Western culture: humility, before people and life and God. It is often preached, and rarely practiced, but I saw it in the faces and actions and words of the Moroccans I encountered, and it refreshed and inspired me. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to have such an experience, to be blessed with such luck and good times, but the return to normal life only makes such journeys seem even more surreal.