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Published: April 23rd 2008
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The chaos and trauma of the last few days are now at an end, for the time being anyway. We are back to the comforts of spare rooms and lounges on improvised beds and mattresses. Our good friend Julianne meets us at the port of Barcelona and without further ado we are in a train and heading for a smaller town called Girona. It is pretty to say the least, but beginning to rain. This is good, because we get another chance to unfurl our clear plastic umbrellas, stretching that 350 Yen even further. Julianne’s partner Tom meets us at the station and we head off to a smokey little restaurant where the memory of potato croquettes are put to rest for a while. We even have to toast our own gigantic slices of bread before an open fire. This is a huge health hazard and we should really let the NZ tourism office know so that they can post a warning to all potential travellers. Code orange!
We still have a half hour van ride to go before we finally get to our final destination this evening, which is a little village in the foothills of the Pyrenees called
Amer. It’s a night arrival so we don’t really have any concept of where we are or what it looks like, except the driveway is a bumpy dirt track and the place we are staying is a very ‘old’ stone ‘barn’ (they didn’t have polystyrene or spray on plaster in the 1100s), which has been turned into liveable accommodation while they finish refurbishing the real house just down the drive.
Waking up in the morning reveals a country paradise. We are overlooking the village, you can see snow on the mountains in the distance -I guess that’s why it’s quite cool then- and there are hills shrouded in native bush as far as the eye can see. The native forest just happens to include a species of pine tree which produces the pine nut. If you’ve ever wondered why they’re so expensive it’s because extracting them is exceedingly hard and time consuming (here’s a good challenge for genetic engineering). While we are taking in the beautiful surroundings and checking over the quality of Toms refurbishment work on his house to make sure it comes up to Council Approved Registered Master Builder Specifications, an old fellow with knarled hands and
a little dog walks up the drive, leaning heavily on his stick. There is rapid conversation in Spanish, and then all of a sudden he is armed with a key on a piece of string, water divining. He even finds some, but Tom will have to get resource consent to put a well down, I would expect.
Everywhere always has it‘s little problems, here it almost never rains so water is a precious commodity and in short supply. Apparently it’s been in drought for the last 4 years. You wouldn’t know it though, everything is green (well, they are evergreens) and seemingly lush. Apparently Barcelona is just about to reach crisis level though, kind of like New Zealand this winter, except they’re not worried about power, being nuked up, they’re thirsty.
We’re thirsty too, so it’s off for a walk down the hill, past an old vineyard, some goats and lizards sunning themselves in the sun, to the village, which is not far off shutting up shop entirely. It’s a Saturday , and the whole place stops at 1pm, except for the pub. The little shops are all specialist stores, the closest thing to a supermarket is a
on the patio...
doing the dishes the old fashioned way kind of dairy, but this one also sells beer wine and hard liquor, as does every service station and shop like this one. With a population of only 3500, Amer (and similar villages) still consists of 4 or 5 storey apartments in the centre, making it compact and vibrant, with a large central square which appears to be the place where one comes to hang out and socialise.
The remainder of the day was spent playing guitars and singing songs, looking for badgers and snakes and playing patio tennis. Oh, we might have had a glass of wine or two as well. I found a couple of bottles for about €1.45 each, which I was very impressed with.
On Sunday, after getting up and having an outdoor “shower”, we headed off to see more of the Catalonian countryside, through more little villages, to a volcanic region rather like parts of Auckland but lacking Auckland draped over it. We stopped at a chicken rotisserie place which also offered roast sheep heads as a speciality, had a picnic in a forest park and walked up to the top of the hill overlooking Tom and Julianne’s place where there was an
Iberian Village, or the remains of one, and a breathtaking view of their whole valley. We still didn’t see any snakes or badgers though, so we had to be content with the sound of woodpeckers and giant ants, oh and a spectacular sunset.
So ends the Catalonian country chapter. For on Monday we were heading back to Barcelona by bus, with Julianne as a Spanish speaking guide. Sorry for the overuse of alliteration in that sentence, it’s not on purpose, they just came out that way.
Olza
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kez
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chaaawce!
Great post Ol! Great pics too - keep it coming, we're lovin' it.