For the last couple of weeks I have briefly exchanged bicycle touring for a lifestyle made up of extremely contrasting activities and places.
After spending a few days in the sweltering heat of Ronda I decided to have a very early start to get to my next destination. Waking at 4am to the pitch black campsite, even the animals were having a break from their constant noise and movement. I quietly packed away my tent and belongings and made my way through the town using my bike lights and the occasional street lamp to show me the way. Being the sole occupant of the whole silent town was an exciting and slightly disturbing sensation. Heightened by the dark and quiet I felt that I was the last person on earth, anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy knows kind of how I felt just a little less apocolyptic!
Out of the town and I began the big climb over the Sierra de las Nieves mountains. At the summit of the first climb I watched the sun rise over the rocky peaks, hoping to catch glimpses of the ibis that are native to the area. My luck was out on this front but the scenery as I swung down and around the gorges to climb the last peak of the range more than made up for it. So much so that after an early start my body clock was telling me that the morning coffee was well overdue.
Having already ridden for 4 hours I jumped off the road to a rocky outcrop and made coffee while sheltering from the wind, watching the world around me begin to wake up as I sat on top of the rocks with an awesome panoramic view of the valleys and villages below me. So far this is the best place I have ever had my morning brew, the service wasn’t bad either!
The heat of the day beginning to rise I decended for miles and miles, following beautiful roads through and past mountain villages, passing through cloud to get down to the River Grande, I found a spot to paddle and have a light snooze, it had already been a long day and was only lunchtime.
A few hours later and slightly rested but feeling a bit groggy in the still sweltering afternoon sun I decided that I would try and find the eco farm I had researched when I was back at home. Off the main roads now, the tiny local tracks are even steeper so my day of climbing just got longer as I made my way into the valley of sun-kissed Andalucian farmland. Passing little farmsteads and Fincas with patches of vegetables and fruit growing from the scorched orange earth I rejoined the River Grande and found an old run down but beautiful plot. A hand painted in the typical ‘hippy’ style so evident at all the festivals I have been to told me I’d found my destination and made it to The Ecoforest. Looking around the apparently deserted place, long overgrown grass almost covering the fruit trees and vegetable plants. A few donkeys unsucessfully trying to bat away insects in the field below I stopped for a minute to notice how few man-made noises there were. Far in the distance the sound of a petrol driven piece of farm machinery was almost drowned out by the cicadas, crickets, birds and lizards.
Thinking that I had found a totally deserted commune I went to get back on my bike when I noticed a figure, sat naked in the open air kitchen. As he hurriedly put trousers on I made my way to say hello, explaining I had found the Ecoforest on the web and wondered if I may be able to stay for a few days and help out. Nestor, an Argentinian gentleman moved from nervously wondering who this trespasser was to inviting me to stay for weeks, months if I so wanted. Immediately comfortable in each other’s company, he showed me around the farm, the ramshackle kitchen, the donkeys among the orange trees, the overgrown vegetable area, new pepper, mango and chilli plants rising to the azure blue sky in a race against the other wild plants that made up the rich biodiversity of the farm. A stark contrast to the rest of the traditional farmers whose plants, in neat rows look more like soldiers in a parade, looking mournful as they grow out of the parched bare earth of their fields. We wandered among the plants, past the lean-to compost toilet, and through the bushes to the beautiful clear and warm waters of my friend of the day, the River Grande.
This time able to swim among the fish in the pools of water, we cooled off from the heat of the day with fish nibbling our legs while we sat in the ‘jaccuzi’ of rapids just downstream.
Fully refreshed Nestor showed me to the yurt where I would stay, in the middle of an overgrown field of thorns and spiky thistles. Battling my way through with my bike at least we made a bit of a walkway through the jungle that would prove handy on the coming nights where the lack of electricity made it very dark indeed.
I spent the next week living and working on the vegan eco farm, The place is by no means run with an iron rod! Nestor’s life, that I would join for a few days consisted of waking with the natural light of the sun, spending a few hours picking fruit and vegetables for the day, filling the donkeys troughs with water, and having a refreshing morning bath in the river before walking upstream, dodging the turtles and watersnakes to fill water bottles from the local fresh water spring.
Breakfast was Nestor’s take on porridge, admitting he didn’t really know how to make it he fried the oats with garlic and tomatoes, added spices and the juice from a freshly picked orange. Unconventional yes, delicious? Also Yes! (check the Food page of the blog for the actual ‘working’ recipe)
Followed by a few hours of work, as the heat rose we cut the long grass with sickles and blades, the heavy iron hand tools adding calluses to the ones from riding the bike! Other days we white washed the farmhouse with lime solution, bringing the place back to life and in the process getting rid and sending to charity, masses of abandoned belongings that had been left over the years by other workers who had spent time on the farm and never fulfilling promises to return and pick up their things.
The ridiculous heat of midday was dodged in the cool, naturally ventilated open kitchen, a wooden structure with hand painted cupboards and noticeboards from when the project was started. Communal gatherings would obviously have taken place each day with jobs being divvy-ed out between the commune members over their morning meal.
The two of us would spend a while, drinking cool spring water from the terracota pitcher hanging from the ceiling beam, chopping the freshly picked vegetables that would be simply mixed with indian spices, lashings of olive oil and fresh lemon juice with either pasta or rice that had been cooked over an open fire.
Digesting our huge and delicious meals while reading the local alternative magazine La Chispa. Written by a chap across the river and filled with an amazing array of information and articles on alternative living, natural farming, holistic therapies and more fantasticly green things. I was happily taken aback by the amount of eco minded people and companies in this part of Andalucia. If I didn’t have so much bloody cycling to do I would have stayed for much much longer!
Our huge lunches were followed by a much needed siesta in a shaded area, an activity which while cycling through the heat I have refrained from but on the farm…well, when in Rome and all!!
Once the full heat had died slightly we rose from our slumber to spend a few more hours working, chatting about music, spirituality and living in nature. Evenings were a race against the sun dropping below the hills. The gorgeous pastel colours of the evening landscape, dotted with lights at other farms and with small fires filling the air with the lovely smell of far off wood smoke brought with it complete darkness to the Ecoforest. The car battery that was charged by the rooftop solar panel had been stolen a few days earlier meaning we had to prepare and cook an evening meal, eat ravenously with wooden spoons, sit looking out through the leaves of the surrounding plants before washing up in the sink with a trickle of water piped up from the river. All before we were plunged into darkness and the ever growing noise from the animals that we lived amongst.
Sleeping out under the stars one night was beautiful but came with the hazards of mosquitos and other biting insects. One night was enough for being eaten alive so I put up the tent inner inside the yurt for the rest of my time, hoping that the number of bites may reduce!
Spending just a few days living in such a simple way, defined in every sense by nature and guided by the knowledge and spirituality of someone who has lived such a life for many years I felt a light switch on inside my head. In some way, I knew that this way of life, or at least the ethos of living this way is something that I want to fill my own life with. I have no idea how that will manifest itself but for the first time in a long time I feel inspired by a style of living and look forward to trying to implement it into my life back home.
The days that followed my departure from the Ecoforest would be a stark contrast to what I had just been a part of.
Filled with excitement at the prospect of my best friend from childhood coming out to visit me I pedalled happily through the surprisingly nice city of Malaga, taking in a few sights, wandering the shops trying to find the apparently plentiful alternative stores, (I only found a couple, but that’s a couple more than most other cities so far!) I ate a vegetarian meal and chatted to the bike taxi drivers about travelling by bike and their lives in Spain. Cycling east I found the Mediterranean sea! The third ocean of my trip, and one that I would have to wait to swim in as the weather, although hot looked like turning and the grey beaches of the Costa del Sol weren’t too inspiring either! Spending the night in the tourist hell-hole of Torre del Mar, a place with all English signs to ‘Traditional’ pubs serving ‘full english breakfasts’ I reflected on my time on the farm and wondered what the hell I was doing! Remembering that Matt would be joining me the next day made me feel much better about it all, and the amount of buzzing and biting insects made me jump in my tent for an early night.
I made my way to meet up with Matt at a huge shopping mall, full of things I didn’t need I wandered around quite aimlessly until he turned up, driving a car we later christened ‘the tank’. Picking up supplies of beer and BBQ food I knew that we were well into a much needed holiday mode as we drove into the mountains, leaving the sorry state of the coastline below us to get to his beautiful house in the Andalucian hills. Listening to the local dance music station way too loudly we spent the next few days chatting long and hard, catching up on everything that’s been going on back home.
Unbelievably the first night of Matt’s day’s catching some Spanish sun was a total cloud white out, and we barbequed local seafood and ate like kings amazed by how we couldn’t see much further than a few metres past each other.
Beer flowing and tunes pumping we began what would be a bit of a lads holiday. Something so different to everything I’d done before but the change was awesome for a long weekend.
The view from the house of the Sierra de Tajeda mountains to the left and the Mediterranean ocean to the right is incredible. I could have looked at it for hours, but nature had other plans as the cloud once again filled the air. Feeling bad for Matt coming all this way to weather like this we decided to drive west down the coast. Passing more horrendous package holiday delights like Torremolinos, somewhere I never thought I’d actually see. And yes it is every bit as bad as you think! Apologies to any Torremolinos residents reading but if you can succesfully argue it’s merit’s then I’ll change this blogpost! We sped on through Marbella to Puerta Banus, another place I never thought I’d see and one so darkly contrasting to the last week on the farm that it really shocked me that the two places are in the same vicinity let alone country.
As supercars rumbled past and huge golden yaughts were cleaned by their deck-crew we drank the most expensive beer of my trip sat on the Golden Mile. ‘What a place’ is the only phrase I uttered for a while as we watched the dolled up girls and middle age playboys strutting their stuff, weighed down by expensive jewellery and huge sparking sunglasses.
The sun eventually emerged from the clouds and we spent a few hours baking on the beach, tip-toeing over the oven like sand to swim in the warm, clear waters of the Med. We spent the couple of days afterwards relaxing back at the ranch, looking out over the landscape, sunbathing to our hearts content and generally having a bloody good holiday! Eating a beautiful meal in the local village it was nice to be with another human being rather than a book for a change! The evenings we spent sat on the terrace, gazing upwards at the incredibly bright stars and considering the chances of other intelligent life out there in the cosmos.
The problem with being visited by great friends when you are out travelling on your own is that when the time comes for them to leave, the emotions that have been cooking inside you all the time you have been alone begin a battle with the feelings of contentment and comfort when you spend time with a familiar person and you become a bit of a mess of emotions. When the time finally came around and we said our goodbyes a large part of me wanted to be getting on the plane back home with him, an equally large part was now considering the fact that I don’t know when I will next see someone I know and wanting to stay here in a place I now feel comfortable in and don’t want to venture out into the big world again because its scary! Meanwhile another large part of me is looking forward to being on my own again and being able to get back to my routines.
Needless to say I yet again spent a good while blubbering into my sleeves as I the volcano of emotions erupted once more. I wonder what the next stage will hold. It’s getting hotter and I fancy a change of country! East and North I think…..
• EXPLORINGFOREVER • 