Notes from Almuñécar

All travel problems were resolved by Wednesday, Feb. 14 when Albert's lost luggage was finally delivered, after numerous frustrations that even drove Albert, who at his best is a calm and collected problem solver, to distraction.
We spent the next few days getting to know our house, the hills and beach around it and the town of Almuñécar. For Albert this has meant learning how to drive on narrow, steep streets. One place we're all getting to know well is the Mercadona, the big local supermarket. It has taken quite a few trips there to provision our place for five people, but we're getting there.

Our house is on a steep slope that rises almost right out of the Mediterranean. The views from any angle are spectacular. I have never seen such a variety of trees, bushes, cactus and flowers as you get by sweeping your eyes up from the shoreline to the top of the surrounding hills. And it's dry here. The sun is hot, but there's usually a breeze off the sea and the temperature rises to about 17c during the day. We've walked in the hills a bit and down to the water. We shut the windows and put on heaters for a while in the evening.
I'm finally getting over one of the worst coughing colds I've ever had which hit me within hours of getting off the plane in Malaga. Caroline now has a cold but hers is more in her nose.
On Monday we drove into Almuñécar to walk around and visit the Parque Botánico el Majuelo which is small but contains a variety of trees from all over the world and a lot of pretty ugly sculptures done by Syrians who seem to have been part of some cultural exchange in 2006. But the most interesting area is where the ruins of a fish salting plant have been excavated. It was thriving from when the Carthaginians were here , about 300BC until well into the Roman period, around 400AD. They also produced a fish sauce called garum from fish entrails which was highly sought after, difficult as it may be to imagine.
On Tuesday we drove to Malaga to visit the Cathedral which was built on the sight of a mosque. We also spent quite a bit of time in the Museo Picasso which had an assortment of his works in many different media. It was difficult to get a handle on the organizing principle, but worth seeing. One of the best parts was a temporary exhibit about Federico Fellini. He spent years keeping a diary of his dreams under the guidance of a Jungian psychiatrist. He admired Picasso and dreamed of him about four times. His diary is a fantastic thing to see, it's huge, with writing and colour illustrations. The exhibit included a movie which showed parts of many of his movies that I'd seen and was happy to see again.




















The Cathedral in Malaga







The view from my balcony in Almuñécar

Travel in 2018

May KakaoTalked me at 5:47am, so I turned off the alarm I'd set for 6:00 and slowly began to prepare for Jay to pick me up at 7:00. When he arrived and we were just about to leave, I realized I'd out-thought myself as usual by packing my house key in a place so safe I couldn't remember where it was. Jay hadn't brought his, thinking we'd use mine of course, so I had to search for a spare. I found the one Okanagan Restoration had used, and we left with the house locked and us laughing at how much smoother things go when I don't have time to overthink them, which as a single, retired person I always do. So the only confusion in my life is self inflicted. We had a good talk on the drive, and now I'm in the airport with time to burn.

Unlike my travelling companions, I had an uneventful, if at times uncomfortable, trip and am now spread out on clean sheets, after a long hot bath, in the airport hotel in Malaga. But, according to the Carolyn Baughan rule of travel, they will have the last laugh because they will eat for free off their stories for years while my tales won't get me a kids' meal at MacDonald's.
Pollock's flight was cancelled because of an ice storm in Ottawa so they had to take the train to Montreal where they finally got a flight but the take off was delayed for de-icing. They will finally get here after midnight. But Mela and Don's tale if well told will merit the real gourmet meals. They won't arrive until tomorrow some time because London City Airport was completely closed down today because a WW2 bomb was discovered and had to be dismantled. Can you believe it? In this era of fear mongering, Trump, Kim Jung Eun and ISIS their trip is held up by a remnant of WW2. They couldn't get a flight until tomorrow morning out of Gatwick.

I am now starving. Even in a crummy airport hotel you can't get dinner in Spain until after seven. It is that now so I can finally get something hot to eat.







Flying this morning in a turbo prop over the mountains between Vernon and Vancouver. This plane and WW2 bombs in London City Airport make it hard to believe it's really 2018.

I do have one story that might merit a glass of wine and a couple of small hors d'oeuvres. The plan to use my bad knee as an excuse to take advantage of the handicap services at the Paris airport so that I'd be able to make the quick connection to the plane to Malaga not only worked but also presented a few characters and incidents worth recounting. My fellow travellers were quite a few very old East Indians, a black man with a serious limp and his wife and a French woman from Nice who , like me, was of a certain age but with no discernible handicap. We all arrived at the mustering point in individual wheelchairs pushed quickly by young men who appeared to originate from Arab countries for whom pushing wheelchairs was an inconvenient interruption of their animated conversations. The real treat was the man who drove us to our various destinations. He cajoled everyone he encountered into acknowledging his presence. He even got an old East Indian woman to laugh. She had appeared to be very concerned and approached everyone with loud indecipherable comments to no avail until he arrived and responded to her in even louder and less understandable gibberish. He got her laughing. Even her husband, who had been sitting quietly letting her panic run its usual course, smiled in relief. This chauffeur's driving was as fast and erratic as his talking, so after practically having an accident with a baggage vehicle as we sped around the tarmac behind the airport, the others with minor handicaps and I opted to walk the short distance to our gates rather than wait at the door to be whipped there by more young men who considered us to be mere impediments to the flow of their conversation. I caught the flight to Malaga where I am now awaiting the arrival of my friends.

The weather and dreams

Snowbound
I woke to the alarm at 7:00am, got out of bed and slowly began to prepare to go skiing with John and Mo. The phone rang. It was John saying Mo had a cold so they would not be going. I lacked the conviction to go alone, so, as I was still dressed for bed, I went back there, and dreamed as I have never done before. Jay texted me just as consciousness was returning and I was struggling to get out of the dream but still remember it.

He said he couldn't resist being a cliched Canadian and commenting about the weather. I wasn't sure what he meant until I opened the blind and saw that between 7:00 and 9:30 a lot of snow had fallen. It was still dropping from a pale white sky. And yesterday it rained on Vernon's Winter Carnival Parade. The weather in Canada trumps Donald again. It's less predictable and much better looking. No wonder we talk about it all the time and can't bear the sight or sound of him. Of course I speak for myself and not the two men I sat in the Rec. Centre sauna with last Wednesday. They had nothing but praise for Trump and were eagerly awaiting what they believed would be the inevitable arrest and incarceration of Clinton (which one I don't know) and Obama. He was cleaning the swamp. I kept an uncharacteristic and cowardly low profile the whole time, pretending I was either mute or meditating.

My thoughts are muddled in the cool silence of my own living room. Imagine if I'd tried to give vent to them in the heat of the sauna. I think it would be easier to argue about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin than about how much mud covers which frogs in the swamp that Trump says Washington is and always has been. I've spent my life trying to learn about people and ideas, trying to decide which ones I want to be with and learn from. And I think I am now able to make some distinctions in those areas. Is there no longer a difference between 'right reason' and 'opinion'? I can't swallow his cant about "alternate truth". It's less digestible than mushy peas, which I don't actually mind. And I love leftovers.

Jay said he'd also had weird dreams this morning. I don't know what to make of mine. I was seated at the back of a fairly big, old, dirty, off-yellow, fibreglass boat. How's that for a string of adjectives. Mom and dad were in the middle and Jim was at the front, driving. The waves got big. We passed quite close to a pier and then drifted out. We started to sink. Mom made some indistinct noises and that was it until I was aware of her hugging me as I lay in bed. All I could see was a fuzzy white blanket, but I knew her head was covered by it, and I could feel a light pressure of her body on me. Then I heard the sound of a train that announces the arrival of a message on my iPhone. It was Jay.




Moose Junction, the turning point on one of our snowshoe hikes.