Utah-Spain 2007 (9)

Hey everyone! Rai here... writing from rainey Reus, Spain... ooohhh.. but you know life is good when all you have to complain about is waking up and peaking out your tent to look upon the cliff bands of Siurana and have the misfortune of having to climb back in your down bag and snuggle with your boyfriend as you discuss whether to make coffee in the snow or drive down to the closest big town to kill a day in the coffe shop while you start reading 1984, by George Orwell cause you're feeling cerebral on this seemingly endless roadtrip... But, still, sunshine would be divine!!

The road has taken me by the hand finally! I bid farewell after a long 4 month stint at the Finca La Campana... I think I had a big impact on the owners cause they lost the color in their faces when I said I was leaving... ok, not quite.. but, I kind of took that place by the short hairs and put things in order before I took off. I did my whole move in- take charge- make cute signs on the computer and laminate them for the kitchen-thing... and when Andie, our Canadian travel buddy nominated me employee of the year as a joke, Christine, the owner, said I win employee of all the years! It sucks to be an organizational freak sometimes, cause it makes relaxing hard ... I would be sitting at dinner with my friends and then it would occur to me that the back toilet was out of toilet paper and I meant to change it this morning and that I forgot to print my new sign about the abolishment from the kitchen of all those who don't do their dishes and the dishes are piling up as I swallow the third bite of my peanut sauce stir fry... and I MUST do it now!!! And then Justin dumps me cause he can't handle having such an anal retentive mental case as a girlfriend and then he remembers that he's obsessive compulsive and it all works out! That's just how it is for me... I tried phone therapy but I think I need the real deal.... Just accept me for who I am! Crazy girl!

So, I said goodbye to lovely El Chorro... Said goodbye to Fox Dog, Sherpa, the young boys that I used to babysit (who were way more into the snails at the bus stop than their favorite babysitter leaving... really they just didn't understand the severity and permanence of the Adios... it probably hit them the next day... I won't count on it!), I said goodbye to the locals that I had gotten to know and that was that.. on the road!

The road consisted at first of me, Andie and Derek from Squamish and Toblerone (Torbjorn - simplified as a chocolate bar... nicknames to become Thunderbear and Chocolate) from Norway.. in a luxury rental car... well, a Puegot SUV.. which was supposed to be a small little bug car, but when we showed up without our papers and they realized we'd come to the wrong pick up site, that was all they had... and they thought they were putting us out... haha! Joke of the year! We scored so big with that change... from a cramped car to a huge box with lots of storage.. ideal! And especially now, as we sit in the rain, roofracks on a bug would have been the death of us and our luggage! and it wasn't even a real bug, as in VW, which would have made up for a little discomfort in sheer style points... no, just generic euro model... but, anyway...

Our first stop from El Chorro... which didn't lack several wrong turns and two alpha girls sitting in the front navigating at each other...was Sella, a climbing area outside of Alicante.. the climbing was great... slabby and easy in most sectors, but we spent a day at the coveted Wild Side and that was super! Luckily for us, the locals put up top ropes! The grades in El Chorro are a little softer than those at Sella... note to climbers, go to El Chorro last on your tour of Spain! And I thought I was strong!

Oh well... From Sella, where we wild camped at the base of the crag, we went to Gandia to wild camp in a toilet... well, first in a river bed, on stones and then in a cave on rock... with crappy little pads and toilet paper lingering within a few meters at any time... Andie figures I could make millions translating the book 'How to Shit in the Woods' into Spanish... but I figure... who would buy it!? So, the climbing at Gandia was super cool.. one short crag, with a few sectors.. lots of pocket pulling and tufa climbing on steep rock with plenty of easy and hard lines... and, best of all, gets full sun all day! It sits on a busy enough road, so traffic is a detail of the day, but the climbing and sun made up for it in my mind... and you're looking at the Meditarreananareannean... Sea all day! oooohhh... Derek took a quick dip in that water... trying to refresh since we'd gone a while without showers... he backed off once before diving in cause of a dead fish floating by... then sucked it up and said, 'that's it, I'm going in'... and he ran... and he stopped.. and he shook his head and then he kept going and he went in... He came out with tails of maxi pads floating by and an abundance of trash on the bottom... mmm nice, think I'll hold out a few more days for my shower... (Which came 8 days after my last one)

So, from Gandia we went inland to Montenejos.. slept road side in a forest... it was a cute little mountain town with warm springs put in by Franco back in the day... or some other dude.. I think it was franco... wait.. maybe not... well, a king of some sort... bad, bad historian I am. Anyway.. there's climbing there too but we were all resting and I was cursed that morning with a gnarly cold.. so I didn't even get to swim, but those folks did... that was their pseudo shower.. another missed opportunity for me. We walked around a bit, looked at all the facades on the buildings of businesses run by Spaniards who unfortunately know about that silly Siesta thing that takes place between 3 & 5 pmish every day... So, we didn't really see much... then we checked out the climbing.. quite nice limestone caves and an impressive canyon with water flowing through, rumored to have huge frogs and great swimming in the summer... we had cloud cover that day and weren't really all that warm... we left.

Next stop... we didn't really know.. we thought originally Siurana... but then realized that since we had to pick up boy wonder (Justin) in Barcelona the next day, it made little sense to drive into Siurana and back out in the morming... destination - Barcelona suburbia for wild camping... We found a little road between Tarragona and Barcelona and camped in the woods again, next to some premature olive groves... in the morning, after our usual cowboy coffee session, we hit the road and went in to the big city...

Barcelona is a rockin' city.. one of my favorites!!! It was going off this Thursday that we went in because Celtic was playing Barcelona in a match to determine who would move into the quarter finals of the futbol tourney.... The streets were filled with drunks from Scotland, Ireland, England... wearing their Celtic jerseys, flying the Irish flag... singing team songs.. it was great! A Dubliner walked up to me later in the day and slurred out 'you know about Celtic?'... I said, yeah, it's a proud Irish team based in Scotland.... he was impressed... 'Yeah, exactly'... and walked away singing with his mates... I still don't know who won! Guess I should check.. but man, I bet it was chaos around that stadium!

So, we scoped the buskers (talent in the streets.... live statues, jugglers, Micheal Jackson impersonator, etc) and then met Justin at the meeting point, harbor end of La Rambla.. and we loaded our rain soaked bodies into the rental car and headed for Siurana....

Siurana, the little village itself is impressive! It's stuck in time! It is tiny and no cars are allowed in.... The streets are very chunky cobble stones, the buildings have their original facades with some internal remodeling... the old midevil jail is now someone's back garden... there are still rusty metal shackles hanging inside... I think and those other metal rings here and there to tie up horses, etc.... the village had 7 inhabitants as of the mid 80´s when climbers started to develop more heavily in the area with bolts (previously had been visited by folks training for the Alps, trad climbing only) and with the sport climbers came a salvation for this dying small town! So, now the village has 20 dwellers and vistors from all over, and yet, it is still dead-like with no trash, no bush potties everywhere and just a good feel about it... there are two refugios, one with camping and then some wild camping for the frugal.. like us!

We found an awesome little perch ... three feet in front of our tent's door is a big drop off and down the trail to our right is the gorge filled with all the climbing... we were feeling so set up and so lucky and then... it happened! SNOW!!! I almost made a whole year with no snow... but, it fell today! On our heads! So, we hit the road to Reus to get a warm cup of Java... and we're still here... wallowing in the recent news that it's supposed to rain for the next four days down here, which means snow up on our tents... so, maybe we'll dig them out of their white blankets and head elsewhere for a couple of days..... this is where Justin and I are planning to stay until the end of April when I go to Ireland... so if the weather continues to be this inclimate and uncomfortable.. then ouch, I'm hating it! I sent my down jacket home in a moment of spacial relations desperation! oops!

So, that's this life in a nutshell... I hope all is well in everyone else's life... As I always say.. I love hearing from you.. even just one-liners are great... Looks like I'll be home early July, passing thru CO in mid July and hopefully buying my own little cozy house, finally, in August before I start becoming a real professional development kind of person.. hehe ... SLC- not forever, but not bad for now!