retirándose de ejecución

16 Jan 2019 | Tabernas, Spain> After a day of seeing cheesy spaghetti western sets, went walking around the general area, no sined trails, but manedged to put in 20k on sort of a loop around the intersection of A-92 + N-340A, skirting round the Oasys + Western Leone theme parks, reminiscent of badlands or SW desert in US. Ate at Los Albardinales, the makers of Oro del Desierto organic extra-virgin olive oil + also our current landlords.

Las Salinas

Sound Furie on a landscape

Barranco del Cautivo

dragon tails

abandoned homestead

blood creek (presumably iron rich?)

Oasys

17 Jan | Galera> Swinging around back north, more inland, still listening to our spaghetti western roadtrip mixtape:

Stopped in sum town called Galera where every 1 lives in caves built into the side of calcified cliffs. Couldn't check-in to our cave so walked around town, then around the town (literally) + up into the desolate hills, admiring all the dwellings dug into the sides of cliffs, walked about 15k in total. Had a hearty late lunch + now in our cave house in front of a fire.

our Citroën we named Nella

troglodyte cliff-dwellers

crystallized soil

inside an abandoned cave-house

old cliff dwellings (above) + the new (lower)

center of town

18 Jan | Jorquera> Drove about 3 hours north from Tabernas, past lots of cherry tree orchards, definitely colder when u go inland. To the Júcar river cañyon + the town of Alcalá del Júcar then had lunch on the rim looking down on it. Then back past Jorquera to this hotel built into the side of a cliff, but nicer + more functional than yesterday.

19 Jan | Valencia airport> ... sleeping in a cave sounds like a rome-antic idea til realidad sets in + u discover douchebags in a BWM rented out the hovel above + decided to have a party, stomping around hootin' + hollering.... you'd think caves wood be soundproof but they seam even worse + it wasn't really even a cave so much as a cheap-ass adobe hut built into the side of a cliff + all standard amenities get thrown out the window. Meandered upstream sum then mozied our way to the airport, stopped in Chiva just for the name (we went to shcool in Guadalajara) + had a shitty meal... we've always said Spanish food sucks + ppl go, "but wait, u haven't been here, or tried this," but we've been in Spain enough now to safely say it's all shitfood to us, just like after ~6 months in France we also think their food is crap, compared to Italy, or Japan, or Mexico, that is. That alone could prohibit us from living anywhere else, that + the weird hours they keep. Otherwise, the climate + landscape is nice + it's cheap.

cherries (blossoming already tho it's still january)

río Júcar cliff dwellings

Alcalá del Júcar

río Júcar

Alcalá del Júcar

Flintstone living

Jorquera

stone hut

abandoned hotel

a monster came to see you

On the plane here + now about to head back reading Hombres de Maiz by Miguel Asturias, in spanish cuz before we knew we was moving back to Rome we got a bunch of books in spañhole thinking we wanted to brush up (we still mixfuse our spanitalian). The book don't got a lot to do w/ Spain, Asturias is Guatemalan. The landgauge he uses is agriculture obsessed, very earthy, lots of dirt, milk, yellow rabbits + yes, corn. Hard to follow the plot, we're mostly reading for lengua, a veces parece bastante abstracto... en realidad no hay una línea de "historia," perro a brickolage of mud. Sin embargo imparte una vibra que se siente genuina, sal de la tierra, aunque lejos de ser primitiva. Híbrido interesante de mito antiguo + moderno.