Beyond The Hole

Seville, Arcos, & Granada

August 04, 2002 @ 08:35 AM

Hola! Let me poke my head out of Spain and fill you in on what I’ve been up to lately. I am currently spending the day in Madrid after a week down south in Andalucia — Seville, Arcos de la frontera, and Granada. Tempted mightily, I almost jumped across the Strait of Gibraltar and into Morocco to get myself a rug or fez, but decided to save that wild place for another time. From what I hear its not the safest place to travel alone and the recent fighting between Spain and Morocco has me even more wary.

So what is Andalucia like? Its hot. When I was in Seville it was around 40C (about 100F). I am finally starting to adjust to the Spanish schedule — get up around 9 or 10, have a small breakfast, then a big lunch between 12-2, then siesta from 2-5, and back to work from 5-9. If you are young you may then party until 4-6 in the morning.

It’s 4PM now as I write this — just got back from a big lunch — two thoroughly fried courses with bread, desert, and beer for 8 euro — and I think that is a bit on the expensive side for Spain. If I’m rambling its probably the beer.

Let me touch on some high- and low-lights of the last week in rough chronological order: On the trip from Barcelona to Seville, I missed my connecting train in Madrid and spent the next five hours bouncing between more then ten different desks (no kidding, I lost count after I started seeing red) — ticket counters and help desks — trying to get my ticket moved to a later train only to have no recourse but to buy a brand-spankin’-new ticket.

Later in Seville, I rented a room from a crazy old Spanish man with one good eye who spoke no English. Visited the Seville cathedral and saw Columbus’ tomb, only to learn that its not the only one — this of course made no sense to me, but I seeing as how I was drafting a tour group I didn’t pay for, I wasn’t at liberty to ask questions.

Then came the plunge of faith. For no reason other then a hearty Rick Steve recommendation, I decided I’d visit Arcos de la frontera. A scenic bus ride south and I stood amidst little white-washed buildings without another tourist in sight. Luckily there was a tourist office and I managed to find a place to stay: Senor Gonzales Oca’s pension. Who, although he spoke no English, managed to convey his close personal friendship with Rick Steves. The next day, as my bravery had recently been paying off, I asked Oca for a haircut. Now its a pretty risky proposition — getting a haircut when you can only describe what you want with hand gestures — but it turned out alright — certainly worth six euro. And I got a shave out of the deal, despite my wishes; Oca insisted. I could have sworn I said no when he asked, but when he threw my chair back and went at my neck with the straight razor I thought it best to just hold still…

The previous night I ventured downtown in search of paella — what I found was yellow rice with all manner of interesting and hard to identify sea critters. The little crab in the middle was cute, I even tried to eat it. I don’t think I was supposed too.

On the way back to Seville, had a very rousing conversation with an old timer in Spanish. Our throughput was perhaps five complete thoughts per hour, but the experience was rewarding nonetheless. Also met a nice German couple who offered to put me up should I ever visit them in Hamburg. Discussed how we are all sick of living out of supermarkets — I shared a little bit of Americana with them, telling them about Costco, big SUVs, big refrigerators, and big houses in America.

Back to Seville, I ran into some Scottish girls who had just come from Morocco in a book store — they had me convinced I should go. That night I went out for drinks and tapas with my 18-year old roommates from Bristol — another free place to stay in the future should I desire it. They call me Daz — apparently that is the popular shortening of Darren. All in all, a good day for making friends.

In Grenada, bunked with two South Korean kids in the hostel, Jason and Stephen. Unbeknownst to us our bunks were infested with some kind of remorseless blood-suckin’ parasitic tick chiggers who ruthlessly made a meal of Stephen, but spared Jason and I. Fortunately we got our money back.

I really need to wash my clothes as I might be carrying eggs. But I digress… pests aside, Grenada is a fun half-Spanish, half-Arabic place. Everything is either cheap or free. If you go to a bar and order drinks you get free food (tapas) — all manner of interesting and tasty morsels — add that to the fact that a beer is only about $1.20, you can have an entire meal just by ordering drinks. Even better wandering around late at night you’re constantly harassed by people handing out flyers for free drinks to get you into their bar.

Ran into the two Scottish girls from the Seville bookstore and their French Canadian pals doing just that — its a small world. Amongst all these late night activities I even managed to spend a day in the Alhambra — a conquered moorish fortress. Mom, you would’ve loved the gardens.

Today, spent the morning on a train and have an eight hour layover this in Madrid, continuing to Bordeaux this evening. My connecting train is a sleeper that leaves at 10:45pm. With any luck I should be in France tomorrow morning, poorly-rested but not bug-ridden. When you can get on them, the long-distance AVE trains here are quite nice. My train from Barcelona to Madrid clicked along at 160KPH (90MPH I believe)!

Thats all for now — gotta run and see if I can stomach a bull fight before I am slated to be back at the train station. Just when I was growing accustomed to Spain and starting to learn some spanish, its time to leave. Someday I will have to come back and explore Portugal, Spain, and Morocco more thoroughly. Till next time, ciao!