Rivers, Lakes, Bluffs, Sailors

It may not have been yet twenty-four hours since our fourth North American had arrived and we were already on a bus to a string of lakes out in the country, backpacks full of candles and shandy, to camp out for a night beneath the stars. Ah, poor Holt. I do not know why I often have the urge to do the things that I have urges to do, but in that moment I was determined to sleep outside with just a sleeping bag. I brought my own. Natalie borrowed two from Pili in Toledo for Dee and herself. But Holt, he had only some extra blankets and a second layer of clothing with which to defend himself from the cold. And it was only his second or third night in Spain. And he hardly knew us; none of us really knew each other.

The lakes were cerulean blue. We cooled our shandies in them and poked at crawdad parts in the sand. It would have been awfully romantic to climb up some rocks and make our camp there beneath a fig tree overlooking the water and hills—like any summer night in northern Michigan—but we had just arrived in Spain and had heard from very reliable sources that camping like this was illegal. We discussed our options for a while, then decided to pay to sleep on the hard gravel ground of a camping park, which was kind of like backyard camping as kids do. Less comfortable and more expensive, yes, but equally fun. We had one flashlight and a pack of 12 tea lights between the four of us so we spent that night in the camp's café playing cards and drinking wine from water bottles.

It did not matter, the wine we drank. We did not sleep well that night. And I had my sleeping bag! I can't even imagine how untoasty and unwarm Holt was with his blankets and boots. But the sun came up hot and we spent the entire day walking and sweating from lake to lake. The landscape was lovely, all blue, green, and yellow. We walked and walked, took pictures, and walked. In the midday heat we found a pile of rocks that, when climbed over, let to a path. And this path, when followed under bushes and down slopes, let to secret staircases. And these staircases, once descended, let right to the shady banks of Laguna La Colgada, impossibly aquamarine. There, we took off our clothes and swam; the sun was shining and shit was pretty good indeed.

Later, having dried ourselves napping in the sun, we walked on and had lunch beneath some pines. We had all been carrying backpacks, sleeping bags (or a mess of blankets), and each a bag of food or drink. Walking in the sun, things seemed to get heavier—half a bottle of wine, a little bit of whiskey, cartons of juice, some shandies. We ate bread with chorizo and queso, and to lighten our load I poured the rest of the whiskey into my shandy. Yum! One bottle down. Natalie drank the wine. Holt had something too. I took a sip of my sha-whiskey and BEZZAAOW! I drank a bee! Immediately my lip was thrice it's size and it would stay that way for a week and tingle for another, even after the swelling went down. That following monday I would go to Ciudad Real to get my foreigner's documents in order and in a photo booth I would take a very awkward ID photo, trying to hide the immensity of my bottom lip.

By the end of the day, we'd walked about eight kilometers from our camp to the little town of Ruidera. There was a store there called "What You're Looking For" in which I found a paint-your-own-coffee-mug which happened to be exactly what I was looking for. And once it got dark and the stores closed up, we had some coffee and nutella-filled pastries in a café while we waited for Manoli to pick us up and take us home.

Things were good in La Solana. Natalie, Dee and I signed up for a cooking class in the Universidad Popular. Nights were spent laughing and talking with Irene, Alba, and Xefo. Holt moved into the apartment below ours and was made to deal with Natalie and I accidentally dropping a long list of objects off of our balconies onto his porch. In school, the children learned the English. And my professors took me one day to a casa de campo where we'd eat paella and drink wine and talk about sex, which is all my professors talk about.

In Spain there were just so many places with pretty names—too many legends of hanging houses and castles and windmills—and oh, so little time. At times, nine months sound so daunting, such a very long time to be away from the ones you love. But then suddenly it's the end of October and you have an unbearable need to see everything there is to see, and not a weekend must be wasted. I needed an adventure. I called the man about saffron but it was still not ready to be picked, and anyway he was busy selling roasted nuts in the plazuela. I made plans for Andreas the Austrian to come to La Solana, but they fell through. So I set my eyes on Cuenca.

I do not know how, perhaps it was some magic wind in the olive groves, but things worked out for Cuenca. Within an hour I had a couch in the house of a beat-boxer and a free ride to and from the city with one of the professors at Natalie's school. This professor, Chema, was a good guy; very interesting. We talked the whole way there through hills and poplar forests. He was a vegan, had a bunch of piercings, and was some sort of an ecological activist from what I could gather. Farms, collectives, rosemary. He said that if I wanted I could just stay with him in his house if I didn't mind its condition. It was very small and probably very old, partly under construction, and only equipped with electricity during the night in order to save money and resources. But though cracked and crumbling in places, the walls were covered with paintings of fire, piano machines, and many-eyed faces.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday in Spain and therefore time to go have a beer with Chema's friends. We walked to their apartment and before any introductions were exchanged I was helping these guys move a refrigerator up three flights of stairs. It was tough and ridiculous but we got it up to the kitchen only to find that it did not fit very nicely into the refrigerator nook, and that the door to the kitchen could only be opened enough to squeeze one person through at a time. It was then that we introduced ourselves: Chema, Jeff, Ramón, Palenco, Bici. There was also a very pregnant dog named Yoga, a little yippy one named Gara, and a couple people sleeping on the couch who said nothing and did not have names.

Yoga was making low growling noises and licking her tits in the corner so Bici, Chema, and I took her out for a walk in the park, stopping on the way to buy chips and a 6-pack of beer. The dogs ran free in the sunny park while we three sat on a bench in the shade sipping at our beers and speculating about when and to how many puppies Yoga would give birth. Gara never stopped running the whole time we were there, and she attacked everyone that walked by—old ladies, babies, gangsters, hipsters, art students, whatever. Bici and Chema rolled some cigarettes but had no lighter, and therefore approached as many people as Gara did. And Yoga just seemed to get more and more pregnant, lying there under a tree.

After what must have been hours in the park, Gara became tired and Yoga unconscious. Bici walked the poor dears home while Chema and I went out walking all over the casco antiguo just as the sun was beginning to play its evening color tricks. This place was from a story book—a strange one where the houses are crooked and tiny streets and stairways go in so many different directions that it looks like an M.C. Escher drawing. Houses here were built one room on top of the other to make tall, columnal homes all stuck together, holding each other up. And they were painted pink, red, yellow, blue. Every now and then a room would jut out over the street and make for squiggly tunnels that led out to other squiggly streets or stone miradores looking out from the city to sudden mountain, gorge, enchanted rock formation, and the rest of the world beyond. I didn't know where to look nor at what to point my camera; it was all too much.

Chema said there was some secret elevator that would take us up to the highest point in the city. He led me down a dark tunnel under the roads and buildings of the town and sure enough, there was a underground elevator. We got out at the 7th floor of the town and climbed the ruins of an old lookout tower to see the window lights of Cuenca twinkling in the dusk, the casas colgadas hanging quietly over the river. The sun disappeared in rainbow spectacle. There was a warm glow about the streets—a twinkle in the eyes of all the men smoking cigarettes under lamplight, and the women in overcoats and deep red lipstick walking arm in arm through the plaza.

We had some wine and beer with friends, then stayed up all night in Chema's shack planning some kind of protest against something. We sang songs and shouted about things, and I never really figured out what it was that they were fighting for exactly, just that it dealt with the environment and the excessive use of cars. It was very late and they were talking very fast. The next morning, I rolled up my sleeping bag as quietly as I could and climbed over the sleeping dogs and the dreaming people, out to the casco to explore on my own.

Cuenca is perched on a bluff between the two rivers Júcar and Huécar, and was founded as a fortress by the Muslims during the time of the kingdom Al-Andalus around the year 715. I don't believe any of the houses in Cuenca are that old, but they are still very old indeed. The Casas Colgadas are a kind of emblem for the city, and the only houses of their kind still holding strong against the ravages of time. After a coffee and a tostada con tomate I tried my hardest to find these Hanging Houses, but like all towns in Spain—I have realized—the streets were nonsensical and unnavigable. It was fine; I had nothing at all to do that day except get lost in the old town. I did find the Casas Colgadas after a while and took 578 photos.

I found many sweet little things in sweet little shops but decided only to buy some coffee anise liqueur in a bottle the shape of las Casas, some kind of honey almond dessert wafer very typical of the town, and a vial of royal jelly which tastes bizarre but has a plethora of health benefits. I took a tour of the underside of cuenca, a system of subterranean refuges dug into the rock to protect the townsfolk from war. The cathedral Our Lady of Grace was grand and lovely with the most intricately carved wooden doors that I have seen. This entire city was just beautiful, so much so that it gave me a headache.

By sundown, I had been walking up and down, up and down for over nine hours. My feet were blistered and burning, and I still needed to leave the casco, find my way through the impossible Barrio del Tirador, find Chema's house, gather my things in near complete darkness—the electricity didn't come on until it was pitch black night—lock the door and throw the keys through the window, and then find my way carrying all of my things to the apartment of Agustín, Domingo, and Agata, my couch surfers with whom I'd previously agreed to stay. I found the place easily enough and Domingo threw down the keys from the balcony. Inside there were two more couch surfers staying with them: Pieter from Belgium who was getting dressed as quickly as possible to go meet a Taiwanese girl he'd fell in love with the night before, and Jeffrey (who was deaf) from the U.S. who chopped vegetables in the kitchen fixing dinner for the house. Agustín was helping with dinner. Domingo handed me a glass of beer and led me to Agata's bedroom where we three set to work making large drawings of fish, portholes, and other sailor-themed decorations for a sailor-themed birthday party for people whose birthday it was not.

Once we'd made a sufficient amount of nautical things, we sat down to eat. Agustín and Domingo were the only Spaniards at the table. Agata was from Poland and did not speak Spanish; nor did Pieter. Thus, the common language between everyone was English which only Jeffrey and I spoke fluently. However, Jeffrey read lips. And since everyone but me was speaking English as a second language, the way their lips formed words was different. I ate very little and instead spent dinnertime translating, rephrasing, pantomiming things from Spanish into English, then from English into more pronounced English, sometimes trying to spell out words in American Sign Language. Shit was good.

As soon as he'd cleaned his plate of peas, Pieter bolted out the door and down the stairs to find his Taiwanese love-at-first-sight and bring her back to the apartment. And with so many languages and cultures from all over the world in one house, it took us more than half an hour to get everyone out of the apartment with the decorations, the beer, and the anchor-shaped fake tattoos. Along the way, we picked up a German and a couple of Spanish girls, made shadow graffiti, and made it after many stops and distractions to the house of an Erasmus student. At the party there were more people from Taiwan, Poland, Germany and some from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czech Republic. Some Hungarian girl handed me an entire bottle of wine from which to drink, and then drew some sailor tattoos on my arm. And whenever there arose a moment when one person did not understand the other, there was nothing to worry about because dance was a language used by everyone. We ate pineapple shrimp salad and mussels out of a can, all the while dancing and flicking on and off the lights to the beat of Agustín's amazing beat boxing.

I do not know how everyone got home that night, but we all did. And in the morning I was the first to awake. I had tea and wrote in my journal until the others began to crawl out of their slumber grumbling. We needed a breakfast for all of the six people in the house, so that morning/afternoon the menu included calamari, eggplant pisto, leftover mashed potatoes, and a gigantic bowl of peas which we all ate with our hands. The food made us all feel better, and breakfast quickly turned into a karaoke party in the kitchen. But soon came the time to say goodbye and return with Chema to La Solana.

That night, it rained in La Solana for the first time in three months.

Let's sing.