Being Easter and all (Semana Santa) there were few opportunities to amuse myself so I had to take matters into my own hands. All the shops were closed and so too even the only bar in town. So come Sunday evening Michael up the road was my fist victim. Turning up on his doorstep with a bottle of wine in my pocket was a bit of a slick strategy. Mike is a retired Electrical Engineer who has worked in England, Brazil and Colombia and we spent two bottles of wine discussing such projects and the other English exiles in the village. Mike had the foresight of buying a house here 30 years ago and now prefers here to England.
In the morning I set off in search of El Castillo but took a wrong turn and ended up in the high sierras studying some interesting crystalline rock samples. I left them by the roadside where I couldn’t miss them on my return, but miss them I did.
A trip to the ‘corner store’ three villages up the valley found it closed so I biked it down to the large town below where I was at least able to buy a baguette from a petrol station and top up my mobile phone for my GPS. Sadly on the long haul back to Erehwon I broke a gear cable. Bit of a worry it being it new and only 170km on the clock but at least its default position is low gear. And at least I have a spare with me.
Having consumed all my own supplies and those I had set in for Jean I discovered it’s amazing what you can conjure up with some rice and two stock cubes (thanks Jean – I’ll re-strock before I go).
While this concoction simmered I decided to regale the village from Jean’s rooftop with a few jigs and reels on me pipes: Only after a few numbers did I spot two astonished people on the adjacent rooftop who invited me over for a wine or two. A good strategy I thought of theirs to silence me. A trip to the closed bar ‘back door’ on the way for an illicit bottle of red saw me right for the night.
Marte (Maria Teresa) and Mario and I spent the evening discussing the local English community among other things. No problem there apparently - its just the French.
Marte is a Public Servant and Mario an Industrial Engineer with a consultancy in Quality Assurance so we all got on like a house on fire with only the odd fishing trip for a word here and there - they having only a handful of English words between them.
Marte is a Public Servant and Mario an Industrial Engineer with a consultancy in Quality Assurance so we all got on like a house on fire with only the odd fishing trip for a word here and there - they having only a handful of English words between them.
Come evening I discovered several Spanish and other movies lurking on my laptop that I had not previously had the opportunity to watch so I settled in for the night, sadly aware the foul weather had finally moved on and patches of blue sky determined time approached for me to move on too.
