The Summit at Last

Every day that we have spent here (and there have been a lot in more than five years), we have had the pleasure of enjoying the view of Serra Segaria, the mountain ridge opposite the house.

Serra Segaria

Without ever getting close to making it to the steep sided summit, we have visited various other parts of the ridge and it has become a popular excursion for many of our visitors.  It has great views both south to Denia and the mountains behind Benidorm and north back to Monte Pego, the rice fields beyond and the coast sweeping round as far as Valencia itself.  It has been home to humans for a long time and on the south side the ruins of a Moorish settlement sits on top of an ancient Iberian village some of whose 2,500 year walls are still clearly visible.

We were introduced to the walking routes around Segaria by our friends David and Carol and have subsequently found a few more by trial and error, where error usually means longer than planned walks and lots of scratches.  Happily, life has now been made easier by the various new marked tracks and signposts provided by through the efforts of a local walking group, the Club Excursionista d'Ondara, to whom we are indebted.  Small yellow and white markers painted on rocks now guide walkers all the way from the car park at around 80m above sea level to the summit itself at 509m and today we made it at last in around ninety minutes before taking a longer, less steep route back to the car.

At the top

From below the rock face seems too vertical to be climbed without ropes but a path winds its way up gradually and you only have to use your hands a little on the more difficult bits.  Having marked miles and miles of trails on difficult terrain, provided a car park, spanking new spotless toilets and a guest house with space for 32 people to stay overnight, the Parc Natural de Segaria has everything.  Well everything except a sign off the main road telling you which alley way you have to drive down to find it.  It is actually harder to find the park in the car than it is to find the summit once you are there, but then this country does not win international awards for road signs.  Fortunately there was a friendly local on hand to guide us.

Looking down on our house from the summit

This being late June, and really too hot for walking, we made an early start and had the mountain largely to ourselves apart from four young local firemen on a training walk (I thought Su was going to feign injury and have to be rescued), a fox and the usual collection of birds, butterflies and lizards.  Segaria is only an eighth the height of Mount Cameroon but being able to sit by the pool and contemplate the summit having now finally been up there is extremely rewarding.  I'm almost tempted to open a beer...

San Juan

It isn't often that we head for the beach at 1030 at night but we made an exception on the spur of the moment on Thursday when we saw an article on the evening news about the fiesta of San Juan, which is a highlight of the year for many Spaniards.  It is now, at least nominally, a Christian festival - 24 June being St. John's Day - but the roots of the festival go back to pagan times and it essentially celebrates the longest day of the year which falls three days earlier on the summer solstice.

Rather than celebrate the solstice with a few druids at a stone circle such as Stonehenge, the tradition in coastal areas of Spain is to head to the beach for dinner and/or drinks sitting around a bonfire and celebrate the arrival of the 24th at midnight by venturing into the sea and jumping over the fires while making a wish.  The festival is one of purification and renewal, hence getting in the water and the use of fire to burn old things that people no longer need.  Old chairs seem popular choices for the bonfires (people having sat on them waiting for midnight) as do students' notes, because the 23rd is also the last day of the school year here before the long summer holiday begins.

Fires on Oliva beach at midnight 

We tried two different beaches both lined with bonfires, first the stony beach at Almadrava next to our favourite Restaurant El Tresmall and then the long sandy beach south of Oliva.  Despite the lack of  sand, Almadrava proved very popular, probably because it is possible to get cars right onto the beach itself.  The locals like to save their legs by getting their cars as close as is physically possible to their chosen spot and accordingly literally hundreds of cars had squeezed down the narrow street and on to the path that runs at the back of the beach.  

The beach at Oliva is less accessible and drew a generally younger crowd.  On the stroke of midnight large groups went into the sea, jumped up and down in unison a few times before returning to make their wishes while jumping over the fires.  Of course in these tough financial times for the public sector the cost of the clean up the next day still has to be met.  We should record however that, in the interests of austerity, a number of local authorities did cut out the giving of wood and instead people had to bring their own.

Chilling

We have now been back at Monte Pego for a calendar month, which is now the longest that I have spent here without a break (Su was here for longer while I was in Cameroon last autumn - which seems an age ago).  It is also the most relaxed I think I have ever been. I seem to have, at least temporarily, got over the urge to visit somewhere new every day.

Even the visit of Keith, Sally, Janet and Neville last weekend to stay with us for four nights didn't result in going very far afield, partly because of the beautiful warm weather, which doesn't lend itself to a whole lot of activity. Their stay coincided with Bruce & Jane coming over with four of their friends, so there has been plenty of company for us and we were able to celebrate Neville & Janet's recent marriage and Neville's birthday in suitable fashion.

For the first time in our year away the pace has dropped and we have been able to construct something of a routine.  The key objectives have been to concentrate on getting fitter (after months of travelling and eating out three times a day) and improving our Spanish so we've found a new Spanish teacher, Elena (thanks to Philippa for the recommendation) and have been cross-training and enjoying home-cooked healthy food.

The training has involved quite a bit of running, swimming in the pool, going out on the bikes and some walking on the Segaria mountain opposite the house where a range of new walking routes have been marked by a local walking group.  Fitness training in this heat isn't fun at first but we have stuck at it and got over the worst.  We just need to keep the momentum as the weather gets hotter over the summer.

Preparing food has been a real joy after too many hotel breakfasts and three course lunches and dinners.  We have only eaten out three times in a month and the fridge has been full of local produce.  Highlights have been the freshly squeezed juices (especially from local oranges but also carrot, apple and kiwi fruit), some beautiful barbecued seafood and meat from Denia market, dried tuna and endless amounts of vegetables and salads.  I've been perfecting the production of "espencat", a mix of the fleshy insides of chargrilled red peppers, aubergine and onion mixed with olive oil and salt and Su has produced some very good strawberry frozen yoghurt, soda bread and gazpacho.

Meanwhile summer has officially started and accordingly the weather has got a lot hotter after a cool and unusually (by local standards) damp early June.  It was so unusual that on the main TV channel they gave out a weather forecast dated May 40th as they felt that June had still not arrived nine days in.  The Spanish are very particular about the seasons and we are told that summer began at precisely 19:16 on 21 June, the moment of the solstice when the sun gets furthest north.  Summer will last for 93 days and 15 hours apparently and I'm happy to say that we will be here for most of it

Here comes the sun...seen rising over the sea from home

Up with this we shall not put...

The protests here in Spain continue to cause controversy despite the main camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square finally decamping after 28 days. They have pledged to continue protests in other ways and I think have worked out that some people, such as local traders who were losing money from their presence, were losing patience.

After days of peaceful protests with little sign of trouble there are also signs of the protests radicalising and the authorities starting to take a heavier hand.  Thus far politicians have avoided criticising the popular protests despite being accused of corruption by them.  The first signs of disturbances have given some politicians an opportunity to speak against the protests, telling the demonstrators that they are being undemocratic. Feelings are running high and tempers are starting fray as the Spanish summer finally gets under way after an unsettled first half of June.

Last week there was serious disruption in Barcelona as protesters stopped deputies arriving at the parliament building by blockading it. Despite the president of the Catalan government and others being helicoptered in, they succeeded in stopping enough deputies from getting in such that the debate on the proposed cut backs has had to be postponed amid confrontations between protesters and police.

Meanwhile in Madrid a group of 500 protesters prevented the eviction of a local family who can’t pay their mortgage. This is not the first case of people power being exercised to stop a house being repossessed but there are signs of it becoming more common and of people starting to believe they can successfully throw their weight around. Having prevented the eviction, the mob turned their attention to the bank who gave the loan and made the staff feel pretty uncomfortable. The protesters are not buying the line that if you can’t pay the mortgage it is your problem and instead blame the banks for irresponsible lending, over-stating the value of property so they can lend more and making more money out of their unreasonably high charges. In short, they are accusing the banks of fraud and the national and local politicians of complicity and corruption.

With bigger demonstrations, national strikes and riots going on across the Med in Greece as that country heads for possible default on its debts, one can see a similar situation happening here. If the Greeks aren’t forced into really nasty cuts, everyone here will point at them and refuse to do the same. When push comes to shove (and its about to) I suspect that few governments have the political will required to put payments to faceless international bankers as their first priority when the mob is baying outside the door.  Joining the euro looked good when everything was going up but there was clearly no plan for what to do when the bubble burst.  Now locked into the strong single currency, the obvious route of devaluing the drachma or peseta to restart the economies of Greece and Spain respectively doesn't exist.

This week it looks like the Greeks may be back on course for negotiating another rescue package but even if the Government passes it, we will have to wait to see if the people will put up with it.  Retiring at fifty and sitting in the sun by the sea with a full pension was a great option for middle aged Greeks but now the Germans and French are being asked to pay for it by working into their late sixties, it can't go on as there isn't political coordination across the eurozone.  The water around Greece looks choppy and the waves are sure to reach this side of the Med before long.  The IMF is already spelling out some unpalatable measures for the Spanish economy, so its a good thing that summer is here and everyone can forget about it for a few months and get on with the serious business of beaches, long lunches and evenings by the pool.  Crisis? what crisis?

Heroes & Villains in Gandía

We've been back three weeks from our travels and the furthest we have been is Gandía, the largest of our neighbouring towns and the fifth largest city in the Valencia region with a population of 80,000.

We haven't had much cause to go there before but as part of our busy schedule of fitness activities we cycled up the bike track from Oliva and had a snoop around.

On entering the old town we came upon a group of statues. If the statues chosen as local heroes are an indication of what it is like then Gandía should be pretty interesting. Rather than some dull king or general, we came face to face with a statue of Lucrezia Borgia, from the infamous family mostly associated with late 15th century Renaissance Italy.

Next to her statue is one of her father, Rodrigo, better known as Pope Alexander VI, and other members of Gandía's most famous family (they became Dukes of Gandía from 1480). They were more upwardly mobile than Kate Middleton and more ruthless than Attila the Hun. It seems that being Pope didn't get in the way of Rodrigo and his family's preference for parties and orgies that exceed the wildest dreams even of Silvio Berlusconi (well, maybe).

One of the Borgias' main weapons was Lucrezia herself who was married off three times to prominent Italians whose lives came to premature, sticky ends when they ran out of usefulness.  As wikipedia summarises, Lucrezia's family later came to epitomize the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption alleged to be characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy and she has been cast as the classic femme fatale in various operas, books, plays and films.

Five hundred years on and just around the corner in the Plaza Mayor it was pantomime villain time again. As reported a couple of weeks ago, the youth of Spain is revolting by camping out in the main squares of cities up and down the country. The protests started over the perceived lack of democracy and political corruption and saturday was the day for investing all the new mayors.

The Gandía version of the protest was still going strong and a decent sized group had gathered to heckle the new mayor on arrival and generally have a good old whinge about life in general.  Surveys say that over 80% of the population support these Indignados (the outraged or indignant ones) which is a higher percentage than either of the main parties will ever get and their frustration is understandable. When unemployment reaches these kind of levels we think the capitalist system can be deemed to have failed and there is little sign of any political or economic solution to the country's problems. Five hundred years ago we would have married Lucrezia to the head of the International Monetary Fund and/or the head of the European Central Bank to avoid any more austerity measures and life could have gone on as usual.

The Cucumber Crisis

As we reported recently these are difficult days in Spain economically with record levels of unemployment leading to continuing protests in most towns and cities.  But in the last few days things have got worse as Spanish agriculture has been hit by the cucumber crisis.

Following a number of deaths caused by e-coli bacteria in northern Germany, the German government pointed the finger at cucumbers imported from Spain as being the culprit. Within a couple of days countries across Europe were refusing to import anything grown here and farmers are facing big losses.  Evidence for the problem being generated here seemed scant at the time and now the Germans have retracted the accusations, having found some dodgy soya rather closer to home.  Being exonerated is nice but doesn't repair the economic damage of the last week, nor the potential further losses from reputational damage going forward.  Farmers are even having to pay to have the crops they can't sell destroyed. Irate farmers were seen dumping their unsold produce at the door of the German consulate in Valencia.  It would be interesting to know whether the Germans ate any of it.

Goats (who presumably hadn't seen the press) eating discarded cucumbers

Throughout the crisis we never doubted the integrity of the Spanish cucumber, or indeed any other vegetables grown here, and we have continued with our vegetable-fuelled fitness regime that is in place now that we have a break from travelling.  The completion of our main travel itinerary has happily coincided with the arrival of a number of our friends from the UK and we will be staying put for a while as a result to enjoy their company.  Last week, we visited Nicki and Jeff, the latest addition to the growing colony of our friends here, at their new house in Moraira and Yvette and Jay came to stay with us for a very relaxing and fun few days over the bank holiday weekend.  Being Manchester United supporters they were keen to watch the final of the Champions League and not being United supporters we were equally keen to see Barcelona give them a good hammering.  In a rare piece of good news for Spain at the moment, the hammering was duly delivered!

Yvette & Jay on the balcony looking happier than during the European Cup Final

Being half-term week both Bruce and Jane and Philippa and Sean were out with their respective kids and it was great to spend time with all of them.  Meanwhile the weather continues to be relatively cool for the time of year and occasionally even wet and we had the unusual experience of sitting in jumpers here watching on TV the cricket at Lords being played in bright, warm sunshine.  Having said that, for most of the time it has been plenty warm enough for the doors and windows to be open, one consequence of which has been an unexpected house guest - a fluffy cat from the house behind which has taken to making itself at home in our house.  He likes it so much he has to be forceably evicted, as the picture below illustrates perfectly...

Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador slideshow

Here is a slideshow of around sixty photos of our recent trip to South America covering everything except Galapagos.  Included here are some shots from Lima (not the prettiest city in the world), Cusco, the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu (which was everything it is cracked up to be), the trip to Lake Titicaca and across into Bolivia, La Paz and Quito.   In summary, lots of Inca remains, mountain and lake scenery and colonial and modern city shots, which we hope you enjoy.  A great trip all round!