“Aha!” I got it. “Is this what you have in store for me today? Sleeping under the stars? Well, thanks a lot.”
“You’re being a pussy again.” She was disappointed. “I’ve done everything I could to bring you people who could only give you a short ride so you could have a new experience, just like I promised, and all you do is whine.”
“But, what if I get torn up by wolves?” I wasn’t giving up so easily.
“There you go with your negative attitude again.” She, on the other hand, seemed to be giving up. “Look on the bright side.” She accentuated the word ‘bright’. I didn’t know why, but I decided to stop with the whining. After all, she was right, it’d never taken me anywhere.
Since I had only an hour left until the night came, I gave up hitchhiking and started searching for a safe place to spend the night. Luckily, I had a tent with me, which a girl whom I’d met when I came to Spain had given me. It wasn’t all that bad.
However, I wasn’t feeling at ease. No matter how brave (or reckless?) I was when hitchhiking and couchsurfing around Europe I was still a bit afraid of spending the night at the side of the road. That one night in the bushes of Croatia seemed so far away. Would anyone see me, attack me, rob me? True, I was beside the road, far away from inhabited areas, much taller than anyone else and I didn’t carry anything valuable with me. Whoever decided to mess with me wouldn’t be that lucky.
In fact, the thing that scared me most were wild animals, which might come across me.
I found an area where the grass was high so it could protect me from being spotted; it was an ideal position to set up the tent since it was surrounded by the road on three sides. That was supposed to keep away the wild animals, if there were any.
I set up the tent, had dinner, which included a banana and some cookies I’d bought in the last place I’d made a stop in. I played on my mp3 player an Australian band that brought memories, lit a joint and observed a magnificent sunset.
However, the magnificence was only starting. As the sun set, the stars started showing up, one by one. After an hour they covered the entire sky.
Freedom suddenly had a new dimension.
“Thank you,” I said, grateful for the experience the Road had prepared for me. “I can’t wait to see what you have in store for me for the rest of this journey.”
“Just let yourself go,” she replied, “have faith.”
Day 558.
After a starry night near Seville I spent a couple of days on a farm in Facinas, slept on a beach in Cádiz, attended a CS meeting at the southernmost point of continental Europe, cape Tarifa, met my friends from Sofia in La Linea and hung out with monkeys in Gibraltar.
“If you head north you’ll come across quite an interesting place” the first driver who picked me up in Gibraltar told me, “a little village at the top of a hill, with an old castle in the centre, where the hippies live. I think you’d like it.”
I didn’t pay attention to him or to his advice. I was convinced that I wanted to arrive at my destination that same day, a little town some one hundred kilometres eastward, where I would be helping a lady around the house in exchange for food and accommodation. I’d even set myself a challenge: while I am at her place, I wouldn’t be withdrawing any money from an ATM, I would try to get by with the ten Euros I had with me.
“Dammit!” I yelled as loud as I could, only a minute after I got out of the car. I’d left the road map of Spain, my only method of orientation, in the car.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked the Road angrily.
She kept quiet. Perhaps she was also angry with me for some reason. Or maybe she just didn’t want to give me answers; perhaps she wanted me to think about it a bit and to ask myself where the bad karma came from.
“Have faith,” was the last sentence I had heard from her, a couple of weeks before when I decided to give myself up to her, back when I’d promised that I wouldn’t follow my plans blindly but would let her show me the way.
Did I have faith? Was I sticking to our agreement on spontaneity? Were my eyes wide open searching for signs that could appear anywhere around me?
“Where to?” A lady in a white car asked me using perfect English, pulling over even though I was sitting by the curb and thinking.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?” She was surprised. “Then, what are you doing by the road if you don’t know where you’re going?”
“I’m thinking,” I shrugged, “and where are you going?”
“Casteller de la Frontera,” she pronounced a name of an unknown town, “it’s twenty kilometres from here on a small hill...”
“…and there is a castle where hippies live,” I finished her sentence, feeling my heartbeat speeding up.
“Yes, how did you know?” she was confused.
“Oh” I sighed, realizing why I’d lost the map, “can I go with you?”
“Sure,” she opened the passenger door.
As we were driving up the hill to our destination in a car that sounded like it was dying on us, she told me a few details about the place in which she lived. In that way I found out that the castle was built by the Moors during their conquer of Spain, after which they had left similar buildings and monuments.
During the seventies, the town was completely abandoned and the inhabitants were moved to a village nearby, Nuevo Castellar, which was more modern. At the same time, attracted by the beauty of the village, wonderful climate, loose laws and the proximity of Morocco, the village was inhabited by hippies, mostly from Germany. They moved in the abandoned houses and, protected by the law, transformed the village into a hippy oasis. Today, only a few traces of that period were left and only a couple of flower children, just as the castle was the only remaining building in a village that stood as a testimony of another era.
“Take care,” the lady warned me, leaving me on a street in the village, “we’re far from hippy ideals, so be careful about who you trust. Not everyone is well-intentioned.”
I thanked her for her advice and the ride, and started exploring the place.
It was a village like every other. I passed by a café, a market, a children’s playground, a hotel next to the castle. There were no indications that would tell me that I was in a hippy village. The people weren’t different from others in Andalusia, nobody wore colourful dresses, had joints in their mouths or flowers in their hair.
Behind a garden fence I spotted an old man who didn’t appear as if he were from there: he was tall, pale with long grey hair and a messy beard. I approached him, greeted him politely and asked him whether he needed help with something saying that I was ready to do anything in exchange for food and a place to sleep.
He looked at me with contempt, not stopping what he was doing; he lowered his eyes denying me an answer.
Feeling a bit disappointed and filled with doubt about my spontaneous decision to come there, I sat on the street and started making bracelets. I learnt that skill a couple of months before and I put it into practice whenever I had some time to kill. I would sometimes make souvenirs for the friends I met travelling or as a gift for my hosts. Maybe I could start selling them and, in that way, try to make some money to buy something to eat.
It was early afternoon and still too early to start looking for a place to set up my tent.
“Hey!” a stranger called me while walking slowly towards me. He was old, or at least he appeared old, skinny, wrinkled, with small eyes, pronounced cheekbones and a hoarse voice. He had shoulder-length messy hair, a moustache and transparent blue eyes. He was with a blind girl, who was lame and had a disfigured face, probably a consequence of a car accident.
“Hey!” I responded in the same way, trying to fight back the sense of discomfort that thrilled through my body.
“Where are you from?” he asked me automatically, not showing a particular interest, while the girl was standing still next to him with her eyes hidden under dark shades.
“From Cr
oatia,” I replied.
“What are you doing here?” he continued.
“Well, at the moment, I’m making these bracelets,” I answered, “but I’m travelling across Andalusia, I found out about this place by pure chance so I decided to visit.”
“I see,” he sighed pensively as if he was expecting to hear something else.
“Do you happen to know a place where I could set up my tent?” I tried asking him. By his eyes and his body language I concluded that he was harmless, although that wouldn’t be my first guess when I saw his appearance. He just seemed completely lost in space and time.
“Hmm, a tent,” he gave it a thought, “are you looking for a place to spend the night?”
“Well, yes.”
“Maybe I could help you with that, but a bit later,” he said, “if you could help me, now.”
“How?”
“By giving me 10 Euros, and I’ll give you this.”
He carefully took a couple of green buds out of his pocket. I noticed a reproaching look from a man passing by. The man was dealing drugs in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, in front of everyone.
“Trust me or not, but I only have ten Euros left in my pocket,” I smiled politely, “if I buy it now I won’t have anything to eat or drink. Not until I find an ATM and there’s none in this village.
“That’s true,” he agreed, “but at least you’ll have something to smoke.”
We laughed together from the bottom of our heart. It was the first time I saw him laughing. He still wasn’t letting go of the girl, or she didn’t seem to want to let go of him.
“Look” he was relaxed, “I, we, really need those ten Euros. We need it more than you do, trust me.”
For some strange reason I trusted him.
“And, don’t worry, tonight you’ll have something to eat, something to drink and a place to spend the night,” he finished. “I, Manu, promise you that.”
He was very proud as he was saying it. I assumed that the man had an intense life behind him, full of adventures and miracles, but it seemed that he hadn’t had it easy. Now, he was standing in front of me desperately offering me a few grams of weed for ten Euros.
“There you go,” I gave him the last ten Euros I had.
“Thank you very much,” he said taking the money clumsily and handing me the stuff at the same time, “meet me in the café in exactly two hours.”
“In which one?”
“The only one there is.”
They walked away, and I found a tree overlooking Gibraltar, and laid under it. When the sky was clear you could see the African continent from there.
“Hola,” a lady greeted me, watering the plants in front of her house, while I was walking down the street trying to kill time until I met Manu.
“Hola,” I greeted her back.
“Mhmm, mhhm,” she mumbled something in Spanish.
“Queee?” I shouted, letting her know that my Spanish was bad.
She stopped with the watering and approached the fence. She had a dark complexion, long black hair, was dressed in a floral dress and was bare-footed. She looked like a gipsy. She observed me closely putting a large smile on her face.
“Hashish?” She was direct.
I didn’t have any money, but I did have some time to kill. And after all that time spent under the tree I felt like meeting someone new. Also, I’d never hung around with a gipsy woman.
I could use the Spanish practice.
“Puedo probar?”[13] I managed to put two words into a sentence.
“Claro,”[14] she smiled widely showing a gold tooth.
I followed her into a big yard overgrown with plants, among which I recognized only one - Cannabis. She opened the door of her ramshackle wooden cabin letting me go in first.
The room was dark as there was only one lamp lightening the interior. It was a tool shed, in fact, with a bunch of old rusty tools scattered all over the place and there were two men sitting at a table.
I felt their eyes on me, and at the same time my wish to meet new people left me. There were all sorts of things on the table: aluminium foil, scales, bowls, pipes, bongs and – a sharp knife.
The woman started explain something in Spanish, and the two men listened attentively, never stopping with what they were doing: they tore the aluminium foil, folded it in half, and put a yellow-brown powder in the middle. I understood that she’d told them that she’d brought me there to try their hashish, which I would buy afterwards. That was a lie, at least the second half. They offered me a seat and told me to wait for a moment.
One of two men, who appeared to be the boss, the man, the alpha male, took the aluminium foil in his left hand, a lighter in the right, while he was holding some kind of a plastic tube in his mouth. It appeared to be a straw, only bigger and firmer.
He started the lighter and pressed it to the lower part of the foil warming up the powder that was on it. In a matter of few seconds the powder turned into a black liquid, and a smoke appeared which he, ably, with the help of a straw, inhaled deeply. When the black liquid rolled to the other part of the foil he handed the kit to his companion who repeated the same action. So did the gipsy woman.
I observed their actions mesmerized not knowing what I was witnessing. All I knew was that I wasn’t feeling very comfortable, and that I was starting to feel a little paranoid. However, at the same time, I was interested in what they were doing and wanted to know how the situation would develop.
“Want some?” the gipsy asked me, noticing my curiosity, offering me the next round.
“Wha-what’s that?” I stammered.
“Heroin,” the boss answered smiling at me.
“No, thank you,” I refused shyly.
At that moment I felt my paranoia rise to a higher level. I was in a small village in Andalusia, in a shack with three people, heroin addicts. I was surrounded by old tools and there was a giant hunting knife on the table.
I was in fucking Trainspotting!
I waited for them to finish their passing game with sweaty palms; I awaited the one thing I’d come there for – the degustation of hash.
“Are there any jobs around here?” I asked them in my broken Spanish, inhaling the first toke, “I could use some money.”
“What would you like to do?” the boss asked me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, “something to help me afford food, drink and a place to stay. And something to smoke.”
Everyone laughed. I was starting to relax.
“Maybe we can find you something,” the boss feeling rather important mumbled something. I only understood four words: tourists, road, weed and money. I realized his intentions only when he took a piece of paper on which he wrote a price and another one next to it. I’d always been good with numbers.
The man was offering me the job of a drug dealer.
So, I was supposed to be on the streets, talk to the tourists who would come every once in a while to buy some opiates and I would get twenty percent of every deal I made, either in cash or in goods. I could sleep in their yard as long as I worked for them. Or next to the gipsy who kept on checking me out.
I eagerly accepted the offer and told them I would test myself straight away in my new job. The truth was that, in fact, I was only looking for an excuse to leave that place. I wasn’t feeling very comfortable in their company.
When we finished the joint, I listened to the final instructions of my new employers and headed to the street. Before that, I tried my luck once again.
“If I would be selling weed and hashish I should know what they’re like,” I said as I was leaving, “I’ve tried hashish, can you give me some weed?”
The boss burst into laughter.
“No problem, my friend,” he said as he was handing me a considerable amount, “let us know how things are working out, you can always find us here.”
I was out on the street. I sat on the curb. I knew that, normally, drug dealers, would hang around the corners, but
there was not a single one in the entire village. Luckily, the village was empty. There was not a single tourist with whom I could practice my drug dealing skills.
After half an hour of sitting on the curb, I remembered my appointment with Manu so I went to the only café in the village. Only one waiter worked there, there was one television and only one guest. And not the one I was expecting to find.
I ordered a glass of plain water and sat at a table in the corner. There was a football match on TV; I assumed the World Cup was on. I didn’t pay attention to it, but I concentrated on my little black notebook so I could write down all the details of the day.
“Do you want a cigarette?” I looked up and noticed the only guest at the bar standing next to me with an open pack of cigarettes.
“Thank you,” I reached for the cigarette introducing myself. I don’t usually see any point in smoking cigarettes, but that day was definitely anything but normal.
“What are you doing here?” He went straight to business. He was a man in his mid-thirties with a three-day beard and yellow neglected teeth.
“Waiting for a friend,” I replied briefly.
“A friend?” He repeated. “What is the name of your friend?”
“Manu.” I told the truth, and by the expression on his face I concluded they knew each other.
“And what were you doing with those people an hour ago?” He continued, detective fashion, “I saw you entering their yard.”
“They offered me some hashish to buy,” I continued in cold blood exhaling the smoke.
“I see,” he seemed to understand, “Manu is not coming. But I’m Roni, you can come with me.”
I didn’t know the reason, but the company of that man made me feel comfortable. I could sense that he was telling the truth, that he wasn’t trying to take advantage of me, and most important, I knew that I could trust him.
I got up, and not asking any unnecessary questions, took my backpack, thanked the waiter for the glass of water and followed him.
He stopped after hundred metres, in front of the house of my Trainspotting friends, looked me in the eyes, smiled and walked into the yard.
1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker Page 11