“There!” Chris cried, pointing towards the rubber curtain at the end of the luggage conveyor belt.
Sure enough, there, emerging from the tunnel, was Geri’s container. There was much laughter and looking at her, as she circled the carousel, crying like a banshee. She also smelled pretty bad too, having been caught short in her crate. We lifted her off the carousel, and onto a trolley. We couldn’t believe there was no paperwork to do or anything; the Spanish baggage handlers had just put her out with the luggage. Although I am not sure how much she enjoyed the travelling, I would like to think it was worth it, as she is now able to enjoy her Spanish retirement home.
Now that we had everything, there were formalities and business to attend to. We picked up a large people carrier which we had hired for three weeks, enough to give us time to settle in, and, we hoped, find a second-hand car to buy. We were due to meet Sarah, the estate agent, en route to our appointment at the notary to complete the purchase. Our solicitor, José, was also to meet us there.
I was feeling slightly nervous, as Neil and Caroline had been in touch with us in the days before we moved, asking us to bring a large amount of cash out as part of the purchase. We had heard that a lot of purchases were done in this way, which included handing over ‘black money’, as it meant only declaring a certain amount of the purchase price and avoiding some of the tax. Even the notaries are in on the act, and they leave the room for this part of proceedings. José had, however, assured me that he would deal with the financials, so I was under the impression that maybe he would have this cash on him, drawn from our house purchase account.
At the notary’s office, we met up with Neil, Caroline and their solicitors, Antonio and José. I managed to have a quiet word with José about my concerns, but he said an abrupt ‘No’, that we were to complete the purchase in the legal way, and declare the total cost. This would be better for us in the long run. I must admit to breathing a sigh of relief as José seemed to be on top of things.
We were ushered in to a room with a large conference table, and the notary entered. It was a little bit as though a priest or a judge was in the room; the solicitors seemed a little in awe of the man. I guess they are men of power. There was much shushing and looks of ‘be quiet’.
We were taken through the house paperwork, and it was translated for us, and then the financial side of things came around. Things became slightly uncomfortable here, as Caroline was particularly upset that there was no cash to be handed over. They were planning on paying their commissions to the estate agents using that cash. So Caroline proceeded to phone her bank in the middle of the notary’s office, trying to arrange to collect funds later in the day. There were dagger looks from both solicitors and the notary, but Caroline was oblivious. At one point she even raised her hand to her solicitor who was trying to get her to end the call. It seemed hugely disrespectful, and left a slightly sour taste. It could have been dealt with after.
Once formalities were complete, there was much handshaking and cheek kissing, twice of course, and keys were handed over.
Outside the office, we talked to Neil and Caroline.
“Errmm, eekk, we do have a little bad news I’m afraid, hmm eek. We haven’t been able to arrange the removals van for today, so we need to come and collect everything tomorrow. We hope that’s okay with you, eek eek.”
Caroline added, “And, the dogs are there for tonight, and the horses can’t be collected until the weekend because of paperwork! We will be up tomorrow to collect the dogs, and show you how to feed the horses for a few days. Don’t worry, it will be fine!”
“Errr, okay,” was all I could muster. We had no real choice but to go with it, our furniture and belongings were not due to arrive for a couple of weeks anyway. With that we headed up the motorway towards Cordoba.
When we first pulled off the motorway and started heading into the countryside, the nerves began to tell!
“Is this it? How much further? Are we there yet?” Chris and Frankie kept asking.
But then we turned off the road onto the dirt track for the final section of the journey. They must have been exhausted, nervous, excited and very wary, all rolled into one. We took the track slowly, as Geri was still in her travelling crate, and the hire car was brand new, and we didn’t want to damage it.
As we pulled up outside the house Lorna announced, “Now, this is it, this is our new home.”
“Wow, it’s massive, it’s like a castle!” was Frankie’s first reaction. Chris’s was more, “Oh my God, it really is in the middle of nowhere!”
With the horses still at the house and the peaceful setting it was like arriving at a tranquil rural holiday destination. (I must admit, some days we wake up and it still feels like a holiday, even four years down the line.) We unloaded the car and let Geri out for a drink and a wee, and showed the kids around.
“Right it’s going to get dark soon,” I said. “Your mum and I need to get to the supermarket, to buy some stuff for the beds and a bit of food. Let’s get the fire lit, and we can let you two relax and find your feet a bit!”
“Good idea,” said Lorna.
In January much as in the UK, the days are short and it gets dark before six. Once the sun goes down, especially in the winter, it also gets cold. This is something most people in the UK just don’t realise. They think it is always sunshine and hot, but in the winter the weather can be incredibly cold, there is even frost and ice on the cars in the morning.
We also still needed to get to the supermarket to buy some food and some bedding for that night, as although we had brought some bed linen with us, we had no pillows or duvets. Chris and I gathered some firewood from a pile left behind, and Neil had kindly left a box of firelighters, so we lit a fire. Lorna and I headed back out, up the track, and left Frankie and Chris to relax for a while. We headed out to find a supermarket we had been told was only 30 minutes away, and it was already about 7.30 pm.
We took the track back up to the motorway, driving a little slower now, as it was dark, and we headed on the motorway in the direction of a town called Andujar, home to a large supermarket where you can buy practically everything. When we reached Andujar, we could see the signs for the supermarket but we missed the turning, took the next one instead and ended up driving around a country track for what seemed like an age.
We eventually made it back to the motorway and arrived at the supermarket at about 9.30 pm. It closed at 10 pm. We rushed around buying only the essentials, pillows of funny shapes and very thin duvets. We managed to pick up a few snacky foods to get us through the evening and headed back home. By the time we arrived back, at about 11 pm, we were exhausted. We walked into the apartment, hoping at least Frankie and Chris had been able to relax.
“Hi you two, are you okay?” The apartment was freezing cold.
“Erm, no, not really,” was Frankie’s unhappy reply.
Chris took over, “The problem is, we couldn’t get the fire going. When you left, it looked fine, but that was just the firelighters. I’ve gone through a whole box of firelighters and it’s still not going! All it’s doing is smoking a bit.”
“And it’s bloody freezing,” Frankie added. “We had to huddle together on this chair and get Geri on our laps to keep us warm.”
“Oh my God,” Lorna said sadly. “I’m so sorry, we thought it would be good for you two to have some time on your own, maybe you should have come with us. Maybe we should just all go to bed now, it’s been a long day and we’re all exhausted. At least we will be warm in bed.”
I think if we had given them the option, both Chris and Frankie (and Geri) would have caught the first available flight home.
The following day we awoke to beautiful blue skies, and for the next three weeks, 21 one full days, we hardly saw a cloud in the sky. This kind of winter weather was the reason we had moved to Spain, we were sick of grey!
We congregated in the living room to find that none of us had slept very well: the beds that had been left behind ‘gener
ously’ by Neil and Caroline were very uncomfortable, and although we had been warned that it would be cold at night, it was much, much colder than we had imagined. Thick stone walls, tiled floors and a lack of central heating take some getting used to, and we were going to need much more than just one night. In actual fact, a week or so later, we even found a pane of glass missing in the living room, that we hadn’t even noticed. No wonder it felt so cold!
Neil and Caroline were due first thing in the morning to collect their furniture, dogs and to show us how to look after the horses for a few days, so we were up and about early. Neil brought up a horse-box that he had packed with some hay, and he loaded some small pieces of furniture. He then proceeded to load two ducks in one box, six chickens in another box, three cats in baskets and six loose dogs, all in this horse box together. The last one to be loaded was ‘Bailey’ the big Spanish Mastiff.
“In you go big fella, eek, hmmm!”
He was hurled in with a startled expression on his face, and the door was shut quickly before he could recover and get over his initial shock. Who knows what the police would have made of it if they had pulled them over and decided to check the horse-box. Once the furniture was loaded onto the removal van and everything was on its way, we were alone for a few days. The horses would be collected at the weekend.
We decided we needed to get some food for a few days so we headed in to Montoro to do some shopping. We had heard that the girl in the local bakers liked to try and speak a little English, so we headed there first.
“Hola, beunas dias,” we proudly said and started pointing and looking at the cakes and bread.
Luckily we had found the right girl, and she started to talk to us in broken English.
“You are Engleeesh, si?”
“Yes, yes we are. We have just bought a house here.”
“Ah si, claro. You leeve in Montoro?” She asked us in very slow and considered English.
“Yes. Well, in the countryside, just outside,” I replied.
With that there was some chatter from behind us, and we had been surrounded by a crowd of people around us, marvelling at the new English people and talking to us in Spanish that we had no chance of understanding, being spoken at 100 miles an hour. It was quite a daunting situation but strangely welcoming at the same time. There were lots of smiles and back-slapping going on. We didn’t really understand much that day, and that has never happened since, so maybe it was some kind of strange welcoming procedure, who knows?
Sometime later, we did hear from a friend of ours who lives in the town, that when she first moved here, some of the older ladies would touch her hair, to try and see if they could see the roots as she was blonde. These strange invasions of privacy are very common here. People, even men, are very touchy-feely, and it is not unknown, if you have a baby, for a Spanish lady to just come up and take the baby out of the pushchair and talk to it and cuddle it without even asking you.
I didn’t really know what was going on for a long time before we moved to our new house. I was ferried back and forth to the vets (my least favourite place on earth), where they stuck me with needles, took my blood and gave me pills. They even took a photo of me looking daft, and stuck it in a book. Apparently this was all necessary. I tried to put up a fight, but those floors they have in the vets, I can never get a grip to hold on, and they always get me in there in the end.
The day we left our old house, I didn’t know what to make of it. They had emptied the house, and in the middle of the night I was woken abruptly, shoved in a container, and loaded into a car. After a while I settled down, but then they left me with some strange men, at a very large place. I tried to call them to come back, I was hungry, but they didn’t listen.
The men loaded me onto a large vehicle and then it all went dark and very loud. I was thirsty and hungry and desperate for the toilet. In the end I just had to go in that box, it was very unpleasant. When they lifted me out of the darkness, it was very warm. Suddenly I was moving, but I could hear the voices of my people, so I started to shout to them again. This time they came for me, I could see them all coming towards me, I was so happy. They put me into a new car, and we drove for a while, but when we got out, it wasn’t our normal house, it was somewhere new. It smells strange, but there are lots of trees, and lots of places to lie out in the sun. I think I am going to like it here.
Geri
10 Beautiful Girls
A couple of days into our adventure, and with aching backs and legs from sleeping in the cold, and on the world’s most uncomfortable beds, we made our way down to Ronda. Peter and Penny were due to be receiving their new shipment of animals over from the UK, and it included three of the animals that we were buying. We thought this would be an ideal opportunity to catch up with them and also introduce Frankie and Chris to the people and the animals that were going to have such an impact on all our lives.
We arrived at the top of the track at the house in Ronda to find a big gathering of expectant expats, and a few curious locals, although they tended to be standing back watching from afar. They were all here to see the arrival of these strange looking animals. The reason everybody was waiting at the top of the track was because the transporter was too large to make it all the way down to the house. It was going to need to unload ten animals at a time at the top and reload them onto Peter’s trailer, and then they would be ferried down to the fields.
When the transporter arrived, there was a noticeable buzz of anticipation in the air. The back of the lorry was opened and everybody took turns to clamber up and have a look in. The vast majority of the 30 or so animals on board were white, as this was the breeder’s preference, but there were about three or four Alpacas that were coloured, and two of our beautiful girls stood out a mile. Black Dancer was obviously black, and Cassandra, a beautiful brown, and they were both lovely looking animals. Cassandra is always cooed over by non-alpaca visitors. (She is not the most perfect alpaca in a competitive sense, but she has lovely eyes and eyelashes, and people tend to notice this). Our lovely white girl Lily was also on board.
We had decided we would choose two animals of different colours to try and provide something a little bit different to what was already being bred in the area, and hopefully if another breeder had a client who was maybe looking for a coloured animal, we might be able to work together. Sadly, it didn’t quite work out like we hoped in that respect.
One of the first questions we are always asked when we meet someone new is ‘Why alpacas?’ So I thought it would be a good opportunity to give a little background on the animals, to help you understand our (crazy) decision.
Alpacas come in a range of 22 natural colours, from white, through fawn, to brown, and also grey and black colours. Throughout Europe, alpaca breeding is still relatively unknown. However there is an industry built up around it that includes clothing (alpaca fleece has no lanolin, and is therefore hypoallergenic, and is considered to be of equivalent quality to cashmere), bedding, selling the animals as pets and chicken guards, and selling show quality animals to be used to compete in competitions and win prizes.
Obviously the better animals you have to breed with, the better quality the offspring, and therefore the price you can command for sale. The real reason alpacas exist is because of the quality of the fleece, but most farms make money by producing the best animals they can, and selling them on to new breeders. In 2010, there was one stud male, in the US, which sold for $675,000. One animal! So, apart from falling in love with the animals themselves, we wanted a little slice of this action, and Peter and Penny’s enthusiasm was contagious. Our two coloured girls which had come from the UK were both bred to top males, and they were due to be delivered to us first, in April. The two white girls would be delivered later, as Bermuda was heavily pregnant and Lily needed to be mated. Our first babies were due in the summer.
We had a lovely day at the farm, with lots of food and drink, lots of new people to meet and lots of highly motivating alpaca talk. We really felt as
though we were at the start of something big, and felt proud to be part of this pioneering group. We left that day with a real sense of excitement and anticipation, keen to get started on cleaning up the paddocks as soon as the horses were moved at the weekend.
11 Alone at Last
After a week of horse-sitting we were ready for them to be collected, so we could get our new lives started properly. Neil and Caroline were due to meet the Spanish horse-transport man at a local garage, and then bring him to the house. When they arrived, the man was typically Andalucían; weather-beaten, wearing a flat cap, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He spoke in a series of grunts and shrugs.
The first two or three horses were loaded without an issue, but when they tried to load the large mare into the lorry, she was not happy. She reared and bucked, and the driver fell into the wall and cracked his head open. He was shaken up quite badly. This mare really didn’t want to go in. Neil tried, but the horse was no calmer; The Horse Whisperer he certainly wasn’t. She was snorting and breathing heavily, whilst Neil was squeaking and twitching with all the stress. It was a real sight to behold, and of course not the usual sight we would have seen in Brighton on a Saturday morning. Eventually the horse calmed down, and she walked into the lorry of her own accord to be with her friends. She just needed a bit of patience and time.
Once the animals were out of the way we decided to crack on with cleaning the paddocks in preparation for the arrival of our beautiful girls. We thought it would take a few hours to clear all the horse manure but we had underestimated the situation, and four days later we cleared the last wheelbarrow-full. We had moved about 12 solid inches of manure from two paddocks that were completely buried. We came to the conclusion that those animals had never been cleaned out in the time they had lived there, as we never found any piles of cleared manure anywhere.
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