Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  During this period of impetus, Lorna and Frankie also threw themselves into the manual labour side of things to enable us to get as much done as possible, in as short a time as possible. Of course being English and with the sun shining, we were all in shorts and T-shirts, and Frankie was working in the manure, wearing an ensemble of wellington boots, hot pants, strappy top and gardening gloves. At one point a car full of Romanian olive workers drove past her working, and very nearly drove straight off the track. In all the years they had been working here they would be used to seeing the older Spanish women wearing their dinner-lady tabards or their bright pink housecoat and slippers. So to see an 18-year-old dancer in her hot pants must have come as a welcome change. I’m sure she also quite liked the attention!

  Frankie also had one of her first encounters with the local wildlife, as she found a family of tiny field mice in the manure, which she tried to re-home in the new pile, but of course they all shot off as soon as she came near them.

  Once the paddocks were clean, we had to try to obtain a licence, to enable us to move the animals from Ronda to our house. We had heard that getting these licences could be a bit difficult, as some people had been told they needed zoo or exotic animal licences. We armed ourselves with photos of cute baby alpacas, and headed to the local offices of OCA (the Spanish version of Defra), and tried to speak to the girls behind the reception desk. We showed them the photos of the alpacas, and said simply, “Perdon, Ingles.” (This was about the extent of our Spanish for months, if not years.) One of the girls spoke a (very) little English but she said she had called the head ‘veterinario’ and we were to wait here.

  A stern-faced woman in her mid-30s appeared from an office, and made her way towards us. She, happily, did speak a little English and we were able to explain that we had moved to the area and would like to keep some alpacas at our house. We showed our pictures and she explained to the girls behind the desk about the photos and what alpacas were. There was much “oohing” and “aahing” over the photos, and they didn’t seem to believe these animals would be living in Montoro. After that we felt that they were on our side; the vet said she would look into it for us, if we could wait for a few minutes.

  “Sit down, Alan,” she said sternly.

  I don’t think it was meant to come across as though I was being told off, but I felt suitably chastised. It was just the Spanish way of speaking. They were, in actual fact, very helpful, and we were told that all we needed to do, was speak to the local vet, who would come to our house and see if it was suitable for alpacas, and then draw up a plan to submit to OCA for the licence. As there had been horses there before, they didn’t think we would have any issues. This meant the next port of call was the town vet.

  We visited Manuel, the vet, who we had been told had a good grasp of English. We had heard correctly: his English was much better than our Spanish was, and still is now, in fact.

  “Manuel, we would like to bring some animals here, to Montoro, to breed them and keep them at our house in the countryside. They are called alpacas!”

  “Alpacas? I don’t understand. Alpacas are food for horses? No?”

  Okay, so his English wasn’t that good. But we did manage to establish that alpacas in Spanish means ‘bales of hay’. We have become proficient in explaining that alpacas are similar to llamas (pronounced yammas!).

  We were able to ask firstly, if he would come to our house to do the OCA paperwork, and secondly, would he be happy to be our vet and treat the alpacas if we needed him. We explained what little we knew, including how healthy and hardy alpacas as a species are. Of course he had never seen an alpaca, but he said he would be happy to have us as clients, and he would do a little research in the meantime. The only problem was (and is), although Manuel is an emergency vet, he does not drive, so we have to go and collect him from the town, which does involve a one-hour round trip. One of the downsides of living so far in the countryside, I guess!

  The three weeks with our lovely hire car came to an end quickly, and we made the rash decision to go out on the day we needed to return the hire car, and try to buy ourselves a car there and then. Looking back now, we should have hired a car for another couple of weeks and we would have been able to look around in a more relaxed manner.

  Neil had offered to show us around a few places he knew of, where there were second-hand cars available, so he met us at Malaga airport (a three-hour drive) and off we went. We were looking for an automatic, Spanish 4x4, the thinking being it would be easier for Lorna to get used to driving an automatic. It also needed to be a reasonable price. Cars in Spain don’t seem to depreciate in value in the same way they do in the UK, so even cars a few years old, and with miles on the clock, can be pricey.

  After visiting a few garages with no luck, Neil phoned an ad he had seen in the local English free paper and spoke to guy named Alex, selling an English 4x4, but automatic. It sounded positive so we headed off to have a look. The car seemed in good order. We had a test drive and Alex seemed like a genuine guy, so we decided to go for it. The price was €4,500 and seeing us for the suckers we were, he held out for the full price, seemingly aware of the situation we had put ourselves in. It was a rookie mistake to admit that we needed the car that day, and probably cost us a few hundred euros (much more in the long run, as you will see). We were told we would need someone to sort out the ownership paperwork for us, but that shouldn’t be a problem. We were delighted to have secured some transport for ourselves.

  We headed off home, reasonably pleased with ourselves and with one more thing crossed off the ‘to do’ list.

  12 Miguel, Fires and Giraffes

  One morning over the next few days, we were all out in the ‘grounds’ doing some weeding. A man came by on a tractor, and introduced himself to us as Miguel, the neighbour from up the hill, the owner of our house previous to Neil and Caroline and the farmer of the olives.

  Miguel is about mid-50s, with a slightly less weathered face than most Andalucíans, maybe because of his love of a straw hat, with lots of hair in a shade somewhere between white and grey, thick glasses and a very smiley disposition. We swapped telephone numbers, although I am not entirely sure how he thought we would communicate on the telephone, and he said basically if we ever needed him, to shout up to his house when he was there and he would come and see us. This was explained by Miguel putting his hands to the side of his mouth and yelling “Miguel!”. He then managed to make it understood that he would come over to our house tomorrow, with his wife, Olga, who speaks English and they would have a drink with us.

  The next evening, Miguel, Olga and their daughter Andrea arrived and they came in and made themselves comfortable (it had of course been their house previously). Olga was slightly younger than Miguel, maybe in her 40s, with shoulder-length blonde hair, very plain, and ever so slightly dumpy in her appearance. She was of course, a farmer’s wife and as such was expected to work, so she couldn’t be glammed up all the time. Andrea, the daughter, was like a miniature version of her mother, and very shy, especially in front of us, the strange foreigners.

  The subject quickly turned to our olive trees, 360 to be precise, planted on very steep hills. It had never been our intention to farm these trees ourselves, so when Miguel suggested that he could carry on working the olives for us, as he had done for Neil and Caroline, and he would, in return, supply us with ‘leňa’ for our ‘fuego’ and ‘mucho aciete’. This was basically wood for our fire and as much oil as we would want. We accepted without hesitation. To be honest, if we could have sorted someone to work the olives for us, we probably could earn a little money from them, but at the time it was a weight off our mind, and meant we didn’t have to worry about keeping the weeds and trees in check.

  Once drinks were finished, we were ushered out and they insisted we accompany them up to their house for a drink. The women (and Chris) got in our car and headed up the hill while I was left to walk up with Miguel. I must admit he put me to shame, and by the time we reached the
house, I was puffing and sweating, whereas Miguel was fresh as a daisy.

  We were shown in through the front door, only to find that about a third of the house was a large open warehouse. There were onions and potatoes on the floor, picked from a vegetable patch somewhere, motorbikes in various stages of repair, a tractor, and every conceivable piece of pipe and tubing you could ever need. Spanish farmers have a reputation for never throwing anything away, it will always become useful.

  Some steps took you up to the first floor level, with some very basic bedrooms and a bathroom, obviously prepared for the olive pickers when the time comes. On the ground floor, there was a large open space with a kitchen at one end, and a fireplace in the middle. There was not much furniture to speak of, just about eight plastic patio chairs and a couple of small tables situated around the fire.

  Miguel took me proudly over to an unusual unmarked container with a tap on the outside and said proudly, “Vino”. I had to try and explain that I don’t drink alcohol, which they all seemed to find extremely funny; to them I was a man who only drinks Coca Cola, no beer and definitely no ‘Whikky’ as they pronounce whiskey. Lorna, Frankie and Chris all tried the wine, and can testify to its potency. Our host was not one to let a glass run dry either, whenever a glass got put down or half emptied it was refilled.

  Olga, who, it turned out, didn’t speak English, but did own a dictionary and could read, provided us with some food to accompany our drinks. In my memory the food consisted of stale bread, crisps, miniature prawns, slimy peppers and some sort of pork scratching/pig fat concoction. Sadly, egg and chips it wasn’t.

  As the wine flowed, we managed to get onto the subject of horses. Miguel had heard that we were going to be having animals, I guess Neil and Caroline had been talking to him. We were, however, having a problem, as when he was talking about the alpacas he seemed to be making gestures that he thought that they were very large animals. We were having a problem at this stage with our communication, but Andrea actually managed to help us out. She drew a picture, of what we eventually deciphered to be a giraffe. Miguel and his family genuinely believed we were going to be breeding giraffes in the middle of the olive groves, but the thing is they didn’t seem to think this was strange. They had just accepted it as part and parcel of the ‘crazy English people’. We managed to clear up the situation as we had learnt a few words about alpacas and llamas. I have never quite got over the thought of a herd of giraffes bounding through our land. It sounds amazing to me.

  As the wine was flowing, the conversations were becoming more and more animated. Miguel had some horses and he wanted to know if we were planning to have any, or if indeed we had done any riding. This was communicated by an inebriated Miguel pretending to be on the back of a horse, and jumping about. We all said we hadn’t, but by this time Miguel’s focus was on Chris. Miguel said he would take Chris out riding. Chris tried to explain that he was epileptic (’epileptico’), so probably shouldn’t be on a horse. Well, the thought of Chris having an epileptic fit whilst riding a horse seemed to inspire Miguel to new heights, and we were treated to an impersonation of Chris riding a horse and having an epileptic fit at the same time, all being performed by an aging, drunk Spanish farmer! It was, all in all, quite an eye-opening evening. We left, having been instructed that Chris and I would be out at 8 am, to collect some firewood with Miguel, for our fire in the house. It seemed fair to us, we needed the wood so we could help collect it.

  At 8 am the following morning we made our way out to meet Miguel. We were a little nervous as talking and understanding was proving to be a little difficult. Miguel sat on his tractor and made a gesture that we should follow behind, and throw the wood in the trailer as we went. There were logs lying around from the trees that had been trimmed the previous year. That seemed pretty easy, we thought.

  Around the trees at the lower end of the slopes, it was quite simple to negotiate our way around the hills, but as we cleared those logs Miguel told us to hold on to the back of the trailer and we headed up an enormously steep path, basically just being dragged along by the tractor. We were losing our footing, and getting cut to ribbons, dressed in our shorts, t-shirts, and completely unsuitable shoes. We were both wearing trainers more akin to wandering around the town centre shops rather than working the land. Both of our legs were cut, with blood trickling, and sweat was beginning to pour from us. Miguel of course was finding the whole situation hilarious, us city boys working. “Mucho trabajo” was the mantra for the day, of course interspersed with occasional re-enactments of his epileptic horse-riding impersonation. It did at least make the time pass quickly.

  We stopped at an area where the trees had been trimmed but the branches had been left to dry, so they needed to be burned and the logs collected. We began to pile the branches up and Miguel used a lighter to ignite the pile… “Whooosh!” The branches went up in a myriad of flames about five metres high. I had never seen anything like it, every time another branch went on, “whoosh” again. It must be the oil in the branches, it burns very quickly and is very hot. Working underneath these fires, and of course with Miguel, did prove to be slightly hazardous. At the first fire, in one of the “whooshes” Miguel set light to his shirt, and leapt about dancing like a tribal warrior until he put it out! We were reduced to trying to avoid the burning embers that were falling from the sky, like some kind of scalding snowflakes. One of these embers must have landed on Miguel’s straw hat, as the next thing we know, there is a ‘yelp’ and all we see is a straw hat rolling past, being blown along in the wind, but with the brim completely ablaze.

  On one of the last fires, Miguel even managed to set alight to an olive tree. Being new to the area, and having heard about wildfires, I was a little alarmed by this, but Miguel was calm, poured some water on the tree and packed it with earth and soil and left it to burn out. A regular occurrence I would have to assume from the calm and considered manner in which it was dealt with!

  After unloading the logs at the Olive Mill, Miguel trundled off on his merry way, back up the hill to his house. Chris and I collapsed in a heap, knowing we had done little for the reputation of the namby-pamby English amongst the Andalucían farming community. At least we had wood and we would be warm for the rest of the winter.

  13 The First Hiccup

  The day before Valentine’s Day, Chris and I announced to Lorna and Frankie that we were off out to collect some wood in the car for the fire and we set off on our ‘secret’ mission.

  Once out on the track I said to Chris, “Right, the plan is, we bomb it into Montoro, look for some flowers and chocolates for the girls and get back here as quick as possible so they don’t think we have been out too long.”

  “Okay, let’s do it!” Chris replied.

  Fifteen minutes down the road, as we approached the turn-off for Montoro, the temperature gauge in the car shot up and the car died.

  “Oh shit, the car’s just died. All the powers gone, even the steering!” I managed to coast on to the slip road, and pull off the road with the hazard lights on. “Shit, bugger and bloody hell. We’ve only had the thing a week!” We lifted the bonnet and there was steam, and lots of it. The only person we knew in town was Antonio, so I called him up.

  “Hi Antonio, we need your help. Our car has just died on the roundabout coming into Montoro, and we don’t know what to do.”

  “Alan. Hi. Okay. No worries, I can help. I know a man. Have you got a triangle? And yellow vests? No? Okay, get some, just in case the Guardia Civil come? It’s the law. I’ll send my friend down. Rodrigo from the garage. Sit tight. Adios.”

  Chris set off up the hill to the garage to buy a triangle and some yellow vests. As luck would have it, five minutes after he returned and we had placed the triangle down the road, the local Guardia Civil turned up. (The Guardia Civil are a branch of the Spanish army, and they deal with traffic policing and other important matters. They generally carry some sort of big scary firearm with them). The two that spoke to us did not speak any Engli
sh, and once they had satisfied themselves that we were okay and not causing a problem, they just left us there and drove off.

  When Rodrigo turned up, he opened the radiator cap and steam shot upwards like a geyser. He gave the mechanic’s headshake that is understandable in any language, accompanied by enthusiastic teeth sucking; this is bad! After the engine cooled, and we put some water in, we were able to crawl back to Rodrigo’s garage slowly through the streets of Montoro.

  We had to call Lorna and Frankie, and own up to our plan, and explain that we were not sure how or when we were going to get home. At the garage, Rodrigo had a bit of a look at the car and seemed to be saying there was a problem, and it would cost around €2,000 to fix it. We had only had the car a week and didn’t want to agree to anything too quickly. Our main priority had to be getting home that night. Maybe we could deal with it in the morning.

  We tried to ask Rodrigo to phone us a taxi, and he said it would be an hour, as there was only one taxi in Montoro. While we were waiting, we had the pleasure of a visit from Antonio to see what was going on. He pulled up in his latest new car, a baby blue second-hand Porsche. Oh dear. The man just got worse. In the car with him was an attractive young girl, maybe 25 years his junior, who was very quiet and didn’t seem to be able to speak very much. Rodrigo was nudging us and winking and laughing and saying, “Puta, puta” which we didn’t understand. But he was laughing a lot with his young friend in the garage. Antonio didn’t look happy and he went off with a scowl on his face.

  After more than an hour of trying to talk to Rodrigo and his young friend, mainly about the universal language of football, a taxi had not arrived and it was starting to get dark. Another of Rodrigo’s friends had arrived in a new-looking Audi, and we somehow managed to persuade him to take us home for €20. He was very happy to help us, and we were very grateful.