WWOOFing at Fran's - Part 2

The Almond trees are in blossom, the skies are blue and the sun is warm,

the food is plentiful and delicious, the company leaves nothing to be desired


and, not surprisingly, I am feeling brilliant.

Living and working with everyone here is wonderful.

Working together in the garden and on projects around the farm together, preparing meals together, singing and dancing together at nights and sharing the amazingly different lives we have had is so good...we love it!

Yoga in the mornings for an hour or two has made me more flexible than I have ever been in my life, in the space of less than three weeks.

Everyone else has been here longer than I and some, Particularly Mira and Vici, are thinking of leaving soon. They are thinking of spending time in Granada.

Having just used just about all the superlatives in the English language to describe the time I am having here, one would be forgiven for being a little confused as to why I would think of leaving at all. The notion that there are many other wonderful places in the world that I have not seen draws me strongly to hit the road again. I think Granada sounds good.

WWOOFing at Fran's - Part 1

The male/female ratio has become much more healthy at 3:4, as opposed to 1:4 prior to our arrival, here at Fran's farm. There is quite a communal feeling with everyone working together and socialising.


Fran is a really nice guy entering middle age who is a wonderfully skilled Flamenco guitarist, a business man and a hobby farmer. He loves to work on the couple of hectares he has near Totana, whether it be restoring the old farm house, looking after the old Almond trees or growing veggies.

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Well for those who don't know good old "Cyclopes" , John is an ozy of the same era as my mother who worked with us on building our house and our barn. Those are the years when Kimon got to know John. He is a work-a-holic and can put his name to more buildings on this earth than anyone I know. Consequently he has a toe in many pies, so to speak. A couple of years back he "abandoned" Oz for the Spanish women and he has never looked back. I got to know him as a really young tacker, me being the young tacker that is :p, on the building site and later on the barn project. He is responsible for one of the best childhood sayings I had, "snicksta-basket", which was a wonderful inability to reproduce John's "sneaky bastard" expression. Which would always be directed at the apprentice, Kimon :p
He teaches Permaculture in Spain and has not lost his love for the Spanish women despite more than eight years among them. He is a real character and has a whole stash of great anecdotes to keep everyone going, interested and amused. A wonderful ol bastard on the whole :p

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Vici is a Spanish Girl who grew up relatively close to Totana. Incredible, she stayed with Dan Palmer and household in Melbourne for over 5 months recently and I never met her and yet here I am on the other side of the world and accidentally we run into each other. She is in her late twenties and has had a fair taste of alternative life and Permacutlure. She speaks good English, and of course perfect Spanish. She is a good Spanish teacher, a wonderfully friendly and kind person and she has a great practical "getting the hands dirty" side. A delightfully light hearted and lovely person to be around.
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Mira is a German girl who had an upbringing similar to mine in many ways. In her mid twenties, she loves painting, drawing and has a strong connection to Spain and the alternative scene there. She has a great knowledge of plants, especially those of Spanish origin. Mira's personality is very energetic, rather intense and, for some, a little too much. However I got along well with her and found a good friend, although some of us at the farm did not.

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Ola is a travel hardened girl, also in her mid twenties, who left the Ukraine on her own in her early teens for Israel where she has lived until recently. She has seen and done many things, giving her an interesting outlook on life that I got a small look into during our time together at Fran's. A much darker personality and outlook that Vici, and in someways a more realistic and down-to-earth view but a little depressing sometimes when compared to Vici's wonderful light hearted nature.

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Marie, the Swedish Engineer in her early twenties from Stockholm, was quite a "dark horse" until very late in the peace. Her personality is a lot quieter and more closed than the rest of us. She has a deep interest in Yoga and is studying engineering when not travelling. Interestingly I got to know her much better than Ola which I could not have predicted at the outset considering her closed nature initially.

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Bloom, the male that made the ratio good again, who could forget the ol boy. So much character. Always at the door, your best friend on walks and that unforgetable old mans limp from a bung hip. What a wonderful fellow.

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Me, who the hell am I? I am sure every one of my friends and family would have a markedly different response to that question. It would be a very interesting exercise. Maybe one day.

I seem to be having the problem that many photographers do, there are very few pictures of me.

Entering the home of Spanish

I only just made it to the shuttle bus to for my flight to Madrid! I had plenty of time until I decided to get a Mexican travel guide and a Latin American Spanish book. Talk about cutting it fine. I knew it would be close from square one, so I started running right away and in the end I only scraped in with a minute or two to spare. My 23kg pack turned running into a totally new experience.

I met a great guy, Ruben, who is from Madrid who was in Brussels for business, promoting NGOs in governmental planing from what I gather, and we talked for much of the trip to Madrid.

I met up with John Logos (an old friend from Oz who worked on our house with David and Kimon) and John's lady friend, Silvia. We headed for the mountains outside of Madrid, where we stayed for a few days. The house, care of Silvia's sister, is located in a snow resort village called Puerto Nabatherada a little over an hour out of Madrid.

John and I took a day trip to a village where he spends much of his time during the summer months, while Silvia studied in Madrid. He does a lot of building for people so he has many places throughout Spain that he has a share in. This little hut is one such place and we spend a great afternoon before heading back into town.

On the walk back into town I was treated to, arguably, one of the best sun set I have ever seen.

The plan was for John and I to leave for a farm in the south of Spain in a couple of days from Madrid, so it made sense for me to take Ruben up on his offer to show me around Madrid a bit.

He was open for me to come down for a few days and stay with him and see Madrid a bit. I jumped on the train in Puerto Nabatherada and enjoyed a slow ride off the heights of the snow covered mountains and met up with Ruben in the swarming night life of Madrid. There was a bit of a complication with staying with Ruben, his land lord(Juan Carlos) had decreed I was not welcome, so we arranged a hostel in the centre of Madrid. Later that evening Juan Carlos retracted that decree. I had already booked the hostel and we felt more comfortable giving Juan Carlos his space so I opted to stay at the hostel.

The Spanish love to party, so quite appropriately Ruben and I went out to the birthday party of a friend of his and enjoyed our selves until the early hours in the morning.

Once the party came to close, I jumped in a taxi with some people leaving the party for a nightclub in down town Madrid at 4:30am, with the hope of getting out near my hostel. One of the guys in the taxi didn't stop telling me how he really wanted me to get home safely for the hole time in the taxi(30 minutes or so) and I forgot which suburb I was meant to get out at. So, in my rather poor Spanish and a bit of his English, he convinced me to get out at Anton Martin :s

So there I am at 5 am somewhere in Madrid central, a little drunk, with very little other than a map of the metro, which is closed at that hour by the way. So here's me looking a the map and trying to work out which metro stop it was that I was meant to get out at. After about half and hour I remembered I needed Tirso De Molina and started asking for directions. Thankfully it turned out I was only one suburb away from Tirso De Molina. The only reason I remembered I needed to be in Tirso De Molina was because I remembered thinking of semolina :p By 6am I was in bed in the hostel. Quite an experience.

The following afternoon Ruben took me on a wonderful tour by foot and metro of Madrid, explaining much of the history behind the architecture and culture. This was a great introduction to Spain. Thanks so much Ruben.

John and I met up the following morning and took the 6 hour bus trip to Totana in the south of Spain. We were picked up from the little village of Totana and taken to a small farm nestled in the hills about 15km to the north.

Belgium in a Blink

I flew out of Italy from Pisa airport with a cheep RyanAir flight back to Belgium to spent 5 days with Kimon.



As always, Belgium was green and we even got a bit of snow.

Although it was not cold enough for the snow to settle.


Kimon organised a great day of paint ball with us and all his friends.
The paint ball place was really cool! Decaying late 18th century houses and some great open air terrain. Although I should add the quality of the paint balls was very poor which meant they broke in the gun very often and the accuracy was shite. Result: the group used over 4000 paint balls in 2 and a half hours.

Not sure if the distinct lack of bruising was due to the thick over-alls or the guns being lower powered but I can say for certain that the injuries and bruises sustained by all were fare fewer and less painful than when I played in Oz. No big purple, green and blue bruises to show off in the days following sadly :P

Kimon and I indulged in the digital entertainment a little too. We kicked back to a few episodes of 24(22 episodes to be precise), gnawed away at C.O.D. ,UO and finally COD2 and enjoyed some of they greatest music from Pink Floyd and numerous other favourites.

I made good use of the fact that Kimon's delightful KEF Reference speakers, NAD surround amp and 17" Apple laptop were in my room. Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" album came alive, movies sucked me in like never before and games blew me away. If any of my friends remember the LANs at which I play COD with my Logitech sound system turned up...think bigger...think louder...think better :)

Sveva was much better tempered this time. I think the mood of the parents really rubs off on kids! She was a really brat last time for much of our time together. However this time we had a great time. She was so happy to see me and we had some really nice time together. Ironically this was while some of the most boring things where happening(e.g. driving in the car, waiting for the two parent shoppers to do their thing in a big department store and while walking to school).


Although only 5 days, it was worth every bit of it.