In which I walk 15 kilometers through the desert, skinny dip in the Mediterranean, and eat the biggest dinner of my entire life…

Travel is stressful.  I dislike packing, I dislike airports, I dislike the fact that you can’t stretch out in the business-class section of an airplane, and I especially dislike travelling overnight.  My flight to Spain was an overnight one, in business-class, and I spent more time in airports than I would have liked because my connection from Madrid to Málaga was delayed 4 hours.  The most sleep I got was for 15 minutes on a metal bench in the airport in Madrid, at what would be 5 am EST, and what still was EST according to my body.  Another thing I dislike: time changes.  Needless to say, I was completely exhausted by the time I arrived in Málaga, and I was only one of nearly 120 other equally-exhausted, bewildered students.  IES (our study abroad program) took this time zone-adjustment problem into its own hands in the following manner: an early bus-ride to the Mediterranean coast, a 15 kilometer hike through the desert without shade, a few good, salty swims in the sea followed by more walking, a gigantic dinner, and then another 2-hour bus-ride back to Granada, after which time students had to trek home across the city past midnight.  The strategy, as I see it, was along the lines of: “If we get them utterly exhausted, there’s no reason they won’t be able to sleep well on a Spanish schedule.”

Therefore, on the third day after we arrived in Granada, 120 time zone-shocked American college students went to Cabo de Gata.

Cabo de Gata is a protected nature reserve on the peninsula at the most southeastern point of the Iberian Peninsula, a 2-hour drive southeast of Granada.  It is a rocky, mountainous desert environment formed by now-dormant volcanoes right on the Mediterranean coast.  The same volcanic mountain range stretches southward under-water and into Morocco.  The park itself contains many species of specialized desert plants that are only found in that particular region, including the only native European cactus.

It is here that the currents from the Atlantic Ocean entering through the Strait of Gibraltar (further to the west) collide with the Mediterranean currents and make sailing difficult and dangerous.  Cabo de Gata, for the ancient Greeks and others, therefore represented the edge of the known world.  The Greeks considered the area to be the entrance to Hades, and the dangerous rocks you see below were supposedly inhabited by dangerous mythological creatures including sea monsters, and the sirens and Sycylla and Charybdis of the Odyssey.

We left Granada early in the morning on two buses, driving up through the mountains on the windiest road I’ve been on since Bolivia.  Almost immediately before getting on the bus, I had chugged a mug-full of hot café con leche.  Not a good choice.  The views were, nonetheless, very beautiful.  I have never seen so many miles of olive trees in my life (actually, I had never seen even one olive tree before, but that’s not the point).  When we arrived in Almería (a town nearby Cabo de Gata) we picked up our guides and divided into small groups of about 20 students.  Our hike began literally right on the coast of the sea – we climbed over rocks, walked through the water where we could not – as our guide, Rafa, explained to us the geological history and the mythology associated with the area.  We then started climbing up, into the dry hills, which had some absolutely amazing views.

It was a long, hot hike.  There are no trees anywhere, and very few rocks or cliffs large enough to give much shade.  All of us burned at least somewhat, and we used up drinking water quite quickly.  At about 2 in the afternoon (Spanish lunch and siesta time), we stopped for an hour or so at a beach to eat and swim.  The water was a beautiful light, cloudy blue – and warm like a bathtub.  We then regrouped and continued walking, up and down hills.  We stopped twice more at beaches to swim.  They were clothing-optional – a fact that, after a few minutes of shock, was quite inspiring.  I can now cross off my list of things to do in life (which I have never actually had, and if I did I don’t think this particular point would be on there) “skinny dip in the Mediterranean” right here:

In the late afternoon, we walked to the other side of this bay:

… to a small town called San José, where there was a restaurant run by a single Italian family that IES had reserved for us.  No one in the family spoke Spanish very well, so the tri-lingual negotiation that went on between the students and waiters was a bit like a game of charades.  This is what San José looks like:

We took over the entire space and tables from the back had to be brought out and put on the sidewalk.  They were expecting us, with an enormous dinner waiting.  For each table of about 6 people they brought out liters and liters and liters of water (we were all dehydrated); then liters and liters of orange soda; then liters and liters of coca-cola; then liters and liters of beer; then salad; then 3 different kinds of lasagna; then grilled vegetables; then a pizza.  Then another pizza.  And another.  And another.  After 2 hours, they were still bringing out food.  By the time we were on the third or fourth pizza, no one could eat another bite, but they kept bringing more – another pizza, half a chicken with a pile of potatoes and roasted vegetables, and more beer.  While we were contemplating the incredible quantity of food that we could not possibly eat and discussing what we should do, the imposing-looking matriarch of the family – who was also the boss of the business – wandered around the restaurant, looking disapprovingly at us and the uneaten food, angrily insisting that we eat more with two well-delivered words: “¡¡¡la pizza!!!”  We were there for a total of 3 hours – undoubtedly the longest and biggest meal of my life, including Thanksgiving.

We were sore, sunburnt, covered in salt and sand, and stuffed full; our exhaustion was almost complete.  So we got back on the bus to go back to Granada, arriving in the city past midnight, and then walked back to our homestays – Emily’s and mine was a half hour away, across the city.  We had classes the next day at 9:00 am, but if I am correct about the strategy behind the trip, our IES directors planned well – I don’t think I’ve ever slept so soundly.

The hectic pace of the first two weeks here has slowed down a bit and the seasonal fall rain has begun in Granada, so I will soon be writing about many more adventures!  Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to hear about!

Granada routines

I apologize for having been so far so negligent of this blog.  I can excuse it partly by the fact that I had a blog post all written and I wanted to attach an audio file to it but couldn’t, despite multiple attempts.  I had been set on posting that audio file.  Now, the original post doesn’t really make sense to post, and so I’ve had to start over – a difficult thing to do, when the only down-time I ever have is during siesta (and even then not often, as my host mom likes to talk a lot).

So.  I am inside the red dot on this map:

During orientation, I learned that Spaniards only lisp when pronouncing "c"s or "z"s, and then only with certain vowels following.  Therefore, my impression that "Spain" in Spain's Spanish would be pronounced as "Ethpania" was incorrect, and the original name of this blog was therefore wrong.  For any of you who knew that already, I apologize!!


I live in a 5^th-floor (6^th-floor, in the English-speaking world) apartment with my host mother, Hortensia, my Californian housemate, Emily, who is here with the same study-abroad program (IES), and our super-happy little dog, Campanilla (which means Tinkerbell) who occasionally leaves me little brown gifts on the floor of my room (which is easily forgivable because she really is the best company ever, and vastly attenuates the potential awkwardness of a homestay).  It has taken me a little while to get used to getting into an elevator every time I come or go from the apartment – at first, it unsettled my stomach quite a bit, but after walking miles and miles every day, I really do NOT want to be going up 5 flights of stairs on a hot afternoon.  Granada is quite the place to be.  It is possible to walk everywhere, and people DO walk everywhere.  It’s not even practical to have a car, unless you live really far outside the city; the majority of streets are pedestrian-only, and in the old Muslim part of the city it is completely impossible to ride around, even on a motorbike (of which there are many here).  So I have been building up my leg muscles.

Every morning after an early breakfast that Hortensia places out neatly for us (complete with Hello Kitty mugs of coffee and tea, Choco Rice cereal, and mini breakfast cakes), Emily and I walk 15 minutes through the commercial center of town to the IES building where we have classes.  The IES building is right in the center of the old city, with a beautiful view of the Albaicin (the Muslim quarter) and the Alhambra (14^th-century Muslim fortress and pleasure palace).  This is what one of the (many) views from the IES center looks like:

This is the Alhambra, from the top of the Albaicin:

The IES center is also right next door to the Iglesia de Santa Ana, which is the most popular church in Granada for elaborate weddings.  On weekends, there are weddings there every consecutive hour.  I have seen more weddings in the past two weeks than in all the rest of the 21 years of my life put together.

[Iglesia de Santa Ana]:

I am taking classes in Spanish language, Islamic art and architecture in Spain, a literature class about Federico Garcia Lorca, an early 20^th century poet and playwright who was executed during the Spanish Civil War, and an investigative anthropology class about minority and immigrant communities in Spain.  I will be taking 1 or 2 classes at the University of Granada when classes there start in the next 2 weeks.  At around 2 in the afternoon Emily and I walk back home again for lunch, which is always huge and always delicious and often includes Hortensia’s daughter Irene and her two children, Carlitos (1.5 years) and Irenita (4 years).  This was one of our lunches, arroz negro, which is made with rice, some vegetables, and seafood, including mini-octopi and blackened with squid ink:

Then we have siesta, a wonderful cultural invention.  Even if I don’t sleep, it’s relaxing, and the conversations that take place over lunch (politics, immigration, health care, economy, education, food, language, history) often extend for hours, until siesta is over at 5 or so.  Around 5 or 6, depending on the day, Emily and I return to school for afternoon classes, which last usually until around 8.  Just as the sun is going down, the whole city turns out onto the streets, with their dogs, their small children, their friends, balloons, baby carriages, ice cream cones, and music, to “dar el paseo” (the closest English equivalent I can come up with is the Jane Austen-like “take a turn” as in, “let us take a turn about the room”, but “dar el paseo” is a million times less stuffy).  You walk around slowly, through the streets and plazas, greet all the people you know, buy some gelato or go out for tapas with your friends.  The street, in Spain, is an incredibly public place, and rather than meeting friends in someone’s house or at a particular restaurant or bar, it is most common to gather with friends in the street or in one of the many plazas before deciding what you will do.  And people go to bed late; even on weekdays, people are out in the streets until 1 or 2 in the morning.  On weekends, that hour is more like 4 or 5.  Small children stay up until 11 or 12, often later, accompanying their parents on the paseo late at night.  I can barely keep up!

Weekends are a little different from this weekday routine, of course.  I have so far been to 2 sites on the Mediterranean coast (I can now check “skinny dipping in the Mediterranean” off my to-do-in-life list), gone to a flamenco concert, gotten free backstage tickets to see the most popular rock band in Spain, gone to the movie theater to see a really melodramatic big-screen interpretation about the life of the 17^th-century poet and playwright Lope de Vega, and walked all over the city and seen some of the best views of my life.  Most of these require their own blog post, so I promise to be more diligent in my blog duties and to write about each of these events in more detail soon.

For now, if you ask me specific questions about Spain, or Granada, or my classes, or whatever, I’ll have more of an idea of what people want to hear about.  Post questions to this blog, or send me an email at mwinslow@brynmawr.edu.

I send you all greetings!!!!!!!

And Hortensia, who is in the room at the moment, sends greetings and "besitos", too!