February 23 - Week 4

Our friends from Moncton have arrived. We left early to go to the airport and stopped 4 stops early so that we could walk and geocache arriving in plenty of time before their plane arrived. We waited and waited, and they weren't coming out of the baggage area. After a half hour wait, we thought that they had missed their connection. It turned out we were at the wrong arrival gate. They had been waiting for us for a half hour before we found them.

We accompanied them home and then went out to show them a bit of the city. They were in bed by 8:30.

This week, the weather has really warmed up, in the 20’s every day.

I am really enjoying my winter in Spain since it’s been a dream of mine for years to spend a certain period of time in Europe and live as the Europeans do and not as a tourist. But as much as I am enjoying it, it makes me realize how lucky we are to live in a country like Canada. I don’t know if it’s all the refugees or not but there are homeless people and beggars at every street corner and in between. Some are begging side by side and all their cups are empty except for a few pennies. A lot of them even have little stools or pillows to sit on. One girl is next to the door of the bakery in the morning and moves to the grocery store when the bakery closes.

Yesterday, we went to a park in Valencia and did some orienteering. It was fun, and we managed to get to the end in spite of one of the codes being painted over just as we arrived. It was great fun as we had never done any orienteering before.

A dog bathroom

There is a geocache on that tower. Guess where it is.

Today, we left early this morning to take the metro out of the city to a small village called Moet, where we walked a 20 km trail. It was awesome because in some areas you felt as if you were in a jungle with bamboo trees all around and some even making a tunnel effect over the trail. Other parts it felt like we were in Arizona. There were cliffs of red soil. It looked like the red rocks of Sedona or areas close to the Grand Canyon, with cactus and agave plants everywhere. we also saw quite a few butterflies which is now a rarity back home. But the walking was very hard with a lot of uphill and big rocks, well not so big but 5 to 6 inches rocks as ground cover so very hard to walk on.

We had definitely not brought enough water, bringing only one bottle each. With the temperatures in the mid 20’s we were soon very thirsty. We stole each an orange from one of the trees in one of the multiple orange groves along the way. It was the sweetest orange I ever ate and being so juicy I felt like it was a life saver. You can’t find a fresher orange than directly from the tree. Oh, it was so good. Maybe the fact that we stole it made it that much sweeter, who knows. We arrived back around 6:30 very tired and dehydrated. 5 glasses of water, 2 beers and then some wine and I’m feeling a lot better.