Tilting at windmills

Zafra square

First was the drive across Spain, through the foggy Basque hills, the vast empty spaces of Castile Leon on to Salamanca, and off the beaten track through Extremadura. The colossal highways rushed past small dusty pueblos, across the dry and endless plains. When the towns came they felt exceptional in that they were there at all. The large ones with their hilltop fortresses and cathedrals, so evocative of a forgotten feudal age, the smaller ones, baked into dust with charming campaniles and squares.

The car was filled with that same heady spirit of wonder, the feeling of being a kid in a sweet shop we had when just the 3 of us last visited Andalucia. We didn’t know exactly where we were going, but we were loving it.  While driving, Lani wanted me to continue my life story, with the so far censored Arizona years, but at first I couldn’t dig so deep. Instead, I started on the Kashmir story with her typing on the iPad. Then of course, on day two, on the way to Seville, with old olive groves, their leaves swaying in the warm breeze, on either side, she got the whole story warts and all.  Seetha was worried she would be upset but as usual she only seemed to be concerned that I had been through a hard time and that I was well.

We spent a night in a parador in a forgotten corner of Extramadura called Jarandilla de la Vera, stopped briefly at the stunning Playa Mayor in Salamanca, had lunch in Zafira, visited Jerez, and stopped at a roadside place to eat. I wish we had spent much longer here. Jarandilla was well off the main roads, and just as far back in time. The long fields were full of large bright green tobacco, which we could see drying in crumbling barns everywhere. The town itself is near a national park and it had put on (like bad make-up) a facade of tourist bars and restaurants. Beneath the facade there was dirt and mess everywhere, Seetha said it reminded her of India. The parador was of course completely different, with stunning courtyards and thick stone walls offset by beautiful date palms. Near the pool there were lemon, olive and pomegranate trees, their fruit all lazily ripening in the sun.

Spain lives it seems with a sense of unhurried destiny. It is as if they know history is long and  therefore there is pleasure in the now, in the food, in the family. Even when the cities are urban and cool, there is a sense of people, particularly the young discovering life here, not sure of it, not tired of it – a sense of re-birth that will go on and on. I love the way whole families spill out on to the streets in the evenings and chat and take in the last of the light.

It is evening as we take the coastal road from Cadiz to Algeciras. The windmills that we had noticed in the north, now cover the landscape. They are tall gracious and silent and they crowd the ridges of the hills that look South. Suddenly, we see the sea!  We have reached the Southern tip of Spain. And there, before we can fully appreciate the journey across Europe, we see, directly across a small stretch of the sea, no longer perhaps than the distance between Nyon and Geneva, the northern coast of Africa!!  I feel my eyes tear up, it feels like our voyage has truly begun.