12/02/2012

This will probably be my last post for a week or two. Why? Because Nana and Grandad are coming out to visit for two weeks tomorrow !! We will be staying for the first few days in the house in La Vinuela that we house-sat in and then we’ll come back to stay in Neil’s house for a while before going to stay in another, nicer rental house higher up in the mountains.

Anyway, two Sundays ago we went geocaching. There is only the one geocache near Orgiva. I got all the details, coordinates, clue etc. and we set off. We found it in the end but it took quite a while. The problem was that the clue the website gave was in Spanish and google translate couldn’t work out what “Espartera” meant in English (the clue was “Bajo una espartera”). Espartera turned out to mean big, green, hairy plant as that’s what we found it under!

Here is a pic of us after finding it:

 

and here is the geocache box:

 

Also, Neil may be returning on the 26th of March which means we will have to find somewhere else to stay.

Meeting Pixie

Soon after we arrived at Neil’s we met Pixie. She is an English lady who lives nearby and built her own straw-bale house. Yes, that’s right straw bales, no concrete involved. All she used to build it was specially compressed straw bales and wooden beams for support. It was very original (in a good way) with lots of character about it.
After we went to the house, Jay did a little project on straw bale house designs and the pros and cons etc. We found out that they straw bales are great for insulation and very fireproof (not what you’d imagine) as well as being an eco-friendly building material. Also, the straw used to make straw bales is a)cheap and b) you can usually locally source it which means no pollution is made in transporting it.
This was our second encounter with a straw bale house in Spain.
In the pictures below, you can see the wooden roof beams, the inside and the outside. Remember, all the walls are essentially made of straw!

		Pixie’s house VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Last week…

Last weekend, Jay and Dad went back to visit the boat to check on it and do some bowsprit repairs. The boat was fine and floating and they got some new batteries for the generator. They saw Eric and his Mum and Dad and some others to.
Also, Jay met up with the writer of a magazine called La Chispa to talk about her writing for them. They got on well and now Jay is sorting out her first story!
On Thursday night, Juin (the land lady from our house-sit in La Vinuela), Fransisco (from my last blog post) and Fransiscos friend Vincente. It was great to meet Juin at last and see what she thought of our work at the house. She was happy with what we did.
I have been working on (and still am) a website for us to advertise our house-sitting services. It is still a work in progress but I’m getting there. Instead of designing the site from scratch i.e writing complicated code, I am using this website to make our site. I said I would do one for Juin after to help sell her house to!!
Nana and Grandad are coming out to see us on the 13th of this month (March) so we are looking for a place to rent and sorting all that out. It’ll be really great to see them again!
Speak soon and remember to leave any comments or e-mail me at samhermiston@hotmail.com

Mike’s Party

On the same day that we went on the cycle that I talked about on my last post, we went to Mike’s party who had turned 54. At the party (which lasted till 3AM!) we met lots of people. There was Mike’s friend Francisco from Italy, Linda and Steve who lived near Mike in a finka, Tom who played his Guitar and his violin for us and a very nice old Lady called Mercedes who only spoke Spanish and so couldn’t really understand what anyone was saying.
Mike had a lovely little, original house which we all crammed into the living room of. He had only been in Spain for a few months but had made plenty of friends since then.

Since I’ve got so many photos I’ve put them into 4 groups:

Group 1: photos of Francisco

2: photos of Tom

3: photos of Mercedes

4: some other photos

(the man wearing the navy blue woolly hat is Mike)

		Francisco VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Tom VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Mercedes VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Other photos VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The horse-shoe in the “Other photos” group was our present to mike by he way.

Our little cycle

		the trip VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

These are of the cycle trip we did up the side of a valley last Thursday. Jay didn’t cycle she just walked a bit though. Mum and I forgot to take gloves though so on the way down, our hands got very cold.

We started the cycle at above a town called Capiliera which is at a height of 1436m. There wasn’t any snow at the start but as we climbed higher there was more and more and at the highest point, you had to be careful of all the ice on the road. We probably reached about 1600m before turning round and coming back down.

The 4th picture is of a half-melted snowman by the way.

We did the cycle on the same day as Mike’s birthday which we went to that evening.

Last month rastro pictures

This is the first post in a series of 3 with pictures and some text.

This one is about the rastro which I've mentioned a few times.

		February Rastro VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

In this album, you can see the funky door/bridge that serves as the bridge over the stream at the rastro venue entrance… I though it was pretty cool

Also there is a really cute pic of two puppies we saw there. They seemed to be lying on top of each other!

I took some of the stalls as well for you to see the variety of stuff available. I liked the one with the buddhist-style clothes and vibrant colours.

The picture featuring the three gas canisters is pretty interesting. The canisters have been modified to work like small fires. The small one cant be much use though considering how often you’d have to re-stock it with wood to burn.

And last but not least, there’s the one of my ice pole which I bought and randomly took a picture of. This leads me on to the cafe/bar that was being run there. You could buy drinks and snacks (and ice poles) pretty cheaply. It was run by a Dutch lady.

Pictures

Although we have done quite a bit of clearing since we came, there is still some stuff lying around in these pictures of the house and grounds. I will post some more later on of mum and dads room, the patio etc when I get them.

Because there were so many pictures to put up, I just picked the best ones out and made a collage with them as well as some individual photos.

 

This is part of the area downstairs around the front door. (Still being cleared)

 

  

Some photos of mum and dad cleaning (so interesting"!).

 

Some pictures of the land.

 

The kitchen.

 

Upstairs and the stairway.