When we arrived home, after about three hours and without any Valentines’ gifts, we felt a little disheartened. We looked up the word ‘Puta’ and found to our surprise that basically it means whore! We laughed as we finally got the joke.
I telephoned Alex, the English guy who we had bought the car from and he basically told us it was our problem; there wasn’t anything he could do, as the car was fine when he sold it to us. I had always thought that English people living in a foreign country would stick together and help each other, but this was the first example of someone ripping off a fellow countryman that we came across, and sadly it wouldn’t be the last.
Antonio gave us the number of Keith, an English guy who lived in Montoro, who had been a motorbike mechanic in the UK, and had moved to Spain after a bad accident as the weather helped his mobility. We arranged for Keith to collect us the following morning, and he offered to take us into town so we could do some shopping and he would have a look at the car for us. Keith knew some of the local mechanics so he said he would speak to a few for us, which we said would be great, but we would be without a car for a week or so. Keith offered to pick us up the following week to do another shop.
It just so happened that this period coincided with our first experience of bad Spanish weather, three weeks of cloudy grey skies and rain. This of course meant not a lot of solar power, and having no car, we had no means of getting out and buying petrol to enable us to run the back-up generator. We resorted to playing monopoly and scrabble by candlelight in the evenings, which is okay for one or two days but can get rather boring after a while. Plus, the rain also meant that we were unable to do any work during the day, so we had to read the few books we had, or play yet more board games. I think this period was hard for Frankie and Chris, as when the idea had been discussed we were all full of hope, optimism and ideas. However, we were still yet to sell the house in the UK, so our hands were tied and we were unable to spend much money until that happened.
After a week, Keith collected us again and said that he had spoken to a couple of garages who would look at our car, but it would take a week or two, and then we could get a proper diagnosis. Luckily, for the first three weeks of being carless Keith proved to be a real Good Samaritan for us, and never took any money for petrol.
During those three weeks also, I think Frankie and Chris started to miss their home comforts, at first the hand-washing had been a novelty but that was wearing off, and if she was feeling stressed, Frankie would take herself off to sit with Mary-Belle, and think. We knew it would be hard to adjust to life here, but this was our first testing period. We had never really discussed how it would be if things went wrong; I’m not sure that is something people want to envisage when embarking on a new part of their life. The first three weeks of living with our new solar electricity had been okay: we had had sunshine, and once our things arrived, we could watch TV in the evenings. But those weeks when we didn’t have sun, and no petrol, we were reduced to never leaving a light on, reading by candlelight and going to bed early because we couldn’t do anything else.
These days, we love our ‘off-grid’ lifestyle, but people often wonder how we manage. We have a washing machine, which we can use if it’s sunny, and fridges, and these days we watch far less TV, maybe two hours in the evenings in the winter, probably not even that in the summer. If we have a period of time where there is no sun, we may not be able to do any washing for a week or two, but to be honest, do your clothes need to be washed after wearing them for a couple of hours? Probably not! We turn every appliance off at the mains when it is not being used, and we make the most of the available low wattage light bulbs. Our oven is gas, and we use an old fashioned kettle that sits on the hob. Our boilers also run from bottled gas.
We have become avid readers, and we work on the land in the mornings and evenings before and after the hottest part of the day, and in the real height of summer we ‘siesta’ like the natives. It’s a great feeling to know that all our energy comes from the sun, and our water comes from a spring in the hill.
On the third week of our enforced imprisonment, when Keith collected us, we decided to all go into town, and we decided that the best course of action would be for me to catch a bus to Cordoba, and then a train to Malaga, to hire a car for a couple of weeks. Of course we looked into hiring a car closer to home, but the prices were astronomical. Obviously nothing was happening quickly with our car, and Lorna’s son Mark and his partner were coming out to visit the following week, so we needed transport.
Being in a hurry to get back to Montoro to collect everyone, I had been going a little over the speed limit, so when I was pulled over I cursed myself, not only because I knew I would get fined, but also it was difficult to speak to the Guardia. The man who spoke to me drew a picture of a speed camera and said I was doing 107 in an 80 zone. They had a photo of me he said. Then came the unusual bit, he said I had to pay him €70 in cash. Luckily I had it on me, and he did give me a receipt, but I still to this day do not know if that is the legitimate way of dealing with speeding fines. At least we now had transport for a couple of weeks. We could have a nice time during Mark’s visit, and hopefully the car would get sorted.
Over the next few weeks, we had to make regular pilgrimages down to Malaga to renew the hire on the car. Each time we went into Montoro, we drove past where the car had been left, and it still had not been moved. We would speak to Keith and he said that his friend in the garage was going to pick it up that week, so we just kept waiting. This was our first real experience of the mañana effect. While mañana means literally morning or tomorrow, if a workman or an office worker tells you something will happen ‘mañana’ it generally means it will happen, but not today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after. Maybe! We were beginning to get frustrated, and of course the situation was costing us money to keep hiring cars. We still hadn’t sold the house, and we were getting by but trying to save the pennies as best we could.
Our days comprised basic, menial tasks. The ladies would do the hand-washing and Chris and I would go out in hunter/gatherer mode and collect and chop the firewood for that night. At the time we didn’t have a chainsaw so we were using two old handsaws that had been left behind, and it would take us at least two hours a day to prepare the evening’s wood. I think the car situation and the lack of money had a detrimental effect on Frankie and Chris’s attitude to our new lives. It was a difficult time for us all, so they decided to have a few days back in Brighton to see their friends and to make a few decisions. At the time I remember saying to Lorna that I wasn’t sure if they would come back at all!
They did, however, return and we collected them from the airport, but they both seemed pretty quiet. We decided to stop for a meal, at a restaurant, to break up the journey.
“Is everything all right Frankie, you both seem very quiet,” Lorna asked.
“To be honest Mum, I don’t really think it’s working for us living here. We haven’t got any money and we can’t even go out on our own.” We had hoped to be able to buy a little run-around car that Chris and Frankie could use, but not having sold the house, our hands were tied. “We just thought it would be a bit different to this. We had a really good time when we were home, we miss our friends and I think it would be better if we went back.”
Chris joined in, “We can live at my Mum’s for a while, and we will both get jobs and we’ll be able to save up for our own place, and of course we’ll visit loads.”
Lorna was devastated but we sympathised. We both understood their decision and as Lorna has said many times since, I’m not sure how many 19-year-olds would have been able to stick it out in the wilderness.
They planned to go back at the end of April, which meant they were here to help us with preparing for the alpaca arrivals, which was now due to happen in the next couple of weeks, at the start of April. We were grateful for the help and of course it meant Lorna and Frankie were able to have some quality time before they returned. Although it was a difficult time, pa
rticularly for Lorna, it was a bit like a weight had been lifted: there had been an escalating level of tension in the air as it became obvious that it wasn’t really working for the youngsters.
14 Problems with my Waterworks
Animal count: One dog, one feral cat, two feral kittens (The mother cat that was living around the olive mill gave birth to two little kittens, but they were all so wild, we seldom saw them) and one pot-bellied pig.
“Alan!” Frankie hollered. “Erm, the never-ending water pipe has stopped.” This was the name we had given to the pipe that came into our house and filled our ‘deposito’, and we had been told it never stopped. I know now that the water originates from a spring, deep in the hillside, but at the time I was blissfully unaware and just accepted that water ran freely to the house.
“Okay,” I said, worried. “Chris, we have got a job to do!” I shouted, for a bit of moral support.
Chris and I went out to investigate, not really knowing what to look for or where to look, but we noticed Miguel out and about on his tractor, so we called out to him, and shouted in our ridiculously bad Spanish “Problema, con agua”.
He trundled over and had a look at a part of our supply pipe that comes out of the ground and has a tap attached to it. He opened the tap and some dirty water gushed out, but then it stopped. He said lots of things, but the only word we understood was “limpia” which means clean. We didn’t really understand what he meant and he obviously realised this, so he took us up the hill to where our spring comes out of the hill. What it looks like is a little stone cupboard in the hillside with a metal door.
Obviously, I have concluded over time, someone found the source of the spring and, using drystone walling techniques, built a stone well that the water filters through and drips into, with a draining hole at the bottom from which a pipe runs all the way down the hill and back up to our house. From what we could make out, Miguel was explaining that this hole had become blocked, hence the dirty water, and therefore the lack of water now. What we needed to do was clean out the well hole. Miguel demonstrated this by removing his shirt to reveal a remarkably hairy chest and delving into the well, emerging with a handful of filthy smelly mud, and gesturing that this needed removing. What we had to do, was drain the well by undoing the pipe from the outside and letting the water run away, allowing us to clean the bottom of the well.
There is a drop of about three feet when the water is emptied from the well, so I had to lean into the water. The mud collected at the bottom was thoroughly unpleasant-smelling and wet, and therefore heavy. Of course, at the same time as leaning in and cleaning the well, the water was still dripping from above, so one ended up covered in water and mud and smelling foul and unpleasant too.
Once we had managed to clean out the well, it started to fill up again, and we waited for our water to start flowing. But it didn’t. So we again had to call Miguel to come and explain the ancient Spanish plumbing system to us. This time we had to work our way down the pipe to every connection and let the air out, as air blocks won’t allow the water to flow. With wet hands, we worked our way through half a dozen of these connections, and although by the end we were both suffering with blisters from undoing and retightening the pipes, we managed to start the water flowing.
This was my first lesson in Spanish farming DIY and plumbing, but I have become much more adept over the years and I can very often work out a way around a problem if I need to.
That hurdle cleared, we were ready for the next big one. The alpacas were going to be delivered and we were officially going to be alpaca breeders!
15 Alpaca Arrival
“How are we going to cope in summer?” I asked Lorna.
“I don’t know. I mean I know we were told it would be hot, but damn, this is hot!” Lorna laughed.
It was a bit of a shock to the system. By moving in January, we had thought we would be able to acclimatise during the year and by summer we would hopefully be able to cope, but this was intense and worrying. Over the years we have lived here we have learnt that very rarely does it get hot gradually, but normally there is a day, probably in June, when the atmosphere just feels different, hotter. We wake up feeling hot and just look at each other and know summer has arrived. The only thing was, it was April. This was an unseasonal heatwave, and the wind was blowing up from the Sahara desert in Africa, bringing with it the blazing hot air, and of course the red dust. This wind is known as the ‘Sirocco’.
“Do you know what?” I said sitting at the table drenched in sweat, “My eyelids are sweating!”
Lorna laughed at me, but it was true. I had never in my life been aware of my eyelids sweating before. That is how hot it was.
“And Peter is bringing the alpacas tomorrow - that will be fun in this weather!” I exclaimed.
Peter arrived early the following morning, having set off before sunrise to avoid the heat, to make the journey as comfortable as possible for the alpacas. We greeted Peter with hugs and hearty handshakes and there was a noticeable nervous excitement in the air.
We had prepared a paddock for the girls, Black Dancer and Cassandra, to use while we prepared the rest of the land around the house. We had erected simple, but pretty, two bar fencing around the area and Frankie had spent weeks painstakingly gathering stones and rocks, and building miniature dry stone walls around the bottom of the fencing. A key point in our research highlighted the fact that alpacas do not challenge fencing; that is to say, they will stay where you put them, not go through, over or under the fence. It all looked lovely.
Peter reversed the trailer up to the gate and I lowered the tailgate.
“Okay!” I shouted.
Peter exited the car. “This is it, are you sure you’re ready to be alpaca breeders?”
We all replied in unison, “Yes!”
He ushered the girls down the ramp and into their new home. We waited for a few minutes, and Peter, on a bit of a schedule said, “Do you want me to catch them, so you can hold them before I go?”
Frankie’s eyes lit up, “Yes, please.”
It would be good for us to see the expert at work, for future reference.
Peter’s approach to getting hold of an alpaca, is the unsubtle version. Corner and grab the animal, then hold on tight, a technique that has landed him on his backside on more than one occasion.
“Your side forward, this side back,” Peter was directing, as we neared the fence “Okay, okay, slowly now.”
As Peter made his clumsy lunge forward, Cassandra calmly turned and jumped right through the middle of the fencing. Not wanting to be separated from Cassandra, Black Dancer followed suit.
“So much for not challenging fencing,” I joked.
“Um, well, maybe they are a bit stressed from the journey, but you’re going to have to fix that fencing!” We looked at each other trying to suppress a giggle, it was like being told off by a teacher. “Anyway, I need to be off, I’m sure you’ll manage. And don’t forget, fix that fencing!”
He was climbing into his car with a wry smile on his face. He left us with a toot and a wave, and there we were waving our arms and gesturing at these bloody animals to get back in their paddock.
“Left a bit, right a bit, that’s it, slowly, slowly, don’t let her through, uuurrrrggggghhhh,” as once again they evaded us.
Eventually Frankie said, “I’ll get some food!”
Well of course, as Frankie brought the food in, the girls jumped calmly through the fence immediately and began munching away.
“Maybe we should have fed them first!” she said with a smile. “C’mon Chris, we’ve got our orders, we’ve got fencing to fix.”
We hunted through the barns and stables to find any old planks and fence posts we could use to keep the girls in. Our lovely two-bar fencing was long gone as it became hastily bodged-together three-bar fencing. We even had to remove Frankie’s handiwork as the walls had started to fall down already and we didn’t want any animal injuries. That was that, we were now alpaca breeder
s, at the forefront of the exciting new Spanish alpaca industry, and ready for riches to start flowing our way (We are still waiting now, four years later).
For the first weeks of our alpaca ownership, we became somewhat local celebrities, and were summoned out of the house, usually by cars tooting or people shouting to us. We spoke to all manner of local famers and officials, who had heard about the ‘Ingles’ and the ‘animales locos’.
We had to endure all the normal questions that you would expect in England, ‘Why do you have alpacas?’ ‘Can you eat them?’ and ‘Can you milk them?’ however, of course, all in Spanish. We managed to refine the answers over time, and can now talk quite comfortably about alpacas; ask us about cars, however, or gardening and we struggle. We gradually began to realise that many of the Spanish are very different to us in our attitudes with regard to animals, as well as the multitude of stray dogs you have to get used to here.
The Spanish just don’t understand why you would keep and breed an animal that doesn’t produce meat for your family or milk either. A goat produces both of these and costs a fraction of the price. The only animals the Spanish seem to keep, that fits this description, are their horses. As far as we can tell, horses are a kind of status symbol: the more you have, the more important or wealthy you are, however it does not necessarily mean you care for those animals any better.
One day there was a commotion outside and a tooting of a car horn, so I looked out of the window only to find a car of the ‘Guardia Civil’ and three uniform-clad policemen, complete with guns. With all the horror stories you hear about expat’s homes being demolished or being fined for doing things wrong, I live in fear of something like this happening to us. Thankfully, one of the policemen only wanted to put his new camera phone to good use and have his picture taken with the alpacas, and after speaking with us for a few minutes the alpacas had worked their magic and they were all smiles. An alpaca cannot fail to brighten your day!
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