After 18 days of blissful peace and happiness on the farm things started to go a bit sour. Carmen fell out with Jorge and we returned from an evening out in Guadalajara to find the door to the room locked with about 5 chairs stacked in front of it to make sure we couldn´t get in. We found an even more romantic spot for the night, on the veranda of a near by house covered in honeysuckle to sleep. We lay under the strong, full moon stroked, once elegant but now dusted with the fragility of time, oak beams of the veranda, dotted with lizards which kept on falling off through out the night on to our little bed to try and join us in the heaven of the night. The next morning we decided to leave the farm and go back to Carmens flat. I had been planning to cycle down to Granada to meet Zack, my friend coming out from England, but in the end I caught a train so me and Carmen could spend more time together. I visited the Cubans in Madrid again quickly before I left and I saw that 4 or 5 had been on hunger strike for the past 15 days. It was a horrible and powerful sight, their faces were shrunken, their skin blotched, rolling about in the unrecoginsable state of egolessness that that kind of punishment for your body brings about.
When I got down to Granada me and Zack inhabited a little field by the side of a river a little outside the city for about 2 weeks. It was a beautiful spot with a little fire place that cooked us many amazing meals. We found a small co-operative a kilometer away from our spot, the people were extremly nice and we often hung out there. The two weeks passed in a haze of relaxation and discovery of the city. The day after Zack left I moved into a cave even closer to the city than the field. The cave was amazing, you had to climb a rope ladder to get up to it, it had a kitchen and 4 caves lined in a row. I was living with 6 other people mainly, but the number changed all the time and everyone was always bringing up their friends. We had a cave kitten called Raton, who someone had found in a bin abandoned, probably the cutest kitten I´ve ever seen. I quickly got taught in the art of recycling, and Granada was one of the best places to start, you could find everything, food, clothes, furniture, cooking equipment, bike equipment, anything you needed. All that people had thrown away, and within roughly the month I spent living in the cave I didn´t spend a cent.
The cave itself was very beautiful, it would never get to more than about 25 degrees while the city of Granada itself usually got to the still slightly too hot temperature for my English blood of about 45 degrees, it was dug in to the side of a mountain that looked out over a beautiful forest with rolling hills, filled with sweet birds and calmness. it had a river nearby with a powerful waterfall to serve as a shower. I explored Granada and discovered a fraction of the amazing places filled with wonderful people. Granada is an amazing place, I never really knew a city like this could exist. Many, many squats about. One night me and some friends went to one of these squats which was more or less a big paving slabbed courtyard, a few buildings and a garden. There were 15 people there at about 1am when a person practising fire spinning showed up and wanted to show us all his fire dancing. The whole scene must of been one of the best experiences of my life, beneath this impressive dark night, jewled with few stars, in this silent still court yard where time stood still was a perfect setting. The dancer began by setting down two dishes of fire on either side of him and he started elegantly moving and flowing, as he and his stick became one, I was transported to some taoist temple in Asia.
Granada has filled me with undying love for life, it has awakened something in me which was always there but had only just found the catylyst to shine through. Just knowing that there is this world where only truly lovely people exist is enough to make me smile for the rest of my life. On one of these Granadian days set with a smile on my face and hunger in my belly, I was going down to the local soup kitchen to get some food, where a guy asked me why, since I was from London I was getting free food. For London is a rich place. That one question sparked an intellectual conversation that would last for me a good 5 hours and for my friend Deeds 7/8 hours. Stuff like that would usually be how I spent my days, wandering around recycling and filling my day with unexpected things in this beautiful city.
There was a festival in Portugal that nearly all of the travellers were heading to, Boom. I wasn´t planning on going because I wanted to start cycling around the coast, but when one of my cavemates Jack said that he would be up for cycling with me we suddenly started preparing for the 700km journey. On our supposed last night in Granada, the Wednesday before Boom started we went down to one of the main squares to celebrate and see friends. We met the Belgium girls who had been up at our cave a few days before, Gitte and Lieve, and we stayed up quite late just sitting in the square talking. At 4am one of our friends a crazy cheque guy called Bigasz insisted that we come to his squat to look at the view and Jack walked Gitte back to Lieves place where she was staying. Bigasz´s squat reminded me of an Aztec castle, with big gardens and ominous steps leading to unfortold mysteries, the view was pretty cool and we stayed for about 30 minutes. Me and Lieve went back down to Plaza Nueva and where about to say good bye when all of a sudden she kissed me. Suddenly we were locked in one of those passionate kisses in which the whole world seemed to revolve around us. That kiss started a whirlwind romance of 4 days of bohemian love; me, Jack, Gitte and Lieve stayed at Lieves flat and spent our time once again in blissful happiness.
We left on Saturday, the first day of Boom, the festival went on for 8 days, and then there was the official after party, which last for another 4 days. For some reason we seemed to think that we would cycle there in a few days and still have loads of time to party. It turns out we were quite wrong...
