A wandering mind trying to express itself. I want you to BE where I am through my words and photos.
Just for today…
May I revel in the innocence of my inner child
May I look at the world with wonder and amazement
May I summit every obstacle with the ease of a trained athlete
May a calm mind and steady determination bring me and those around me joy
May I always remember to be kind in my actions and words
Just for today…
It’s sometimes hard to slow down and take time to organize my thoughts. We have now been on the road for almost 4 months, not including our 2 years of vanlife. We have visited Ireland, Scotland, Portugal mainland from Sintra to the Algarve Coast, Madeira Island, San Miguel Island in the Azores, Germany, Austria and Spain. We are currently on our way to wrap up our Schengen EU Visa in Dubrovnik, Croatia. From there moving down into Montenegro for at least a month, which used to be Yugoslavia until 1991. From there who knows where?
It sometimes feels like we’ve been gone for so long, and at times I want it to just stop and go “home”, but where is that? My heart is filled with gladness, my mind filled with curiosity. There is just so much of the world to explore. I must admit, at times, we have to pass up some countries we’d love to explore due to many different reasons, both political and uneasy feelings about traveling there as two women. We are playing it on the side of caution when if we were younger, we might throw that same caution to the wind.
Does that mean that we are older and wiser? Life is more precious? Probably…
In the last 2 years, we have been taught a lesson in the value of living life as if it were your last day on earth. I tear up just thinking of family members lost too soon and those that lived out their lives to the fullest and just came to the end of life’s road, including my grandmother and our faithful corgi, Gandaulf. It is part of our motivation to do all we can while we are healthy and able to.
Another motivating force is the all encompassing world of climate change. Since we’ve been retired and living in the world as nomads, living with and off the land around us, we have seen the changes first hand. Coastal flooding, unbearable heat and harsh winters. Storms off the charts. It seems that every year we are breaking records of all types, rain, heat, hurricanes, snowfall, wild fires, ocean temps rising, and drought, to name a few. Perhaps it is the way the earth is trying to wipe us off like a festering tick sucking the life blood out of her? It is everywhere and my heart is saddened to think it may be too late to reverse. Perhaps it is just the way it is going to be and we all will pay dearly in the end. In the meantime, here we are off on another adventure to see all we can before it is gone. We are doing all we can to reduce our carbon footprint, but we are just a minuscule part.
Since the 26th of July, Chris and I have been house and pet sitting in Yator, Granada, Spain. It’s a sleepy little town with only one tiny cafe on the main street. The town is in an area called Camino Montenegro.
We agreed to do a pet/house sit for a German expat who owns a little farm up on the mountain outside of Yator. It’s a tiered farm with several raised gardens of all the normal vegetables, fruit trees, including pomegranate, apple, cherry, lime and figs. There’s a patch of just tomato plants and a vine garden of peas, beans, assorted squash, melons and cucumbers. There is also 30 or more olive trees, heavy with fruit, and two large Spanish Almond trees full of nuts.
Each morning we water all the trees and gardens, by hand, plus the ornamental plants on all three levels. In the cool morning air, hangs the scent of honeysuckle from the numerous honeysuckle vines covering the red dirt. Growing wild throughout the property are the herbs, rosemary and oregano, and the raised gardens have basil, parsley and chives. Basically, we have all the food we could ever need or want from the land. Watering of all these delicacys is done by gravity fed hoses at several stations throughout the property and takes about and hour and a half with both of us watering.
The water we drink comes from a spring located even further up the hill and 3 times a week we must turn on the feed to fill the water tank with fresh spring water. The tank is about 14 feet square by 14 feet deep. With the watering, showers and daily consumption, we take the tank down about 2 feet a day. The water is cold and clear and tastes delicious without the chemical additives in normal tap water.
One thing that has always been hard for us, since we’ve been in the road, has been getting vegetables into our diet. They are bulky and took up a lot of room when we lived in the van, and traveling around Europe for the last 3+ months, we’ve been at the mercy of the restaurants to get our veggies. Mostly we get potatoes or something that resembles squash, always over cooked or fried, and never fresh.
For the last 3 weeks, we have been eating fresh from the gardens, trying out new roasted veggies, beets, carrots and leeks. We’ve been making home-made salsa from the tomatoes we grow and the purchase of peppers and onions from women set up on street corners, selling the excess from their gardens, harvested that same day. Cooking meats with the herbs we grow and making delicious side dishes with the variety of squashes we grow. We’ve been making fresh salads with the lettuce, carrots and cucumbers we grow. It is very rewarding.
It is such a huge thing to know where our food is coming from, how fresh it is, that it is grown without chemicals and picked by our own hands. There’s something to be said for that, which never really crossed my mind until now.
Do you know where your food comes from? There are horrifying documentaries on how our food is grown, the process and effect of GMOs, fertilizers and other chemicals used to produce bigger yields and to keep the pests away. The impact we are having on the land, water and our bodies. I guess it took us slowing down here, putting in the effort and love it takes growing our own truly organic food, and being enlightened by these documentaries, to really understand and come to value this little humble farm.
Our next few months will be spent in Montenegro and perhaps Bosnia, both countries pride themselves on their clean food, clean air and clean water. I hope that we have learned a lesson and will begin to appreciate locally sourced food, grown with love, sweat and clean practices. Perhaps our carbon footprint will get even smaller which for us, is something we are proud of.
We emerged from our guesthouse and onto a very narrow street with many streets running off in all directions. For the directionally challenged, this could be a house of mirrors. The sound of music and people chatter fill the air in quiet whispers carried on the breezes.
The streets are bits and pieces of cobbled stones, smoothed from the ages. Built on a hill, Lisbon is a challenge to get around but there are trolleys running up and down the streets. Side alleyways with hundreds of stairs are shortcuts around the maze. This medieval town boosts narrow streets that two people with outstretched arms, could touch wall to wall. Not built for cars but these juggernauts play dodge with the trolleys all day and night.
The side walks are also small white rock chips with stone curbs. The walker shares these with telephone poles, mailboxes and other people. I’ve seen a few brave souls on bikes ferrying their way through the back alley cafes and complicated streets.
Looking up and down each street intersection, one can see squaller and grand castles and churches. Graffiti liters the walls. Clothes hang outside on wires strung high above the streets to save on the cost of electricity. It doesn’t have the overwhelming stench of diesel fumes as in other European cities we’ve just come from.
Our room is in a guesthouse with different common rooms for sitting and cooking. Our room has an interesting arched room, which is left to the imagination of its use or significance. We have hot water for showers, air conditioning for a comfortable night sleep and a comfy queen bed. It’s simple but affords us all we need to sleep, shower and dress. I think this is gonna be a fun city to explore with its sidewalk cafes and little haunts with music and laughter pouring from the doorways and down long hallways.
We set out from Utah over a month ago. We said our farewells and hopped on a plane, one carry-on sized roller bag each, one shared large backpack, and a small carry-on pack each. All our worldly possessions in those bags. It was a bittersweet parting, but the world has become our oyster, and we plan to explore it for a few years. Our goal is to find somewhere we can settle down for a while, but never long enough for the grass to grow under our feet.
Our first stop was Ireland, an incredibly enchanting isle, full of wonderful food, drink, music and genuinely kind people. The scenery was jaw dropping gorgeous, the roads narrow and windy. We rented a camper van from Indie Campers out of Dublin…once a van lifer it’s so hard to break away from the freedom it affords. Our challenge…driving on the left side of the road, in a right hand drive stick shift.
I, being the navigator, was also reminding Chris to turn left stay left and turn right stay left as well. I’d say that after 5 days, she developed the muscle memory it takes to take on manning the controls on her own. For the next few weeks I still had my place not only getting us were we needed to be safely, I gradually returned the turn signals to her. She did splendidly, even coming to complete stops when a large truck or bus was barreling down on us. Next came the round-about or traffic circle. There were normally 3 to 5 exists out of each one it was just picking what one would take you where you needed to go. Mostly we had GPS to tell us where to go. I would sit with my arm out like a compass needle pointing our way through each and operating the turn signal as Chris shifted. What a team we made!
I think what I loved the most about this fine country, was the architecture and the accompanying tales of the families over hundreds of years. Some buildings were built as far back as 1200. Tales of Vikings, Norse, Kings, and many other European invaders and religious conquests.
Political and religious history all incredibly fascinating, and standing in front of you was the building that saw all this history and still stood tall. Generations upon generations of land ownership and the hard work it took to eek out a living. Stories of whole villages wiped out by famine, war or plague. The flight of millions across uncharted waters to the New World of America. Strong and proud people.
Scotland was our next stop. We had made no plans except to rent another van and see where it took us. After the first few days in Ireland, we were in a bit of a panic about driving for another two weeks. Our initial plan was to drive the 515 +/- miles around the North Coast 500. It is a windy, mostly single track, paved road that hugged the north west coast all the way to the most northern tip of Scotland and back down the north east coast. We had seen pictures of the roads, but it was the scenery that was the biggest pull.
When we picked up the van we were thoroughly convinced that we didn’t have the driving skills, or perhaps courage, to take it on, so we began to make other plans. We made our way to Inverness, the start of the NC500 and booked a pitch at a wonderful campground. It was here that an older British man in a camper asked us if we were going to drive the NC500? I stood there as he explained the beauty and the chance to see huge cliffs and mountains. He was so convincing that we could do it, we had to give it a go.
The North Coast 500 started out as a big 4 lane road that meandered through bright yellow fields of grape seed farms, shaggy cows and fields of sheep grazing on the intensely green fields. The first real choice is whether to drive clockwise or anti-clockwise. We chose to do it clockwise so we could get a little more time driving under our belt before we tackled the 12-15% grades on the most northern end. This proved to be a wise move since most do it anti-clockwise. The roads quickly became narrow with a soft side, if at all. We were happy that the Scots weren’t as rock wall happy as the Irish and we didn’t feel that we’d take out the side of the van.
Passing became a common occurrence. It was quite simple really. One vehicle coming would pull off in a ‘passing place’ and flash their lights signaling to the oncoming driver to pass as they waited. This meant that you not only needed to pay attention to the road, but also look further ahead, sometimes a mile. The worst was the big truck, of which we didn’t pass many the first few days. They owned the roads and would rarely even slow down when passing and hardly ever stopped for you to pass. The tour buses as well would take their half out of the middle and some. We found both quite rude. There was one road right off that cautioned campers not to use it and an alternate route, 17 miles out of the way, was recommended. We sided on caution and the drive was spectacular. At the end of everyday of driving tho, Chris was spent. A cold beer was always waiting in the fridge.
Wild camping is allowed in Scotland. There are only a few rules. Don’t block and entrance or road, don’t park in a passing place and mind private property. We didn’t make any reservations hoping we could access some of these wild camping areas. We passed by several lovely pull offs that other campers had chosen but never did wild camp. Mainly because we didn’t want to use the toilet in the van to do anything but pee. The second reason was the fridge in the van ran off the batteries if not plugged in. Our van we built had solar so wild camping for weeks was not an issue. Here tho, if the fridge drew down the battery, there was no AAA or roadside assistance that could bail you out. Established campgrounds cost between €\£ 24-38 a night and all had running water and electric hook ups. This gave us peace-of-mind but also an added expense we didn’t plan on. So be it…from that first night on we made reservations.
We gave ourselves 9 days to do the whole route. By the time we reached Ullapool on the middle west coast however, the roads were getting steeper and the traffic heavier. We chose to head an hour and a half, which really meant 2-3 hours and set out across the middle to Golspie. From there we headed up to the north anti-clockwise, to John O’Groats and Dunnet Bay for a 2 night stay. The huge cliffs were a rookery for seabirds and wind swept green grasses grew right up to the tops, creating an incredibly stark contrast. We camped at Dunnet Bay right at the edge of the sea and nestled in the grass covered dunes. The next morning we set off for the Northern most part of Scotland for an obligatory photo shoot by the John ‘O Groats pole, then headed back down to Inverness and back across to Edinburgh.
The next morning we turned in the van for good. After driving in Ireland and Scotland for a month, it is time to move on to our next stop. Portugal!
Today, we close the circle. Our travels through Ireland will conclude in 24 hours from now. Still, to this day, I’m not over the beauty. The thousands of shades of green. The incredible rich, vibrant colors of all the many flowers blooming as far as the eye can see. The hundreds of castles, churches and abbeys, holding the past inside their rocky, vine covered walls, like ancient time capsules. The bright smiles and chipper hellos from locals and travelers alike. The numerous small towns with their brightly painted buildings and historic pubs. I doubt that the memories will fade anytime soon.
I think the most interesting was hearing stories of the struggles of the proud, hard working Irish. The stories of sorrow and triumph. The strong, proud individuals that tried to make a difference for their countrymen in the time of need. The big men and women with large hands and kind hearts. The thick accents that change slightly as we traveled from county to county.
There were many times that I would be listening to our driver and I could envision the people he was talking about laughing and a dozen small children running around underfoot. The homes and land passed down through generations upon generations. The miles and miles of rock walls, the sheep dotting the green hillsides in white and pastel colors, splashed upon their backs showing ownership. The border collies running after them. Life, so simple and so hard.
When we started planning this journey we really had no idea of what we were setting ourselves up for. We’ve never driven a right hand drive stick shift on the left side of the road, first of all. Secondly, we’ve never driven an “over-sized rig” on narrow roads. So perhaps we can save you some scary unknowns.
I’ll first start off with the advice we were given by a local bus driver…hug the white line. That means claim your space. The white line is the middle line, hugging it means your left hand side mirror stays out of the brush covering the rock walls lining the luge run.
Second tip, stop if you are nervous to pass and let the vehicle coming at you pass you. The alternatives…Loosing your right hand mirror and a possible head on collision.
Third, don’t let the vehicles following you intimidate you. There is plenty of opportunities for you to pull over, safely, and allow them to pass. If they are in a big hurry, which most drivers here are not, then they can pass when the law allows. You just need to slow down and allow them to overtake you.
Forth, there are red roads, orange roads and blue roads on the maps. These seem to be the widest, most of the time, and perhaps a bit quicker. Once a bartender laughed at us by not wanting to take the fastest route. He said, “it’s okay girls…there’s less traffic.” Well we risked it and the road was pretty much a one lane country road with pull overs to allow for on-coming cars to pass. This means you must pay attention and look beyond the road straight ahead.
Lastly, have a co-pilot that can remind you to turn right and stay left and turn left and stay left. You may think, that’s not necessary… maybe so, but when you’re trying to drive thru a traffic circle, shift, operate your blinker and exit at the proper time, it helps.
So, these are what we have been challenged with. Hopefully these few tips might help if you plan to travel to a European country that does use the left side to drive in a right hand drive vehicle.
It’s been a good day except for the 2 hours of driving. The countryside is gorgeous. The famous rock walls are now covered in a thick coat of green.
The roads are narrow and the means to an end if you want to see the small towns and castle/church ruins dotting the landscape.
Our choice of a van, the same size as our old van, was a good one at the time. Our driving skills are good but to combine the small rural roads, driving on the side of the road unfamiliar to us, a right hand drive and a stick shift, and we are like fish out of water.
We made it! It seemed like a long haul. It’s not been a very good one for me so far. I managed to get the stomach bug going around and allowed myself to get dehydrated bad! I guess with the jet lag and brain fog, I didn’t put two and two together. Fever, the runs and three red eye flights don’t work well together.
The van we picked up has been used hard! Coming out of The Turtle, this will take a bit of getting used to. First off, she’s a right hand drive and a stick shift. We drive on the other side of the road than we are used to so everything just seems a bit backwards.
Last night was our first full night sleep in the van. We went to bed, exhausted and exasperated, at 9:30 and didn’t stir until noon. Check out was at noon but no one came around to kick us out. It took a bit to get our bearings and I was trying desperately to convince myself I was well.
The first thing that became apparent was the WiFi we rented doesn’t work. Now we don’t know about the stove or hot water. The WiFi was to be our guidance for point A to point B. There are round-a-bouts everywhere and it’s hard to know ahead of time where to exit out, plus you have to remember to go in to the left, not right as we are used to. We almost pulled out in front of a delivery truck because we naturally look left. Here we turn right, stay left and look both ways.
We ended the day in a pub called Matt the Miller, a quaint little pub on the corner of the block on the waterfront. They have 3 pages dedicated to whiskeys alone. The burger I ordered was delicious and Chris ordered a pizza. A pint of Kilkenny for me and a Guinness for Chris. Live Irish music and the pubs decor just made for a pleasant end to an otherwise stressful day. Leaving the pub, the Kilkenny Castle was lit up and reflecting on the river. Beautiful. Cheers!
What is the one constant in everyone’s life? No matter black, white, brown, or green…no matter if you live comfortably with means, or are barely scraping by…no matter if you live north, south, east or west…animal, insect, plant or human, impermanence is at play in your life.
Over the last year, our lives have been greatly impacted by this often times unwelcome part of the life cycle. Everyday things change. Our likes and dislikes, our health, plants bloom and die, trees loose leaves, even as simple as outgrowing our favorite outfit, everything is in a constant state of living and dying…change. We live our lives as if we have a life-time of living to be had, fall through each day as if there will surely be another. Will there be? Are you sure?
In my Buddhist practice, my teachers and their teachers and right on back to the Buddha, have always talked about impermanence. Nothing is without change. It is not only about a physical human death, even that is not permanent, but more about the constant flux that is a naturally occurring part of everything, living and dead. Humans are the worst at accepting this phenomenon. We try hard to make sure things are as we like them, to be sure we are always comfortable. We diet to stay the same weight, facelifts to prevent the inevitable force of gravity, even engage in risky behaviors to slow the aging process. Western medicine is all about treating the diseased so that death can be cheated. We never even think about death. To speak of our death is considered taboo, macabre, not something accepted in a “normal” daily conversation.
I know that the hardest part of accepting death, is to realize that death is not the end, not a permanent condition. Yes, our physicality comes to an end, but there is so much more to all living things that just a failing vessel of blood and organs, all things are made of the most basic of matter, water and carbon, formed into a structure that can resemble many different things, from a tree to a worm, yes and the human body. The essence of which is held together by energy. This energy is universal, it exists in the chair you’re sitting on, the flowers blooming in the spring, and even the ancient old growth forests rotting on the forest floors.
OK, so you may be thinking, how do I stop or slow change? How can I accept something, death for example, that seems so final…so permanent? What happens to that life force when the vessel dies? Religions have been trying to pacify the panic and mourning that goes along with death with the promise of heaven and hell. Alchemist have been trying to find the secret of eternal youth since the beginning of time. No matter, impermanence is just a universal condition to be accepted and worked through on a daily basis. If you knew you were gonna die tomorrow, would you do anything in your power to stave off this inevitability? You are not alone. Why not live everyday as if it were your last?
If I told you that to slow, maybe even end the violence in the world, the pestilence, the hate, anger, and all the “man-made” destruction of the planet, all we have to do is live each day as if it were a gift, treat each other with kindness, show unconditional love and acceptance to our fellow human beings and stop harming even the smallest of insects, would you at least try? It is so much easier to find fault, to feel the anger and act without thinking, to pass judgement and spread gossip, to continue to pollute rivers and oceans as if they were an endless resource. To avoid change at all costs. What if we all just gave it a little effort? What if everything you said to someone, stranger or friend, ally or foe, went through three gates first. Is it true? Is it necessary? The hardest one, is it kind? What if you smiled at a stranger, held the door for someone, didn’t honk and yell at the driver you feel is being crazy or stupid. Could you make a pact to do one kind thing for someone or something everyday? Could we each start a pay it forward society just by one kind act? What if it were really that simple?
The world is suffering, we all are dying everyday, tomorrow is not for certain. Every where Chris and I go, we bring love and light into someone’s darkness, whether we know that person or not. We are not alone. It is never too late but it does take an army to move an anthill these days. I implore you to at least try, how can it hurt? We can’t stop change but we can influence it with just a few random kindnesses.
Two Travelin' Chicas... 