18/12/08 - Estoi (Portugal) 

Once again I find it's been too long since my last blog update. Now that I am sitting at the computer it's time for my share on what's been happening. First and foremost it's warmer in this neck of the woods, or is it that we are becoming used to the cold!!! It does get cold overnight, cold enough for a great log fire. These we have been having every night for the last two weeks. It's super sitting down to a delicious freshly prepared meal next to the fire. Our delightful hosts (Sergio and Andreia) are the most hospitable young couple. Both are very musical (Sergio plays the hang) while Andreia is quite taken with my Native American flutes. So taken in fact that she has ordered one from Matt (SpiritSong Flutes), the craftsman and very good friend of mine who made the flutes I play.

Time has slipped away here in Portugal. Each day I play the flutes for up to an hour. With this focus I feel that I have new skills in the subtleties of fingering. It's very interesting that in the two performances that Maia and I have had here, the flutes have drawn the most attention from the audience. This is quite the opposite from our other experiences.

The other great passion I have is my re-inspired photographic eye (see plant photos above). Early each morning in the chilled mountain air I venture off with six upper layers of clothes and beanie to capture the wonders of nature. My wanderings have generally taken me up into the hillls, following the rough rocky tracks used by farmers and hunters. I am mostly shooting blurred images, those that capture (for me at least) another dimension in natural objects such as rocks, flowers, shrubs etc.

The foliage here is generally stunted, with a particular spikey shrub that insists on piercing my pants as I push my way through. Many old dead trees with the most gnarled and twisted branches offer great photographic opportunities for this style of photography. I am very happy with the selections I am keeping after culling (on an average I delete around 150 photos on my return). We are considering having a joint exhibition when we return home.

We are looking for our next community/centre to relocate to before Christmas. As the airfares are expensive at the moment we will probably stay in this area until after New Year. Then we are seriously looking at South America to go to. At the moment we are interested in communities and spiritual retreat centres in Costa Rica, Chile or Mexico. We have had some positive replies from a few, so it's now time to see which is the most affordable and which offers the most sincere spiritual focus.

Either way for me it's been a good lesson in surrender and patience to see just where we are meant to be heading. I am so used to being involved in projects as a member of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. I certainly miss this focus. But all is good, as we await final decisions as to where we are heading. Maia and I are looking forward to combining our musical aspirations in recording a CD when we return to Australa. I have been improvising with some new sounds with the flutes, these I hope to perfect in time to use on our CD.

So as Christmas approaches I will be away from my sons and family and friends. To you all, you are in my heart, I miss you and look forward to catching up in the New Year.

Photos: Creating surreal images...with a twist or two of the lens/camera.

Right: That's frost!
Left: Yep a gum tree, originally grown here for their straight trunks used in roofing.
 
**Images are unedited.

30/11/08 - Spain (Barcelona) 

Wow we are now in Spain...though I am beginning to forget where we are. We have slept in so many (uncomfortable!) beds, packed our bags so many times, whizzed through so many train tunnels, lifted our bags so often in and out of trains, and up and down endless flights of stairs, eaten so many bread rolls and biscuits with Nutella, honey or bananas, checked in and out of so many hostels and hotels and on it goes...no wonder I am a tad confused, what day is it??

But you know what, I love Spain. It is so easy here. Almost everything in Barcelona is so well planned for tourists. It is such a relief to get onto a train where the platforms are the same height as the carriages, and where lifts and escalators are the norm in all stations. Every carriage has an electronic list of stations it stops at and these are gradually lit as the train progresses, so you know exactly where you are and how far it is to the next station. They even tell you on each platform how long it is until the next train (in seconds!) - I so wish the Italian authorities were reading this blog!

Barcelona is a very scenic place. Some of the tourist things you have to do, and when you get away from those there are plenty of interesting spots in the back blocks. It pays to be careful though, there are a number of homeless people in the old part of Barcelona we are staying in, so common sense is needed when walking alone.

As usual Maia has done a lot of research for our best travel options. This evening we are travelling yet again, this time by night train from Barcelona to Cordoba in the far south of Spain. 

I am sitting in the dining room of the New York Hostel where we have been staying for the last four nights while Maia is shopping for some new gloves after losing hers in Montserrat.  Before Maia found this hostel I looked at another hostel - their rooms were on the second floor, I counted 82 steps that we would have had to carry our bags up...no second guesses for how we felt about that.

We will swap over typing our blog entries when she returns in an hour or so. We will fill in the day until 8pm, when we will travel by metro train to the central train station for our overnight train trip that departs at 9.30pm, arriving at Cordoba at 7.15 tomorrow morning. This will be the first overnight train journey I have done. Even though I would have preferred to have taken a day train to see the scenery, the night train is good value as it saves paying for a night's accommodation.

The weather should be warmer in Cordoba, so it may be time for us to pack up some of our warmer clothing and send it back to Australia (Maia reckons no way!) - that would give us one less bag of luggage - yippee!

The Spanish are very polite, gentle, friendly and helpful, I feel a strong inner connection with them and that's really nice. Spain is also cheaper than France or Italy. I have noticed that there a lot of European tourists here at the moment. They are probably getting away from the winter in their countries, which makes sense.

I have walked a lot since arriving in Barcelona, been to most toursist places, and done a lot of exploring away from the main areas with the camera. The architecture is quiet different from France and Italy. On our train trip to Barcelona we travelled fairly close to the snow capped Pyrenees. These are really scenic and will no doubt receive a lot more snow as winter really sets in.

One very pleasing aspect of that journey was the large number of wind turbines. I saw one group of over 30. They are quiet mesmerising to watch - their long blades turning effortlessly in the breeze. They remind me of a heartbeat, constantly generating power with each rotation. For the most part they are grouped along the ridges of the foothills of the Pyrenees and can be clearly seen with their prominent towering white structures contrasting with the surrounding countryside. 

Hey, it will be Christmas soon, I wonder where we shall be then?

The most current blogs are below (dated from the bottom up) 
- see 'blog archive' for previous countries and adventures...

sahayak's blog

21/12/08 - Estoi (Portugal) 

THIS IS HUGE - I can now eat cheese without worrying about sneezing and sinus!! - the answer is goat's cheese. The French over here make a beautiful goat's cheese that comes in a 'log'. Wow is it ever so tasty, goes great on bread with a smeer of honey. Sounds weird doesn't it, but wait 'til you try it, you'll be heading back for more. I'll be checking out the supplies back in OZ!

The Portugese are a little upset with the English who are buying up big in this area, then renovating the old homes. The influx from the UK is beginning to be felt in the pocket with real estate prices rising as well as the goods at the supermarket. Traditionally this area is fairly low in productivity and fairly poor. Like Italy, the hills have been terraced, but there is very little arable land, most of it is very rocky. Stone walls are everywhere, and the traditional homes are made of stone. The exterior and interior stone walls in the house we are staying in are over half a metre thick. In the Algarve region, where we are staying, there are six 18-hole golf courses for the tourists, and I believe they are planning two more...but resistance of the Portugese is mounting!

Flat land is scarce, and where available is planted with mostly citrus trees (oranges). A twist of fate, when Portugal entered the European Union, they were shocked to find that the oranges they grew were 'too small' to sell through the Union. So instead they sell juice made from the oranges. All of this brings too little return for the labour, so many orchids are abandoned.

Water is abundant - nearly every property has a well. These are not used any more and many still stand intact, but without the donkeys to turn the gearing. It seems that safety regulations are non existent, wells are not fenced off and their open tops pose a real danger for the unwary.

The countryside is really beautiful and quiet and extends for many hundreds of kilometres north of here. The hills are covered in thick, stunted vegetation. White farm houses typical of Portugal are dotted throughout this region. Abondoned homes are left to collapse. It never ceases to amaze me to see these old ruins. Whole generations toiled in these hills to eke out a living. The only sign of their efforts now are the ruins of these homes and the collapsing stone walls. On my morning photographic walks I make a point of looking closely at these ruins as I stumble across them. I reflect on the stories, the hard labour and the sense of history in each. Clusters of extended farm houses are common. It seems that as more children were born extra rooms were added, or as old rooms collapsed new ones were built.

By the time we leave Portugal we will have spent one week short of two months living in the country. One month at the ecovillage in Italy and now three weeks in Portugal. I wonder what it's going to be like on Tuesday when we fly to London on our way to Costa Rica and arrive to major traffic and pedestrian energy.

My legs haven't seen the sun for months now, my only pair shorts will probably die of sunstroke the first time I wear them. My feet, covered in thick woollen socks for such a long time now, will enjoy the sunshine. So all is good, we are really looking forward to Costa Rica, and spending time in some of the many spiritual communities there.

Will write again soon....love to all.

 

26/12/08 - San Jose (Costa Rica) 

Wow so much has happened over the last few days. There were some tears as we left Portugal. We were on our way to London for an overnighter in 'Earls Court'. To get there after our flight we took a train from Gatwick airport to Victoria St station, then changed to the 'tube', destination Earls Court station.

Once again we were caught in the hectic rush of rail passengers as we negotiated stairs and lifts between stations. After arriving in the cold of evening, we only made one U turn before we found the street where we were staying, which was only five minutes walk from the station (due totally to Maia's unending research for convenience etc). It was a very strange feeling arriving in England after three months in Europe. My first impressions of London - red double decker buses, London cabs and English accents, buskers at Covent Garden, Christmas shoppers, drunken lads spilling out of the pubs onto the streets and a free operatic performance in one of the cafes in Covent Garden. 

Very early next morning we were off again to catch the N9 night bus to the airport. For those who may not know, there are no trains in London in the wee hours of the morning! As it tuned out the N9 bus stop was 10 minutes walk from Earls Court. (** if you are travelling from London to Heathrow this may be a very helpful and cheap tip (tickets cost 2 pounds each). On the bus, which became progressively more and more packed with passengers and their luggage, we were subjected to the hysterical screaming of a young woman for some 10 minutes. I am not sure what it was all about, but she would have made an Aussie shearer blush with her command of the English language's most colourful expletives.

The queue at Heathrow was huge, and in the slow 1 1/2hour shuffle forward I managed to chat with a couple of Kiwis who were on their way to the Canary Islands for a holiday. The guy was a physiotherapist who had just set up his own practice in Earls Court - evidently Aussie and Kiwi physios are in high demand in the UK, which makes it tough for recently graduated English physiotherapists.

11 hours and two meals later we were landing on time at San Jose airport after changing planes in Madrid. Warning - Iberian airlines does not have any English movies on board (can't imagine why - a Spanish airline landing in a Spanish speaking country!!!) We were met at the airport with a pre-booked taxi driver holding up a sign with our names on - for a moment there I felt like a movie star!!

We arrived in the early evening to a lovely spacious guesthouse. Our gracious American born host Vicki welcomed us with open arms. My first impressions the slighly musky smell of the tropics, and the very gentle, cool breeze. I just love this part of the world, I had the same impression when we arrived in Thailand. The home is surrounded by two acres of lawn and trees. The sounds of the birds here are new to me and the variety and colours of the birds are breathtaking. Did you know that some 24 percent of Costa Rica is National Parks and it has more biodiversity than any country in the world?

One of the other guests (visiting with his partner) was suffering severe symptoms of Hepatitis B and was not at all well despite having been in hospital for a couple of days and being discharged. During Christmas day a local Ayurvedic doctor and his partner came to treat him. Vicki offers her house as a treatment centre for massages/holistic healing. So all Christmas day was spent in conversation with those coming and going, and the obligatory playing of our instruments :o) This included while the ambulance was here to take the now gravely ill patient back to hospital. The most notable aspects of the day were the number of great spiritual connections we made, and shopping for groceries on Christmas day (!)

This Sunday there is a planned get together with many local folk. We have been invited to perform that evening as well as support a sacred fire ceremony welcoming in the New Year.

You guessed it... I am back out early each morning photographing. We are now planning various trips to see the lush tropical country side. On the books are day trips to see the active volcanoes and bus trips to the Pacific Ocean side of the country to spend some time in some laid back rustic beach accommodation. For those who haven't been to San Jose before, the city is in a valley surrounded by cloud covered mountains. I am dressed in shorts, T-shirts and sandles at last!

Shall write again soon, peace and love to all.

Oh yes a quick share, a poem I saw on the guesthouse fridge by TS Elliot...

Only those who risk
Going too far
Can possibly find out
How far one
Can actually go.