Cabo de Gata

 

 

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

-Mahatma Gandhi

“Where are you? I will come pick you up.”

“We’re down Catolicos Reyes, past the Corte Ingles, over the river, standing in a round-about.”

“Haley, wave your hand! I think I see you! Wave your hand!”

I shake my arm vigorously in the air like a lunatic, spinning around each direction searching for our professor.

“Wave your hand!”

“I am waving my hand!”

“Oh that is not you. I sorry, I not know where you are. I have no idea. I sorry.”

Jorge apologizes, but I’m still flustered. We’re in the wrong part of the city and cannot find the meeting point for our Ecosystems of Andalucía field trip. This weekend we are going to the East coast, just four female students and our professor. We were told to bring all of our bedding to sleep in a bungalow by the ocean and I don't want to miss out! But first one must relax before the right path appears.

We drove through canyons created by the erosion of sediments from a massive ancient shallow lake. It would have been similar in size and depth to the current day Great Salt lake in Utah before the tectonic plates shifted and thrusted the lake bed above ground, where we can now see the beautiful layers of history mapped out before our eyes in linear ribbons. The surrounding area and climate of the past was nearly tropical and supported a great number of mega fauna species like wooly mammoths, large cats, and even early humanoids.

Every time we saw something of geological interest, we would park the car lopsided on the nonexistent shoulder and put our noses to the earth and examine it. Our curiosity was stimulated and a flow of questions poured from our lips, we were children again; discovering the world for the first time. Jorge was bombarded with our queries but answered them thoroughly like a patient father. We were already several hours behind schedule when we stopped for lunch, but time is relative here. Around nine in the evening we pulled into our dark campsite.

 

Calcium stalagmite rock

 

Can you find the castle?

 

Always have a feather eye open

 

Wind turbines to catch the breeze between two mountain ranges

 

Blossoming almond trees and solar panels

 

Break time

 

 Lunch basket

 

Fresh avocado from Jorge's family farm

 

Layer of quartz

 

 

 

Dead jellyfish!

 Our campsite (in daylight)

We settled into our bungalow and stumbled two hundred meters with our heads cranked towards the night sky observing the brilliant stars. A cast iron fireplace warmed the tiny restaurant on the sea, we sat nearby and ordered drinks on our school’s dime. Paella in a pan as wide as a grizzly bear hug came to our table with whole shrimps and oysters decorating the top. We hungrily inhaled it and ordered whisky torte and ice cream for desert.

Full and giggly, we walked along the dark roads after supper to stretch our legs, awed into silence by the presence of massive boulders silhouetted against a backdrop of an inky dome of pregnant with celestial dust. It was chilly and there was a supernatural feeling in the breeze. The idea was planted into our heads without anyone voicing it; we stripped off our clothes and ran naked into the salty black waters, laughing and full of life.

In the morning we ate fresh fruit and warm vanilla milk on the porch of Jorge’s cabin. We visited a geological history museum, an abandoned mine, climbed a volcano crater, had lunch on a beach, watched birds on the salt marshes, and stopped to look at several ocean vistas before heading back to Granada.  

 

 

 FIRE! Someone get the extinguisher!

 

 

 Abandoned gold mine

 

 I found a living metaphor: nature will reclaim the land.

 

 Seaside cafe stop

 

 

Scuba divers

 Puppy love

360 degree view from inside a collapsed volcano crater

 Orchid

 

 Break on the beach

 

Bird watching at the refuge

 

Salt marshes

 Coastal vista

 

LOVE LIFE.

LIVE LIFE!

"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk."
-Jack Handey

And don't forget to be yourself.

besos,

haley