Casa Pollo

We left Torrox behind and made the short 1 hour journey back through Malaga to Casabermeja. In Casabermeja we were met by one of our new hosts, Anne. Anne drove us to their house in the tiny 200 person town of Puerto Del Barco. Puerto Del Barco means passage through the mountains and that is exactly what it is. It is set in an agricultural region in the mountains of Andalucia. Out of our window were mountains as alpine and rocky as the 14ers at home even thought they were only a few thousand feet high. They had olive groves and wheat fields stretching up as high as possible up the steep sides before they gave way to rocky outcrops and buttresses. It really looked as though someone stretched the farmland of Pennsylvania over the topography of the Rockies.

For the first few days we were there we had another wwoofer staying with us as well. Harold was an 18 or 19 old German who was practicing English and Spanish. Harold was very proper and polite, quite the opposite of our last German friend. One day when his job was to trim the lawn out front of the house Harold came out in a suit that looked as though it belonged to the ghostbusters, complete with rubber boots and a full face mask. He would certainly be safe from flying grass! Our hosts John and Anne were more British Expats. I’m starting to wonder if the UK is somewhere I want to go since they all seem to be leaving. Our eating at Papa John’s Place was British food on a Spanish time table. We got up and ate a light breakfast, then would eat toast, coffee and fruit at about 11:00. We would then eat our largest meal of the day at about 2:00 and a light snack at night. When they first told us about the eating we thought they were nuts, why on earth would we need two breakfasts, dinner at 2:00 or 3:00 then nothing until late in the evening. Well it didn’t take long for us to start counting on a second breakfast and we were sure ready for dinner at 2:00. The food was very good but very British; creamy fish pies and steamed veggies for example.

While we were there we did some similar work to what we have been doing; watering, planting and weeding. But our main job was to build a chicken coop. We first had to do some research to find out what a chicken coop entailed and how big it should be. We were given a pile of old junk wood and palates to work with. The only power tool was a compression drill from 1984. We had to fix the saw before we could use it. After some carful analyzing we decided to build the coop out of an old wooden dog crate and a masonite bookshelf. We added vertical shelves to the book shelf so that it would have little chicken cubbies for them to lay their eggs in, complete with doors to access the eggs. The dog crate became the roost where they could sleep on some dowel rods that we installed. We used palm wood and bamboo mats for the shingles to give it a nice tikki look. We even installed window shades and a little door made from a wine box with a nice grape pattern. We also had to build a fenced in area for them to scratch around in. It was a challenge using less than ideal materials and tools but in the end it was a really fun project and a nice change from digging and weeding.

As usual we had plenty of time off as well. One day we went climbing at El Torcal, a tourist attraction on top of a plateau. It was all small limestone towers. The rock was bombproof and the usual fun limestone pockets. Towards the end of the day while I was belaying Lisa I got surrounded by a flock of a hundred sheep. Luckily Lisa scared the crap out of them when I lowered her and they took off. John and Anne were nice enough to drop us off that morning but we decide to walk home. It was a few monotonous miles of pounding downhill on a paved road followed by a fantastic few miles on farm tracks through the wheat crops and olive groves. Another day we climbed the most prominent mountain nearby. It was a scramble right from the start as the only trails were old goat tracks. After scrambling for an hour we got to a high saddle that had about 500 sheep in it. From there, we had a short section of semi-technical rock and another short scramble to the top. We also took some time to explore the nearby city of Antequera which had a cool castle and bull ring. On our last day we took the train to Ronda, about an hour away. Ronda was just another white Andalucian village, except that it is divided by a 200ft deep gorge. It was pretty touristy, but for good reason as it was absolutely spectacular. We had a nice lunch overlooking the gorge and watching the tourists go by in their lines following whatever shiny nic-nac their guide was waving. The next day we were back to Malaga to fly to Milan to meet my family.