August 8th to 15th, 2002

Genalguacil, Spain

Genalguacil!
Pure & Authentic Pueblo tucked away in the mountains of Andalucia

Our long journey to Genalguacil started around 2am from Barcelona. Silvia, Albert, Jeremie, and Carlotta picked Sasha & I up from Ripollett, and we made our way south. During my short hours of sleep we passed through different toll stations of Spain's autopista. The night was short and most of it, I was awake.

Most of the time I hardly understood the entire plan because the group conversed really fast in Spanish. This would play a role into the entire trip as the drama continued which is later in the story. At around 6 a.m. we finally made our first stop into a beachside city near Valencia. For a moment I thought we were just taking a break to chill out on the beach. Then Silvia and Jeremie brought out their sleeping bags and I realized this was going to be a start of an interesting trip. We tried to sleep on the beach of Valencia but the weather started rolling in grey and so our time was short. We picked up our stuff and went back into the car. Albert and Jeremie were really exhausted at this point and I could see the sleep needed in their eyes.

We drove around Valencia a bit. Over some conversing in Spanish. I heard "campo" and some other things. The next thing you know we turn off the autopista once again and start driving into the little small villages near Valencia. Making turns heading towards olive fields, I thought we were just making a short stop for some gasoline or maybe some food or even maybe a relative who lived in this area.

As we parked our car into the middle of somebody else's olive fields, Silvia and Jeremie once again got out their sleeping bags and we started to siesta in the field. As I was unprepared for such an event, I tried my hardest to sleep but couldn't manage on the hard settled soil. My lack of sleep cumulated to about 38 hours of no sleep with 9 hours left of a drive.

That should've been '9 hours' was stretched into another prolonged 24. After sleeping in the olive field of Valencia we moved forward into the south aiming for lunch in Alicante during the middle of the day. As we pulled into Alicante around noon, we made a mistake in directions missing the playa of Alicante and heading south along the coast towards the more smaller touristy villages.

On our way south the first dramatic episode of a fun few took place. It was quite interesting, the other car with Jeremie, Silvia, and Carlotta decided to pull over and Carlotta jumps off into a taxi.......why?, I don't know. But it was almost another Jerry Springer episode, Spain edition. I stayed out of the drama because I couldn't keep up in the rapido espanol if I tried to. It was hilarious watching this "Latin" situation take place and how everything went down. Lets say mucho drama... and just a pilot for what would be an Emmy Award winning sitcom, our trip.

After the drama was extinguished or at least postponed, we finally all made our way to the playa south of Alicante where we played around, ate some good spanish food, and bathed. But clouds were rolling in and time was cut, which was good because I was starting to wonder when we were actually going to make it to Genalguacil.

After the beaches, we aimed for either Granada or Murcia for dinner during the night. At around 10pm we arrived into Granada heading up to the top of of the centro area for some dinner. More misunderstandings of plans took place during this time and what I thought I heard was exactly what I heard. The group was planning on partying the night through and heading south the next morning. For myself I could imagine another night without sleep and just wanted to be settled in a town to sleep already.

Of coarse more dramatic episodes took place and we ended up skipping out on the whole plan of staying overnight in Granada. Instead of a one shot drive straight to Genalguacil we ended up in another olive field south of Granada. But instead it was colder, I had 1 position to sleep as both driver and passenger chairs were reclined onto me, and the police woke us up. They didn't do much, they allowed us sleep in the olive field after asking for our identification.

The next morning we woke up and headed the wrong direction on the autopista back tracking the direction we came before. After seeing Granada again the drivers figured it out and we headed the other direction en route to Genalguacil. We finally arrived into Genalguacil the next afternoon and had the best time in company with all the friends and family of a very strong community.

Genalguacil is a small little pueblo tucked in the middle of the Andalucian hills. Spaniards retreat here on holidays and enjoy the fresh air and beautiful landscape. No tourists just 'puro Espana'.

Scroll down to see the pictures of Genalguacil.