Vicarious Nomads: Couchsurfing Almeria

Refreshed by three days in a hotel and a romantic weeken, we boarded a bus for Almeria Monday afternoon. We played cards for much of the two-hour ride, pausing to take in views of the Sierra Nevadas. My dad has said Spain reminds him of the American West. And there, as we rode through the Sierra Nevadas, I saw it. We could have been working our way somewhere between the Colorado Rockies and California. As we worked our way down to the sea, we saw miles of greenhouses. Much like California, this region of Andalusia supplies Spain and much of Europe with fresh vegetables year round. The Tuesday market in Almeria confirms this. Beautiful tomatoes. Many varieties. Fresh avocados.

We are greeted at the bus station by Antonio, our newest couchsurfing host. He is tall and thin, veins visible in his arms, a marathon runner, maybe somewhere in his forties. He has a bicycle and a patch of gray hair that wanders between his temple and the back of his right ear. He wears jeans, gray jogging shoes with flashes of green, and a t-shirt. This is his uniform. The shirt changes. A spectacled intellectual lion one day. Plain dark gray the next. Light gray running shirt the third.

When he told us he would pick us up at the bus station, I expected a car. But it is just him and his bike. He asks us if we are tired. We say no. So we will walk to his home, Annette and I with backpacks, Antonio with his bicycle. The short walk becomes longer and goes up hill.

After about thirty minutes of walking at a brisk pace, we reach his house—a second floor flat in a two-story building. He shows us a room for our stuff and the pullout couch in the living room. It I sparsely decorated. Only one frame sight. It is propped on a small table just inside the entrance way. It is a three-stage photograph of a building near the port in Almeria being demolished. The top photo is of a tall building next to a gas station. In the middle photo, the building is half as tall, smoke and dust gushing from its sides. In the third photo, it is an empty lot next to a gas station with a crowd around it and a view of the raised rail line that ends over the sea. A ferry sits prominently in the background, almost unnoticeable in the first photo.

In addition to the red couch that will become our bed for the next three nights, there is a rotary phone in the corner, one of the few I have seen in use in this millennium. A camera on a tripod occupies a second corner. And a hulking old camera for taking portraits occupies the third corner. It has a detachable hood, a wooden apparatus with wheels for moving it, and what looks like a ship's wheel on the side, presumably for adjusting the height. The fourth corner has the doorway. In the middle of the room sits a small table with three chairs around it.

We go to the kitchen and Antonio asks us if we are hungry. Annette and I agree that we are. Antonio proceeds to prepare us a feast of hors d'ouevres. Tuna on bread with fresh sliced tomato and olive oil. Fresh Andalusian grapes. A roasted sweet potato, just now in season. Cold water. Cold beer.

We eat and talk. We learn Antonio spent August couchsurfing in Iceland. His girlfriend Flor he has been dating since March. She has her own place. Antonio grew up in Almeria. He spent eight year working at a university in Malaga, trying to come home. Finally, he got a job last year with the university here in Almeria. He works as a technician with the physics department. A lifetime before that he was a photojournalist. These are the kind of details my mom always expected me to get on every person I met. She used to interview me over the dinner table for them.

By the time we break into the grapes, he is showing us how he mixes his hashish with tobacco. He essentially takes all of the tobacco out of his cigarette, mixed the hashish in, and then re-packs the cigarette. Then he carefully removes the filter and breaks it half, puts half back and throws the other half away. I don't know why. These are the kind of details my mom always left out.

Antonio's English is better than my Spanish and he uses his whole body to communicate—facial expressions, gestures, and lots of sounds. He makes us laugh. We talk of protests and politics, peaceful revolution and a world without borders.

By half past eight, Antonio has taught Annette the Spanish word for “high” and we are out the door. We follow Antonio back down the hill at his usual marathon pace. We stop for him to ring a buzzer at an apartment building. Moments later his girlfriend, Flor, emerges. She is blond and spirited. Tomorrow, she will cook us a delicious dinner of lamb and chicken with a beautiful Spanish omelette and a delicious almond-garlic-olive oil spread. Then we will see her beautiful spacious apartment and learn of her two daughters and her half-Senegalese granddaughter. For now, she looks far too young to imagine her as a grandma.

We turn two more corners and settle at a table at Chele, which would become our regular spot for the next three days. I wrote about tapas in Granada and the mystery of what would come next. Well, if that was Dig Dug, this is Choose Your Own Adventure. A menu of more than twenty tapas (we ended up taking the menu as a souvenir) provides all the adventure and mystery necessary. For 2.20 Euros, we get a draft beer (cana) and our choice of tapas made to order. It starts with a skewer of grilled shrimp and salmon in a delicious sauce of garlic and olive oil. Then a skewer of grilled pork. Then the fish—too many to name. A half a fish in olive oil. Meaty chunks fried with aioli, a grilled green pepper and a balsamic reduction sauce (gallinetas – one of our favorites). Then a smoked fish on toast with a blue cheese sauce. Over the next three days, Annette and I would sample most of the menu (and a paella that wasn't on it, but was delicious, the best yet!) Tonight, we make it five rounds. Conversation revolves around travel, food and drink, mostly. The food and drink provides ample and frequent lubrication to get the conversation through the occasional silence presented by a partial language barrier.

Our next two days in Almeria consist of tapas, walking, the beach, an incredible dinner at Flor's and a visit to Cabo de Gato Natural Park.

We drove close to an hour up and down dirt roads, then hiked another thirty minutes atop cliffs that skirt the sea. Then the cliffs opened into a valley and a sandy beach maybe 500 meters long. It is the clearest water we've seen since Croatia. Only with beautiful sandy beaches this time. The inlet is surrounded by cliffs on three sides. The ruins of an old church now converted into a few homes and a source of wind and solar energy dominates the landscape. Maybe 100 tents, forts, caves and makeshift homes dot the hillside. Some have doors and windows and front porches with small gardens. One has an irrigation system and a small fruit orchard. Another is just thatched grass. Each is its own creative expression. Fresh water pours from a pipe in the ground. Some rules are written on homemade shines in five languages. They primarily deal with where and how to shit and what to do with your garbage. Naked people with dreadlocks, dogs and no tan lines speckle the land. Some are here for days. Others for years. Presumably they fish and grow fruit. I am sure they all rely heavily on Las Negras, the nearest town, if for no other reason disposal of their trash.

Choose your own tapas