The Ultimate

Tuesday, August 9

My, my, my beautiful Sunday

Sundays Aug 7th, 2005
I woke up this morning with a congested throat and a clogged chest, Elegance’s condition was worse than mine, and since it’s Sunday and, except for restaurants and coffee shops, all other places were closed, we had decided to take it easy and relax on chill-out music around the apartment all day. But as it got closer to noon time, the weather gots really warm and there was no draft although we had all the windows open. This called for an immediate change of plans, so we took out all the tourist’s attraction booklets we got previously from a traveling agency and checked out the outdoor areas in the nearby villages where not much physical activities were needed. At the same time we thought we’d ask around and may be get lucky to find farm houses that sell natural honey to help cure our flue, since we have heard that there are plenty of those in mountain areas of Spain.

And so we chose the place that we wanted to visit, checked the map, with Elegance being the driver and me the copilot responsible for the road map and direction, we hit the road and in about twenty minutes we reached San Jose Caves located in the town of La Vall d’Uixo.
In the town we made a 40 minute boat trip, actually it was more like a gondola trip to the center of the earth; an underground longest navigable river in Europe which is believed to be more that 15,000 years old and was inhibited by man at a time in history. The temperature of the caves stays at the constant 20 degrees throughout the year, we started a 5 kilometer trip on boats navigating through the caves and another 250 meters on foot to witness a dry gallery of the caves, and we also learned that there is a stretch of 1,932 meters that is not open to the public. And that despite the speleologists, neither the origin nor the end of the cave have been discovered.

We boarded the gondolas and our guide rowed us inside caves that narrowed so much at parts to a point that we had to stoop all the way down and widened to large halls of vaults with the breath taking, numerous shapes that have been sculpted by whirlpools over millions of years to tell the history of it’s evolution and it’s natural procession. The caves were equipped with a mellow relaxing music system and artificial lighting which were the only source of lighting that enhanced the majesty of the place; I even meditated at some parts, but what pissed me off is that we were not allowed to take pictures and there were some scenes that I really wanted to photograph but I couldn’t despite my sneaky efforts to outsmart the guide. I even wished I could shoot a video clip to meditate on when I return back home, but…. Tough luck

After leaving the caves we strolled down a pathway in the surrounding area of Sierrra de Espadan Nature Reserve that zigzagged and circled around the valley crossing dried rivers through the wonders of wild nature at parts and well groomed greeneries at other parts, we walked more than an hour in a completely relaxing atmosphere with my MP3 receiver in one ear playing Café Del Mar music and the other ear exposed to the sound of creatures of nature around.

When we finished our walk we asked some locals about a farm house selling honey. And to our surprise we discovered that there was one place, close to the center of the village that were renowned for generations for the quality of it’s different types of honey, each used for certain medication purpose, but the problem was that no one knew the street address of the house, but all villagers have known them for years and they have had customers from all over the globe, the locals had warned us that the address was not easy to find, but nevertheless they did describe it’s approximate whereabouts.

So we decided to give it a try anyway. And after some time spent in asking others in town center we finally found the place.
The trip was worthwhile because as soon as I took one spoonful of honey I immediately felt my chest clearing, I even got a jar of honey for my dad’s asthma, and another jar for relaxing my mom’s hard temper.

When we came back to the apartment, the weather was much cooler so we went out for a bite and again strolled along the beach, checking out the nice architectural chalets along the strip of the beach with coffee shops each playing their type of music pleasant to the ears of the wayfarers. I also got this sudden urge of photographic experimentation which started to irritate Elegance with my constant click-clicking at ever moving and rigid figure around.
Why do I keep comparing this to the long dull Fridays of Kuwait?

Posted by AyyA:: at :: 2:30 PM::

3 Comments:

Shurouq said...: Enjoy what's left of your vacation, dear.

& Kuwait isn't so bad with the right company :); 12:10 PM
Peach said...: Those caves sound heavenly ;) I missed u too love. Have a servesa and some fried calamari in my name will ya ;); 4:21 PM
AyyA said...: Hey sweetie, looks like you are back, I hope you had a nice vacation, yes the right company is worthwhile, but what about having the right company and the right places to spend your time? not much choices we have, do we?

Peach
Right on princess I promise you that.; 10:36 PM