Our Spanish farm life under the palm trees!

Hola!

It has been such a long time since I last blogged that my fingers are forgetting how to move on the keyboard, but here we go again!  We have now settled in, got used to the most beautiful view one can have from the front porch, the constant terrible heat and of course the animals. We've been out in the town and met awesome people - even one guy from Estonia - how rare is that! The temperatures are hot 25-36 degrees and around 20 in the nights not to mention it's getting hotter with each day. Enjoying our days by the pool area listening to music and relaxing - sweet vacation!

Drinking a redbull under the palm trees while having our legs in the pool.

We have settled in Spain now and hence the terrible heat enjoying every single part of it! I haven’t written for so long mainly because we don’t have WiFi down in our cabin and it’s not comfortable to write in the main house and also because our hosts have many books - many really good books. It's so good to relax with a good book in my hands, enjoying the sun and beautiful scenery. Getting more tanned and used to the heat - I'm a bit afraid to come back to the north now. When it's 23 degrees here and the sun's not out I'm wearing long pants because I'm cold. The Spanish mentality can be summed up with just one word - "mañana", which stands for tomorrow. There's nowhere to hurry, don't frown - smile and whatever you have to do today, it can also be done tomorrow. Hope I'm not getting too used to that...

Our view on the mountains every day

My little lemon thief with speed & style! 

Aside from reading we also spend much time watching movies and cooking. Although our kitchen in tiny we have already made the best chicken & spinach pasta, paella, swordfish, veggie chilli lentils dish and many more good and healthy foods. Most veggies can be bought from local fruteria where the quality is far more superior to the supermarkets'. We’re enjoying good wine which is not so local unfortunately and also started our very own iced tea factory. At the moment we are making it based on black and green tea while adding lemons straight from the trees with a little bit of sugar – this is the best thing you can think of when it’s 30 degrees outside and even worse inside the cabin.

We are living in two little cabins that are made of super-thin wood so it’s not staying reasonably cool in the day time there's like a sauna inside but teeming with flies - don't even try to imagine it... In the kitchen-livingroom cabin, there’s a wooden couch for two, a little square table, TV that we haven’t even turned on once and a little fridge that can almost fit everything we need for one and half weeks plus our iced tea reserve. Unlike the living room, you can't really swing a cat in our bedroom... Most of the space in the bedroom cabin is taken up by the bed of course and two big drawers, the rest of the space is just enough to open the drawers or walk around the bed not both at the same time... Between two cabins is the toilet or if to be precise an open shower and a bucket for taking a loo - that's the not cosy part of our living conditions.

Enjoying good wine with a view that people buy penthouses for!

Town Algodonales just as the sun switched places with a little storm

Charlie Brown waking us up in the morning while he escaped his
yard and came munching our flowers.

Aside from the toilet solution and neverending heat I really like the place. I don’t really mind that it’s tiny - it’s cute and works great for two people. We also have front porch as long as the two cabins and spend the most time there admiring the most beautiful view of the mountains through our olive trees. It's good to sunbathe on the porch too, I've only done it once though - lost a layer of my skin after that and I was red! Well if you think of red as a colour like deep red, that's what I was. Now I'm either keeping to shade or limiting my sun exposure time to maximum 1 hour.
On our porch, we are kept in a company by mostly three dogs and additional 2-3 neighbour’s dogs sometimes. Two meters from our porch starts the animal area and we usually wake up when they come under our window and protest if we want to sleep a bit longer. There are two huge horses, Spirit and Fino, and the loveliest donkey (I think I’ve fallen in love already) Charlie Brown.  If you’ve never heard what sound donkeys make well... let's say you will be at least as surprised as I was for the first time! And imagine having it as your alarm sound… or better don't imagine it...

This is Fino - spirit's first in command so to speak

Spirit a.k.a. the boss

We feed the animals two times a day - in the morning and in the evening, that includes the dogs, horses, donkey and 2-3 cats. Then we usually have breakfast and/or go running, afterwards, it’s really too hot to do anything so we sit in the shade and read or go sunbathe by the pool. You will not survive a day in here without a pool to jump in every once in a while and something cold to drink. Sometimes we do some odd jobs like paint or some renovating DIY project. We also built a new horse gate and painted numerous cupboards. We’ve been busy creating a soil terrace on the mountainside for flowers and planted some palm trees in pots. Luckily, most plants are connected to the hydration system and that doesn’t need much watering.

Algodonaleses's main square in front of the Saint Ana church

The villages here in Andalucia are called "pueblos blancos" which stands for white villages and all the houses in it are white. When for example one should decide to paint their house blue or red the villagers would probably be against it and you couldn't keep it. One village like this is Algodonales which is our nearest town - 2km walk uphill from our place. The next closest is Zahara that is approximately 4km away up&downhill from here. There's supposed to be a nice manmade lake that we're going to see soon. 

Near the house, about 400 metres runs a little but fast river that's a nice place to stick your feet into the cold water on a terribly hot day. In everyday basis we don't see much people, neighbours aren't that near and even if they were it's a mountain so they're down there. We have some people coming over every now and then like Maik the workman, Sue the accountant and cleaning ladies. The family we're staying with manage a successful paragliding business - it's really popular in here because it has perfect conditions - mountains and winds. 

View from our front porch to the white town called Zahara and it's old castle

Three baby mouse we found the other day, couldn't do
more just to let them go and distract the cat

So far we've managed well with my Spanish skills that are almost nonexistent, we've ordered food and drinks, went shopping, even got what we needed to build a gate from the hardware store! I think I've seen only one local that speaks English, but that too was as poorly as me speaking Spanish so not much helping... Really the village here is so local, however, we managed to meet another Estonian lad here, no joking!

He's name is Margus and he's a pilot in our host's company. He said that he's been flying for 8 years and each time twice a year spent much time in this area and before yesterday he had not met a single Estonian here!! What are the odds that you meet another person from a small country as it is Estonia in a place like Algodonales, we were as astonished as he! We had a nice chat, unfortunately, he had to take a plane back home the next day but it was definitely one of the many highlights! 

Here's the baby mouse we found from the barn - cuteness overload!

Hopefully, my next post is about something super thrilling and exciting - one of the things from my long and not so boring to-do list, but let's not jinx it! Fingers crossed for the right wind guys! :)

I will also try to write a bit sooner than last time, keep posted and subscribe not to miss!!

PS: I have the tickets back home too!