And, as it turned out, I had the whole of Sunday off, so we decided to take a drive up the road a piece and see if we could find a fabled hermit sculpturer who lived just a few miles away.
And I´m pretty sure I´ve never written the words "fabled hermit sculpturer" at any other time in my life. By the way.
In addition to being simply delightful and engaging company, these two make me laugh...a lot. And honestly, after experiencing some righteous belly laughs with them, it occurred to me that I haven´t laughed that hard, or that often, in quite some time. Neither had they, Kinga told me this morning, so our meeting each other was a terrific and much needed gift from the Universe.
So we left on our little outing around noon and headed up the road. I realized that I hadn´t left the grounds, other than my walks, since I arrived here about ten days ago and it felt nice to be moving again, seeing new sights. We pulled into the parking lot of a miniscule little village called Transverre and I´m telling you it was right out of...I can´t even really reference it at this point...it looked medieval to me with it´s cobblestoned buildings, tiny little windows set seemingly randomly within the walls. Suddenly a woman in an apron and kerchief called out to us in Catalan, "Bon dia!" and ushered us quickly into her shop which was dollsized like the rest of this relic town.
There was a display of jams and jellies and all around were vases and pots full of flowers - herbs dried on lines laid along the walls, and there were scatterings of folk art paintings hidden in a variety of nooks and crannies. I could make out, from her wave of dialogue with us, that she grew the fruits and herbs herself, organically, and produced the entire product herself. Then she motioned us through a beaded curtain and showed us a most immaculate and surprisngly modern kitchen where she completes her work. It was quite the contrast, all this stonework in the other room, and then to be in that sterilzed space, with it´s stainless steel and gleaming tilework.
We talked with her for a minute and then Peter exclaimed that he believed he had left his car parked in the middle of the road. Somewhere, between the time we parked the car in what we thought was a lot, and made it into this woman´s shop, Peter realized that he hadn´t parked in a lot at all...but smack in the main thoroughfare. We bid the shopkeeper a quick "hasta luego" and hurried up the pathway to a man who was gesturing and calling out to us. Peter went to him and explained that he didn´t realize it was a road when he parked the car and that he was sorry. Kinga and I had jumped into the car and were unhelpfully giggling. I mean, I think it was an honest mistake. This "road" was kind of to scale of this miniature little village, it looked like you could barely pull a donkey cart through there, let alone a car.
That was how the day started out...and pretty much continued from there. We drove around in circles for awhile, asking whoever happened to be walking down the lanes if they knew anything about this sculpturer. Peter generally began the questioning, which would cause Kinga and I to giggle quietly at each other...I don´t know why it was so funny...to me it was his earnestness and the pointed way he would say, "¿Usted sabe donde esta el sculp-too-rrr...drawing that last word out. And people, who were generally fairly geriatric, would crane themselves at us and say, "que?"
Eventually we wound up in the middle of the same town square we had driven through a half an hour before, having no idea how we got there as we were pretty sure we had been on an entirely different road. And then Hugh showed up, right at the moment we were sitting there in the car a little dumbfounded, drove right up to us, with his jaunty straw fedora and his perfect English demeanor and said, "Well, how are you all getting along then?"
He directed us once again towards the road we were supposed to take and we followed it the best we could. In the end, we decided that we needed to eat something, having driven around now for a couple of hours, and pulled off to the side of a road with an amazing view of the Cadi valley and ate a lunch of French bread, herbed cheese and tomatoes. Our conversations all afternoon seemed lightening fast as we bounced from one topic to another, it was all very lively and generous.
After lunch we checked the time and remembered that Hugh wanted us back at Sanilles by 3:30 to share Emilio´s paella with the rest of the group. So we steeled ourselves for another meal and packed up.
We had to push the car out of the ditch that we had accidentally rolled in to, causing another fit of laughter, but it turned out fine in the end and we made it back just in time to pretend we were starving and ready for our supper.
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