EL Patio Baeza

... ripped up and down the street cruising on their mopeds and revving their engines…I guess they can’t afford cars. The funniest thing was that the guys wore t-shirts, shorts and flipflops with a helmet or horse riding helmet, while the girls as passengers were dressed to the nines and no helmets at all. We enjoyed the sites and sounds of this cool little town and then walked back to the room to rest up for the next day’s ride.

On Sept 21st, we set off to take the 2pm train to Jaen. That was until Miken was pic-pocketed at the train station in Madrid and lost a ton of money. By the time that got settled...looking for it, talking to police, the 2pm train was full and we had to take the 630. The train ride was easy and the scenery was beautiful. We traveled four hours south and arrived at night in Jaen to a city of lights cascading through the mountains with the cathedral being the brightest and the castle on top of ...

... back down to Granada, spend one night in a Hostel, and then catch an overnight train to Barcelona, where we plan to spent a good bit of time. By the way... sorry about the lack of photos lately... we've still been taking quite a few pictures, the problem is that... well the problem is that I don't feel like going through the whole process of transfering them, picking out the good ones, re-sizing and then uploading them. Maybe tomorrow :-)

... for 30 minutes straight after taking that picture.  The next morning we got up early early and packed up in order to catch the mini bus down to the trailhead for a walk we wanted to do.  We left our packs at the visitor center and headed down the hill towards the Rio Barrosa walk.  It was a couple Km before the actual trail head, but it was all beautiful, so we ...

... to practice and we've even learned a couple of good idioms and a few dirty words, which is always handy. They manage to work a tiny lesson into almost every topic we discuss, without disrupting the flow of conversation. Since there is not a whole lot to "see and do" in Ubeda, we've also had some extra free time to lounge out on their gorgeous patio and improve our tans. We've also taken some day trips outside of Ubeda. More to come soon...

... and we would stop to chat (charlar). One person we ran into was a friend of their oldest son (Jose 27), out taking his two year old son for a walk in the stroller. A lot of men here in Spain do a lot of the child care and appear to be very active parents. In this case, Moses had suffered some brain injury from a car accident and was unable to work, so his wife worked and he cares for Ramon and does the house work. Ramon is just two, but looks ...

flew into quito where hatter met me. we came to baeza the next day for the paddling.good **** as we blindly go down flooded class four runs through the cloud forest. the town is much like that of andrews, but with nicer people. the view from the frontof the hostel is beautiful. i satyed there at hostle de rodrigo ...

... is needed done, from building a house or in our case building a football pitch, then all the families get together to get it done, the men mostly doing all the labour and the women cooking a huge free meal for lunch. Our first experience of a minga was knackering and involved breaking up rocky ground and lifting boulders for 9 hrs with the help of peach wine which is revolting. I'm not too sure what everyone thought of Nick and I but they seemed to find the fact that we ...

... Cindy and Andy, Naomi, Sadie and Luke, and Cousin Sacha. UPDATE: Later that night, an East London mate I made at the hostel, Jordan, took me to visit a few of the local gay bars and nightclubs. Drag queens and all! The gay scene in Granada, particularly the club (which name eludes me...) comes highly recommended!

... there exists an entire commercial sector here, known as bus vendors...whether on urban buses or cross country, young kids to grown adults jump on and off the bus at will, trying to sell anything from fruit and veggies to the silliest stuffed toys, watches, or books...if u stop somewhere, just open your window and you will have all sorts of consumer options from the vendors outside yelling out their prices and products... eventually getting to our ...