Puerta De Luna Baeza

... north and headed back inland on a four lane Autoroute. Within 50 km the temperature went up 5°C to 35. It continued to climb as we went closer to Jaen near our destination, where it reached 44°C. Hot no? Jess, eets wery hot. Een fact, eets hot for dees espanisha peoples too. <br><br>We stopped to fuel up and took off to re-enter the Autoroute. We must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque because the gas station road didn&#8217 ...

... begin teaching. I met all three of the bilingual program coordinators who were very nice and very eager to begin the program. This is the first year they will be doing it so they said they would need my help very much considering even the coordinators do not speak perfect English. The school is the city high school in Jaen and is called Jabalcuz. It is an I.E.S....Instituto Escuela Secondario, a secondary education institute, a high school in the US... Within it is the high school and an ...

As we've moved into July, the weather in southern spain during the day has gotten oppressively hot. The 2 greatest reliefs from this are LONG siestas (from right after lunch -about 3PM - until 6:30 or 7) and a concoction they have here called Tinto de Verano. Literally translated, this means red-wine of summer, but it is basically a mix of red wine and Fanta (usually lemon flavored) over ice. We discovered it in Malaga, and have been ...

... 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 ...

Sorry that entries have been somewhat few and far between these last 2 weeks, but we've been having a great time with Merche and Paco. They are absolutely worderful hosts. Just about every time Paco sees me sitting at the kitchen table (our usual hangout) he offers me another beer or wine, regardless of the time of day. And Merche is a wonderful cook and constantly encouraging us to eat more yummy food. Needless to say, our clothes don't fit ...

... 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 ...

... would be difficult to get a real good immersion experience and adequate practice simply traveling around with one another and we were kinda kicking ourselves for not planning better or pursuing any other options. Regardless, we still wanted to visit Ubeda and see some of the places where Laura had spent so much time: She particularly mentioned "El Gallo Rojo" (the Red Rooster), a restaurant/bar with a very nice owner ...

... on the river, and a DVD to finish it all off? Why not then. We had to do our own food shopping in Baeza the nearby town and our first grocery trip there was interesting. Some folk were friendly, some were down right rude and obviously hated tourists but most just laughed at us. Was it our Spanish, did Nick still have that tattoo on his forehead or was it my flowery cagoule from Millets? Well we managed to buy lots of food but nothing we could actually make a meal out of ...

... us get along really well and cook up massive feasts together. the only downside is the open bar we have at our disposal. Oh and the fact that, as much as i love living in the forest, i am the clumiest of beings ever invented. I cant even climb slippery rocks and cliffs to waterfalls without stacking it several times and ending up with the biggest bruises on me. Also machetties do not agree with me at all. Only a couple of injuries but am working on making myself more environmentally friendly.

After a quick shower and breakfast-back on the bus for the long drive to Quito on the Baeza road and across the Andes on Papallacta pass at 4000m with a lunch stop enroute.Also a visit to the hot springs at Papallacta for a dip sitting in pools in the shadow of the volcano.Stunning scenery and some choice language when people jumped into the cold pool ...