We are coming to the end of our Spanish monster-holiday. We´ve been on holidays for 4mths now, including our quick 3 week trip to Aussie. It´s time to get back to reality and stop being bums for awhile. On Saturday we are heading back to the UK for a stint of normality. We both have our old jobs lined up and we are starting to get used to the idea that we will be working again. In fact, can´t believe we are saying this, but we are actually looking forward to it. Well, the earning money part anyway! We have really enjoyed Spain, loved the lifestyle, loved the country and culture, really loved the camping and climbing but we are now ready to move on. We realised yesterday when we looked out at the magnificent cliffs, mountains and spectacular scenery around us that we had become so accustomed to seeing it that we didn´t even notice it anymore. And the thought of doing another days climbing is almost a chore now. We look at these dirty hippies driving round in old bangers, bludging their way through life stealing free showers from campsites, wearing the same dirty clothes week in week out because they are too tight to pay for washing machines. They climb all day every day, and then we see them juggling their stupid batons, walking on slacklines and playing stupid bongos at night and we realised that we will never become this way and that we will always need something more in life than just bumming around meanlessly. Hence our feelings of looking forward to working again and climbing just on weekends. By the way, just because we lived in a tent for the last 4 mths please do not assume that we lived the hippy lifestyle described above, we are very advanced hippies whot just like very extended holidays! We do not play bongo´s, we shower every day and Ed steadfastly refuses to ever walk a tightrope!
This week we decided to have abit of comfort for our last week. We decided to find an affordable hotel in Benidorm where we have a decent bed and room to spread out. We are enjoying waking up in the morning and going downstairs for our ready made breakfast instead of having bets as to who is getting out of the tent to light the stove! Our new stove is awesome but it takes us ages to get it going especially first thing in the morning. Coffee on tap in the hotels is luxury in comparison. Every morning we go down, we are the youngest (don´t laugh!) as this place seems to be the Spanish retirement home. All the old Spanish people seem to come here for their weeks holiday and each morning at breakfast about 10 people will come up to us and say "beunos dias" and proceed to have a conversation to us in Spanish until they realise we don´t have a clue what they are saying. At that stage they tend to drop to Age 4 and say one or two words that we understand. They then all chat amongst themselves and wish each other a good morning when anyone new arrives. We stayed here one other time and that time we found the babble quite annoying and thought they knew each other and were one big group, but now we can pick out bits and pieces of what they are saying and realise that they are really just super friendly and will talk to anyone as if they are old friends even if they have never met before. It´s a shame our culture isn´t more like this.
Today we spent the day walking around Benidorm. This town is quite similar to the Gold Coast with a nice beach and high rise hotels and as it is so affordable 1000´s of British holidaymakers come here for their breaks. We have avoided the area as much as we could but today we decided to have a walk around and see it for ourselves. It is so catered towards English people, all the signs are in English, the pub are all English with English music and karaoki and the cafes all advertise bacon and eggs. Then you have all the tacky souvenier shops which are basically the same as our $2 shops in Campsie all selling exactly the same thing - junk. We rambled around for a few hours and did have a good day although don´t think we could do it for the whole week like some people do.
Anyway we enjoyed soaking up our last few rays of sunshine here before heading north to the much wetter and colder climate in England.
Unc Big Mc