Drawn by a Star

Driving home last night from Torvizcon, across the pitted,rutted and dusty dirt track road which is carved like a wobbly, ocher coloured line into the midriff of the mountain , I witnessed one of the most fabulous sunsets I have ever seen in my life. Streaks of deep, deep pink, and splodges of dusky dark blue-purple were splashed across the lavender sky. The scene was breath taking. I challenge any painter to reproduce that pink. It was like seeing this colour for the very first time ever, and it was the end of Mother's day here in Spain. In the morning, Angustia's family had invited me to join them for lunch in the family home below my house. It's uninhabited now that Angustia's has died. Arriving in a possy of cars from Granada and Almeria, they told me: 'It's mothers day, come and eat with us!' It wasn't a question! I knew they had come to remember and celebrate her. Nobody mentioned Angustia's name during the feast of barbecued meat, sa...

The skies are full of planes once again. But not the sky above our village. It's strictly a flight path for birds, and always has been. Thanks to the incessant rain we've had during our very long winter, the wild flowers are now beginning to shoot through the soggy soil and cover the hillside with shimmering blankets of yellow and scarlet. Scarlet being the poppies. Annie, my last retreat guest, soon to be married, joined the thousands of stranded passengers at Malaga airport last Friday, and turned her delay into a wonderful adventure. She said shelter,food,and communication with loved ones quickly became her priority. Her blackberry, and a brave sense of exploring the completely unknown served her well. Having been told it would be a week before she could fly back to London, she moved to Madrid where she fell in love with the Spanish way of life. We exchanged many texts. However, she very was disappointed to find that in the cathedral, they had no real candles for peop...

There aren't many days in my life when I feel like a deflated balloon, but yesterday, Saturday, was one. It started on Wednesday actually, with two minor car accidents, but it took until Saturday for me to realize I was in bad shape. A broken toe, toothache and a feeing of uncertainty culminated in a bit of a nightmare. But as with all nightmares, we always wake up to ... in this case, to a bright new day ! !Si Senor! ( no little do- dah's or accents available with this programme, sorry Jeni!) Peter Ustinov once said of his mother- in- law that "she didn't know what she thought until she'd heard what she'd said." I remember thinking at the time that I often don't know precisely what I think until I seen what I've written. Writing has become my way of burrowing out of confusion, or pain, or negativity. And I've had a dollop of all three since Wednesday! So, I decided to write to a friend about these misadventures, and out of that came t...

The Bolivian taxi driver. The taxi driver picked me up outside my hotel which was just a stones throw from the famous Mercado de Hechiceria, otherwise known as the Witches Market. Yes, I chose it because of its location! The market is one of La Paz ’s most visited places, and the concentration of pickpockets in the area I’d read, is extremely high. In the labyrinth of streets which make up the market, you can buy silver, stone, and crystal charms, beads, all kind of herbs, incense and llama foetuses, and much, much more. There’s everything and anything you might need to make your own personal alter or ceremony. Shamans sit on the pavements and read cocoa leaves for the local people. Bolivians will wait for hours (in the street) to consult their favorite shaman. This kind of oracle telling is taken very seriously by all Andean people. At this stage of things, day two in Bolivia , I was still in a state of overwhelm/altitude mal- adjustment, so hadn’t yet dared explore the mark...

Jet lag, rain, grey skies, mudslides, snow, flooding, leaks in my roof, part of the track infront of my house collapsed , stories of extraordianry dramas of cars, caravans and bridges being swept away, and many lovely hugs from treasured friends were what greeted and enveloped me when I returned to Spain. It then felt like I slept for the next ten days . And now three weeks later, parts of Peru are experiencing the same kind of flooding, but worse. Most of the villages where we went to distruibute the hot chocolate and presents are high in the mountains ,so they haven't been distroyed, but many settlements in the Sacred Valley leading up to Machuu Picchu have been. Machu Picchu is inaccesible. Today I'm especially remembering the little girl on the bus I wrote about in the last blog who, as we were driving beside the fast flowing muddy river (which gushes right through the Sacred Valley) , told me that ten mermaids live in the river, that five of them are prin...

Hi dear friends, Happy, happy New Year wherever you are . I'm right on the last lap of this Peruvian adventure. Arrived back in Cusco this afternoon after spending New Year in Ollantaytambo with my young friends Wither and Tatiana and their four year old son Mauro. New Year and last week are a bit a blurr ! I remember buying yellow flowers for my friends here (a Peruvian custom signifying good luck for your house) , resisted buying yellow knickers in the market for them, also for good luck (!), and I remember seeing everybody in the street on the 1st, covered with yellow confetti, a very important Peruvian custom for New Year. I remember having lunch with Tatiana's whole family on New Year's day, her mum sitting in the corner of thier very humble abode making chici morada, a drink made from maize, and local mountain people calling in every ten minutes to fill up all manner of containers. Our lunch consisted of roast guinea pig, roast chicken, rice, spagetti and mou...