Every day is a survival. Hope not to end up here
Dangerous walking along the road
Thirsty but happy to find a place for my horse
The october heat in Andalucia. No green grass, no shade
Snakes alive
Dead snake
Today we walked 32 km. Of all bears that I expected on the road most are disappearing one after the other. Nice. I do see snakes on the road
The vanity of a horse admiring himself in the mirror
. Dog Tosca doesn’t get tired. Being a Dutch sheep dog she feels much superior over all these street dogs here, who sometimes 4 or 5 together come running to her ready to attack. With her belle indifference and her female charme she knows how to impress even the big sheep dogs here. With my very dominant male shepherd home, Joep, this would have been one great battle field. I see young Tosca grow more muscular. And fortunately she wiggles her butt less than before.
Horse Leon is gradually getting along better. Along the road he once in a while finds some water and sometimes some dry and even green grass and he seems to feel fine. Only walking on the asphalt road is really sh.. The sun is hot. Sometimes we are locked between the rails aside the road and then we can’t move any direction but to Saint Peter. Specially when two cars, or even worse, two trucks from different directions pass me. But my two animals can read and write. On the road we walk in line. Trucks pass us at minimal distance but the animals show no fear. Cool. Only if we pass a store window horse Leon stops to admire his lovely portrait in the mirror. Thus I discovered that narcism also exists in horses.
The asphalt is slippery like bacon under Leon’s irons. Each time again he slips away and therefore he walks at an anoying slow pace. The last 8 km. I had to pull him all the way. Well, I consider it a good exercise for my arms and shoulders here in this tiring Spanish heat. What’s keeping me busy while walking? The answer is: surviving this day. Also my pincers were needed today, when I had to kill a stretch of barbed wire that blocked my road. My leggs move like a machine. When I’m tired that counts for my head, but those legs just go on marching. My brother Jack thinks I would be a good sleep walker at night. When in the afternoon I got still more tiredI because of pulling horse Leon , I addressed a tractor driver in the field: soy Holandes. No hablo bien Espagnol. Camino desde Tarifa hasta Santiago y despues Francia, Belgica, Holanda, Alemania, Danmarque, Suedia, Norvegia. Busquo un lugar para una noche para mi caballo: I am Dutch. Don’t speak Spanish well. I am walking from Tarifa to Santiago and then on to France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. I’m looking for a place to leave my horse for one night. I don’t know if my Spanish is correct but it works. The man pointed at a white dot at the skyline. That’s my house. So there I went, pulling Leon on the bloody hot road. A shield warned that the maximumnspeed was 100 km. an hour. Not really reassuring. After 45 minutes I got there. With the best of my Spanish I told an old man that I just talked to his son. Vale, vale, all right, he said. The tractor driver’s brother lived there too. Some casual talk about the worth of my pony and aboutvthe price of an adult sheep and of lambs in the Netherlands. Of course I was very acquainted with this topic because of my flock of 30 adult sheep and 50 lambs. Leon was brought to a big bath with water. Together with Leon and Tosca I rushed to the bath and together the three of us saved our thirsty throats. That impressed the old man. He invited me to go inside to have a drink together. Lo siento, I am sorry, my two hermanos( brothers). The brothers had fixed the license plate of the car, hoping thus to solve some of the worrying noices of the car. I assured them that on their way back to Holland with my car I would still catch up with them. In the meantime Jack and Michiel had checked in in a little hotel. Getting there we heard a ladies choir together with guitars singing cantos. When we started watching them, holding half a liter of beer in our hands and calling olé, olé, they made a still bigger effort singing loud and laughing. At the walls pictures of horse riders, piercing a bull with their lances. Wouldn’t every woman wish such a macho hero?
Resuming: every day my worries get less. Dangerous roads, no problem, dogs feet strong like concrete. Horse no fear at all. The people of Spain helping us, great. Andalucian police, on our side. I? Stay positive and keep laughing.
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