Autumn House sitting in Andalucía

Relaxing while traveling is easy for some, but has to be enforced for us. Pet sitting requires us to be in one place for a while and find a routine. This is our time to relax. We also get immersed in a location unlike the traveler experience. It is by far, the best element of our nomadic lifestyle.

You haven’t heard from us in awhile. That is because we have had bouts of nothing new to say, and then so many balls in the air, I do not have time to write. A huge time suck has been the Portugal immigration process. There will be many blog posts devoted to that circus so I will not cover it here. Other than to say, we went to Portugal for a weekend.

These homeowners are the definition of jetsetters. They are never in the same place for too long, usually each on his/her own itinerary. They stopped in the Jimena for a weekend in between destinations. So we took the opportunity to nip over to Portugal for a house hunting mission. It is still crazy to go a few hours and change countries, and languages. Portugal is closer to where we are than Nevada is to San Diego. Well it was further for us because we made some wrong turns. Ended up hours too far north. At the end of the weekend we knew a few places we did not want to live. Still have not found our first home, let alone our forever home. Stay tuned.

Being world travelers has its risks and drawbacks. We know this. The last few weeks has punched us with a few of these realities. Mark’s 95 year old mother fell ill. Getting home from Europe is always a long haul. Post covid, three times as long. From here it takes three days: one for a pre-flight covid test. Two for travel to a major airport, but not in time for a long haul flight east (which all go early in the day because of the time differences). And three for that long haul flight. Mark did not make it in time. Since he hadn’t left Spain before getting news that she passed, he turned around and went back to the cortijo to start planning a trip back for a funeral. Mark had two pcr tests in one week (one for each planned flight). He is really, really sure he is covid free.

Since Jimena has become a routine house sit destination, we have established some regular life tasks we do here: dentist, routine medical exams, hair stylist. Marbella is about an hour and a half away. This area is like, I don’t really know: Maralago or Newport Beach maybe. Somewhere rich in super yachts, with helicopters and cars like bugattis aboard. Majority of these yachters are Russian. We go to Marbella for the International hospital there. Being tourists, we are not able to partake in the regular national health system and need to find a private hospital. We found this one three years ago. Mark gets his cancer screening. This year he passed a milestone: now cancer free for five years. Whilst (British word I can’t resist)  Mark is doing that, I get the annual female checks out of the way. This year his great news has been balanced by some concerning news for me. Weeks later we are still discussing which lady parts need to depart my anatomy. I am soon going to have another topic to write about: having surgery in a foreign country, not speaking the local language. 

I cannot convey how much we like this little area of the world: Andalucia’s white villages, one of which is Jimena de la frontera. This cortijo on the hill to the east of Jimena is a piece of heaven. The view to the west is Jimena with its castle above. The sun sets behind that. Then the lights come on illuminating the castle. 7/24 it is a view to behold. The eagles are garnish. The hill is called Aguila, which means eagle. Soaring birds use the wind against this hill to get lift and maybe hunt, they are so close, we look at each other eye to eye. The dogs bark and chase them. Almost every day we get a group of soaring large birds. Truth is yes, there are eagles, but the real stars are the vultures. There are two or three species of vultures the size of condors. One is the griffon vulture, it has a buff colored head and is rather pretty. I found a nest and watched the near grown babies scream for food until mom or dad arrived with chow. Couple days later, all are fledged. 

We have been hiking a lot, with and without the lurchers. I have gotten in some horse back rides. We have had some really good time reconnecting with our friends on the hill. Mostly we have enjoyed the lurchers, who recognized us after a two year absence and showed it with a great show of affection.