Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1998 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Jul 4 - 28, 1985 (Written on Dec 7, 1998)

Where Time Stops

Tranquil Villages Near the Costa Blanca

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Spain, Costa Blanca, Alicante, Santa Pola, Aspe, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Last year’s trip to Spain was such a success that there had to be a sequel. The first impressions of Spain were crying for a second helping. When it turned summer it was no discussion at all on what the destination for my summer vacation should be: España.

As a student I had close to 3 months off, summer break. Two of these 3 months I would work as "programmer" in Linz, Austria. And the third month I would indulge in "sol y mar" in Spain. The summer job in the IT department of Fehrer AG, a manufacturer of textile producing equipment, was educational. It was a bit embarrassing because I wasn’t really productive. My programming skills were poor at that time. I was helping with the weekly backups, mounting tapes (yes, they had reels back then) and various other tasks. Once the chief of the IT department was sick and I had to run the operations. I was praying all day that nothing would happen. On that day I sent the wrong file to the printer. Instead of printing a 1-page status report it started to print gibberish. That by itself wasn’t so bad but the printer wouldn’t stop printing that gibberish. After a hundred pages I got worries. I didn’t know how to stop it. Turning the printer off and on didn’t help either. I killed a whole tree that day.

After the summer job was over I didn’t waste time. With my high school friend Thomas who at that time was called by his nickname Loe by everyone, I was standing at the gas station along the freeway with my thumb out. We hitched from Linz via German to Innsbruck, Trento, Verona, and Piacenza and on to Genova in Italy. The second day we hitched along Ventimiglia to Cannes, Aix de Provence, and late at night we ended up somewhere in France near Salon.

It was really late at night when we got off a French big-rig. It was so dark, no moon or stars. Along the highway was light but as we moved just a hundred yards away from the highway we couldn’t recognize or see anything anymore around us. We walked into a fence. We climbed it. Not knowing where we are and not seeing anything, we decided to put up our tent here. Minutes later we were sound asleep. Next thing I remember was some yelling. As I opened my eyes I noticed that sunrise had passed. It was light. Some more yelling in French and then some shaking at our tent. It slowly sank in, someone must be yelling at us. We got out of our sleeping bags and opened the zipper of the tent and stepped outside. No wonder someone was upset and yelling at us. Unknowingly we had spent the night in the middle of someone’s backyard. We apologized and promised that we would be gone in 10 minutes. His tone turned more casual. We started packing and by the time we were done the homeowner came out again and invited us for breakfast. Hot coffee sounded good and we kindly accepted. We met his family and enjoyed the croissants and the coffee. With something warm in our stomachs we were back at the freeway.

In Montpelier a French woman with short dark hair gave us a lift. She spoke a few words English. With my lack of French and her limited English our conversation was quite interesting; it left a lot open to interpretation and imagination. I do remember that we spoke about the French women and their beauty. As with most people, the longer we were in the car together the friendlier she turned. She was on her way to her summer and weekend home on the Costa Brava. She invited us to stay the night at her place. I was quite tempted to accept. Loe straightened me out. Our destination was further south and we still had a few hours of daylight left. It was one of the few times I was a tiny wee bit sad to see someone go who gave us a lift. Next we left Barcelona in the rearview mirror and the night we spent in Sitges.

In Sitges we relaxed a bit, took a break, went to the bank, then to the beach with the enticing name "Playa del Oro". We didn’t leave till the evening. From here it was always south, always along the coast. After passing Valencia and reaching the southern portions of the Costa Blanca we felt we had gone far enough. We had hitched more than 1,500 miles in the last 5 days. In Alicante we had that "this is it, this is why we came" feeling, the one that tells you you are there.

Alicante itself is a mid-sized town. Like in many places on the Costa Blanca there were tourists, specifically Germans. The town was too big to be comfortable. We were looking for something smaller, something more personal. The beaches were more unspoiled in Santa Pola, a village another 10 miles south. It was more to our liking. Here we could enjoy the best of both worlds. During daytime we could take advantage of the infrastructure, the restaurants, the shady beach bars, and the grocery shops. In the afternoon we could leave the village on foot and find nearly deserted and quiet beaches. The nights we could spend on the same beaches, outside the village, without worries of being bothered by anyone. To our simple mind this was heaven.

What else would one need? We had privacy. We had "our" beach more or less to ourselves. We had sunshine. We had the ocean to play with and its waves as our radio. We had everything we needed or wanted.

I even had one of the best meals of my life here. In the late morning we always went into the village to shop for lunch and dinner and to indulge in a cool beer. One day we just randomly picked a restaurant that looked like a traditional place, one where the menu is still in Spanish and not in German. One that looked like one of a kind. We sat down and asked if they serve any food. We were the only ones in the restaurant. 11 a.m. was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The owner and waiter said he’d be happy to serve us but it would take an hour or so. We ordered paella and a bottle of red wine. Sipping the wine we quickly chatted the hour away. The owner brought in this massive, big and heavy, pan filled with the culinary delight, which I was sure, his wife prepared. We placed the pan between us and brought us two empty plates. We dug in. It was so unbelievable good. Lip-smacking good. We took our time and really enjoyed the meal down to the last saffron-coated rice corn. I will never forget this meal. The whole experience ranks up there in my top 3 meals. Even $100 meals could not generate the same joy. It was just fantastic.

People were friendly and easy-going. One day we were a few pennies short for a bus ride. I just gave the bus driver the last coins we had left and showed him my empty pockets. He looked us over from head to toe and then let us get in. During daytime we always left our belongings at the beach, unattended but slightly hidden behind some rather dry bushes. This way we could stroll into the village and do our shopping without lugging our heavy bags around. One day we got back to notice that someone had been messing with our stuff. It must have been kids, only a few small items like alarm clock were missing. We were lucky.

When the life of solitude on the beach got too lonely and we felt like being with people, we did an early evening walk into Santa Pola. There we usually bought ourselves a couple of beer bottles from a store. They had the right size for Loe, they sell beer in 1-liter bottles here. How convenient. With the bottle in our hands we sat down on some doorstep in a side street and watched life around us. People got ready for late dinner, the restaurant owner put up some extra tables on the street and placed candles on the tables, old people dressed in black slowly carried their groceries home, and kids played in the streets. Life evolved and we were casual and temporary observers.

The days had their own rhythm. We slept until it was too hot in the sleeping bag. A morning swim was our shower and cooled us down. For breakfast and shopping we went into the village. We also hid here if we needed shadow. In the late afternoon we hung out on the beach and at night we bedded ourselves in our sleeping bags on the beach with the stars as our blanket and the waves as our lullaby.

After a week of life on the beach and the white sand that the Costa Blanca is famous for, we both had this urge for change. We wanted to leave the last sign of tourism behind. We felt the best way to accomplish that would be by going inland. Let’s try. We got on a bus for nowhere. Any bus that gets us away from the beach would be fine. The first bus brought us to Elche (Elx). Elche was on our map; if a village is on the map it can’t be any good. We wanted something seriously small and unimportant, some place where nobody would stop. We got off the bus in a place called Aspe.

Aspe is not far from Alicante, maybe 20 miles, but because it is so tiny, without any sight, without any attraction and above all without water and ocean, it feels like a village in a remote part of the country, day trips from civilization. We got off the bus and strolled down the main road of this tiny village. The main bar, restaurant and café was the Restaurante Bar Pax. Pax, peace, that was the right name for a peaceful spot. We set our backpacks down and made ourselves comfortable on bar stools. We didn’t know it yet, but this bar should become our home for the next week. We were a sensation and the people in the bar-restaurant loved talking to us. It was clear that no foreigners ever make it here. They wanted to know where we are from and where we are heading. The owner was Antonio Sanchez Gil and he and his sons ran the place. One of his sons was a bit younger than us and was very proud of his very rudimentary English.

The whole afternoon we stayed at the Pax. Antonio’s son told us about a riverbed when we asked him where we could pitch our tent. The riverbed with its 6 feet high reeds became our residence. The next morning we strolled down the main road Avenida Jose Antonio. When the guests saw us coming down the street they got up and cleared a table for us. Within one day we have reached the status of regulars, VIPs. This gesture was so heartwarming. We were welcome here, not only by the owner but even by the guests. We took our sidewalk table and had breakfast, our faces warmed by the sun. For hours we sat here. We chitchatted with the son about music, our mutual favorites from Deep Purple to Falco. They all wanted to know why we are here. Why would we spend our vacation in Aspe when there are so many more interesting and nicer places? That was a bit difficult to explain in our hardly existing Spanish. We tried but I don’t think we succeeded in making them understand.

In the afternoon we left our table at Pax vacant for a couple of hours. We explored the village. The main sights were the main square, the fountain on the main square, and the police station. We were on the search for the bakery but the streets were very deserted. It took a while before we met an old woman that explained to us where the bakery is. We try to follow the instructions, a couple of left turns, a couple of right turns. Still, after following her directions there was nothing to see. No bakery, no shop, not a person, nothing that looked like a place where one could buy something. I was sure, we must have misunderstood her and made some wrong turns. However, there was some smell of bread in the air. The house were it came from was an ordinary house, no sign or anything. A curtain closed the doorway all the way down to the floor. We were curious now. We pushed the curtain aside. Instantly we were greeted by the overwhelming good smell of a bakery. The sight was magnificent. It was dark and hot inside. Old wooden shelves covered the walls to our left. The oven was in the back. White flour marks where everywhere, on the floor, the wooden shelves and the clothing of the old lady and her helper. After staring at this wonderful and original place, we introduced ourselves. We asked for some bread. There was plenty of it in big baskets. The old lady told us we should wait for the fresh one. She just put it in the oven and we should come back in half-hour. Then it would be ready for us. That sounded like a good idea. We restless waited and returned in half an hour. Our mouths were watering. We entered the bakery and watched them take the bread out of the oven. The lady also wanted us to try something I never had before. They looked like muffins and were called something like "madelenas". Since they came with the recommendation of the baker we bought two bags of them too. Right outside the bakery we devoured the first loaf of bread like wolves. Thereafter we finished off a whole bag of these "madelenas". They were sweet, fluffy, with lots of eggs and sugar. Above all they were full of taste. The trip to the bakery became an instant ritual. Every afternoon we left the Pax to make our way to the bakery.

We spent hours and hours over the next days at the Pax, writing letters, postcards and a diary. We drank beer and Loe had his daily shot of Uozo for a better digestion. We became part of the inventory there. The next day we discovered a market where we could get fruits and other goodies for breakfast. Now everything was complete.

But the day had to come on which we had to say good-bye to both people and bar. In 3 days and 12 cars we hitched back the same 1,500 miles we came. The last ride was in a minivan with a mother and her 2 young kids. We played with the kids in the back while she drove us all the way from an Italian Mediterranean town to Austria. It got dark by the time we reached Linz. She was so worried that something might happen to me that she left the freeway and made a detour just on my account. She drove me to a bus stop from where I could catch a ride home on public transport. I had come 1,500 miles by hitching, I would make the last 5 miles too. Before even the first bus showed up I was already on my way again. The second car at the intersection gave me a lift and minutes later I was back home.

This was it. My second trip to Spain. My second chance to make a good friend. Being forced to spend 24 hours around the clock for a whole month together quickly welds one together into a team, into a friendship. I know of no better way to make (or break) a friendship. With me, I only had good experiences and traveling brought me only closer to people.

These early trips were and are very important to me. I cherish them more than others, even though they were simple, without any real highlights. To some degree it was traveling for the sake of traveling. I had more time; and we could do everything leisurely. With time being no issue, we could indulge in the plain and simple. This said it is no wonder that I remember more details about these trips than recent ones even though I took them more than 13 years ago.