Spain

Our new WWOOFing home, seen from up the mountain.

Austin here, with a quick update on our current happenings.  Very currently, Kindra and I are in a cafe in the medium sized Spanish town of Cangas de Onis, with our good friends Dane and Jillie, who also happen to be our WWOOF hosts this month!  They are incredible people, very close in spirit to us.  Their story are how to they got to Spain is inspiring: being young loves like us, and also travelers at heart, they WWOOFed across Europe before getting married and settling down in Santa Barbara (they ran a beekeeping business there, story for another time).  We befriended them in SB and connected with them easily.  Feeling the call of the wild again, Dane and Jillie decided to move in early 2012 to Northern Spain, to live on a farm called Duruxa (doo-roo-sha) that they had WWOOFed on earlier.  When they left the states, we were inspired by their choice of lifestyle, and it was part of our journey to where we are now!

Dane and Jillie relaxing on the local beach.

So flash forward to a week ago, we left our hosts in southern France via bus headed towards our friends in Spain.  One long overnight bus ride and several bus-layovers later, we found ourselves in rainy Northern Spain, surrounding by mountains and within a few miles of the Atlantic coast (to our north).  Duruxa is a farm on a mountainside, with little truly flat land, and filled with sheep, horses, a young donkey, chickens, a sweet, huge mountain dog named Saya (after a local river), and a wonderfully fun and loving community.  It is Dane and Jillie, James (from England, another UK host!), and Joel and Asa and their daughter Mali.  Joel is from Portugal, specifically from the Azores islands, while Asa is from northern Norway.  Both of them have spent the better part of a year biking across Europe, much to our excitement!  Everyone is incredibly kind here, full of tenderness.  While it rained the first night, we ate homemade polenta and played the "superfun game" in Joel and Asa's yurt.  It was super fun indeed, and it involved a lot of laughter.  The rain cleared up after a few days, just in time for Chapman and Peter (some friends of Dane and Jillie's) to arrive from their art schools in Florence for a few days of R&R.  We originally thought this would be exhausting with so many people there, but in truth Chapman and Peter both became close friends to us both right away, and we had many adventures together going up the local mountain or taking a day to the beach (which is absolute paradise, and it is only May!).  On Friday night, we had unlimited pizza night with sidra (a fermented apple juice drink made on the property), which consisted of baked endless amounts of various pizzas in their limestone oven!  What a blast! 

Kindra and Asa talk as our pizza oven warms up!

We are both loving our time here so far, and can't wait for the fun times ahead with our friends.  We can only get internet in the local town, so we won't be able to get updates up quite as quickly.  Love you guys back at home!

In Dane and Jillie's van on the way to the beach with James, Peter, and Chapman (left to right).

 More Picasa pictures: https://plus.google.com/photos/117860913937238604610/albums/5874570106035095985?banner=pwa