Part 20: San Sebastian

After our first round of pintxos, we took a little break to watch the sun set over San Sebastian’s second bay. Actually Sarah watched the sun set and I tried to inconspicuously peek behind Sarah at the relatively cute lesbian girls who were making out. 

It got me thinking that the same way a pre American Civil Rights Movement generation was deprived of the privilege of watching Lebron-James bowl through defenders and throw down a frightening-yet-beautiful dunk. I’ve been deprived of witnessing other relatively cute lesbians make out by society’s bias against homosexuality. 

And the fact that that thought made sense to me in San Sebastian is a testament to the city’s spell-binding beauty and cuisine that leaves you incapable of forming rational ideas.

Other things that hopefully make more sense

• We stayed in the apartment of a guy who was from Bahia Blanca (the Argentine city that lead me to Paul McPherson), which gave me the feeling I never needed of the trip coming full circle with my last continent-transversing excursion. 

• Our last night in San Sebastian, we stared at the city from the end of the bay, while a guy fished in moonlight behind us. 

Once he caught one I ran over to be a silly tourist and take a picture of the fish's flailing body. Then he covered it with a small white cloth and said “golpe de muerte” death blow and karate chopped it to death. I thought that was a pretty solid ending to the trip. 

Part 19: Bilbao

Bilbao played host to two of the strangest sequences of my life:

Rushing for the Blues:

6:45 Show up in Bilbao, our airbnb host invited us to a Blues festival that night in a old fisherman’s village just outside Bilbao. This sounded good, so we accepted. He told us we’d have to leave by 8:00 to get tickets. We needed to hit the market before it closed and wash the waterfall off us, but this still seemed do-able.

6:50 We discuss how we’re getting to the concert venue. Initially I thought our host, Imanol would drive us. Then we went over the plans once more and realized that Imanol wanted us to drive him because he planned on drinking heavily that night. I ignored how bizarre this plan was and told him that our car only has two seats and wouldn’t be able fit him and his wife and that I too might enjoy an adult beverage on the evening.

6:55 He speed walks us to the market. Once inside he says, “Tell me what you want and I’ll run and show you where it is, we don’t have any time to waste.” Sarah and I buy a frozen pizza to quickly eat before the show.

7:15 We’re back home. I’m wondering why Imanol didn’t bother to tell us that his oven was broken as I’m watching a frozen pizza dethaw in the microwave.

7:20 Imanol tells me that he will make us dinner and we’ll share, he then asks if Americans are normally stingy with food and makes a crumpled up gross face calling Americans stingy. I tell him we’re not and we like sharing. He makes this weird face at me two more times. I’m not sure why.

7:30 Sarah and I are ready for a night of Basque Blues. Imanol is still a ways away from being done with dinner. He’s sweating profusely as he runs around the tiny kitchen. Sarah thinks he’s on cocaine. I think he’s just crazy.

7:50 Imanol’s wife, Maria, comes home from working her second job as Imanol in unemployed. She’s a firey Columbian who immediately changes Imanol’s smooth blues to meringue.

8:10 Maria sets the table. The placemats are mini holographic posters depicting disjointed scenes of wildlife. My placemat changes from vibrant tropical toucans to wild deer running in a field. Sarah’s is an elephant in the African safari that changes into a bottlenose dolphin.

8:15 We all squeeze around a small table in an insanely small kitchen. Imanol shows off a his bottle of olive oil for the sixth time and he speaks of his salad as if he were Da Vinci showing off the Mona Lisa.

8:30 Sarah and I are baffled as to what happened to the crazy sense of rush. Maria recommends dessert and Imanol begins to cut pineapple. Maria brings our a large black portfolio from their bedroom. She then asks Sarah what her name is and says, “Justin, Sarah look at what else I do.”

Then she reveals charcoal-drawn portraits of little boys and girls, and a 1950s American actress that Sarah and I had never heard of. After flipping through six or seven, she thumbs to one of a dark-skinned, curly-haired boy. “This one is my son,” she says introducing him for the first time.

8:45 There’s a knock at the door. Imanol says it’s Ruben, Gloria’s son. The teenage Ruben enters and we throw him holas through the wall. He never responds and he’s gone. I’m left to wonder what is going on as I stare into my toucan/deer eyes.

I feel like we're in The Room where characters walk in and out with any context or explanation.

8:55 We all leave for the metro station to head to the jazz show.

8:57 Imanol stops at a toy store window to point out the model cars he’s fond of.

9:10 On the train Imanol talks to us as if we represent all of America. He asks why all Americans are fat, despite the fact that Sarah and I are both thin and he has a massive gut.

He says he was grateful that Americans saved Europe from the Germans in WWII, but he didn’t like our involvement in Vietnam. 

He says he can read English easily, but he has much trouble speaking it. He asks me why English is pronounced so much different than it’s spelled. I tell him I’m not sure. 

9:50 The 10-minute train ride Imanol promised turned out to be closer to 40 minutes. We walk over to the jazz show which is about halfway over. 

Tickets are still available. At this point Imanol says he’s doesn’t really feel like going any more and mentions that he already went the past two nights.

Halftime Break to Talk About Bilbao:

The Guggenheim is cool, but in terms of cool modern structures I saw on the Iberican Peninsula, I’d throw it at third behind Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias and the Casa da Musica.

Their river is gross.

Their old town (Casco Viejo) is nothing special.

Sequence Two (these time are even looser than the other one)

4:50 Sarah and I sit outside a bar on a busy Casco Viejo street sipping some vino and munching on a pintxo.

4:55 Everyone at our bar stares at a drunk woman at the neighboring bar who is laying on the ground under a table near a dog. Above the table are two guys. One wears a Kelly green polo, the other has a shaved head, reflective aviators and a tight-fitting grey polo with the collar popped. (I'm pretty sure this is the standard issue European outfit given to homosexuals once they've come out of the closet.) Also above the table is a normal-looking dude and a punk-rock-styled girl, who is floor-girl's friend.

4:56 I suggest to Sarah that she might be blowing the dog. Sarah says they’re making out.

4:57 You can clearly see dogs mouth and eyes. I think I’m right.

4:58 The woman takes her shirt and bra off

4:58:10 The dog is humping something…For a long time. Everyone on the street is watching.

4:58:30 I snap a couple pics.

Bestiality in Bilbao

Part 18: Las Merindades

Some times the pursuit of a dream is better than actually accomplishing it.

That was the final line of short informational movie Sarah and I watched inside the Cave of San Bernabe. That seems like a pretty deep quote, but since it came from a tour film conducted by a caveman actor with a pet dragon who kept askin us to have a sip of root broth, I chose to ignore it’s magnitude.

The cave itself was really impressive, yet I imagine that if I always dreamed of walking through a cave in a tiny Spanish town, that dream sequence would have surpassed the actual experience.

Alfoz de Santa Gadea

We stayed in a town that according to Wikipedia had 132 people and according to our b&b host had 70 people, which seemed like nothing, until we drove through neighboring towns that boasted a population of five.

The entire countryside was crazy beautiful. Our host’s baby daddy was an ex-pat who was a screenwriter hopeful in LA until he moved to a neighboring town in the Merindades region.

Our host told us that we were sharing the century-old-house with an American from Seattle. I got excited as I really enjoy Seattle and Seattlites for no particular reason. Then we met her and she was a terrible human being because she gave me a terrible, unsolicited sales pitch..

I told her I had a friend who lived in Seattle. Her first question was, “Does he work for a start-up, because there are so many start-ups in Seattle.”

“No, he works for some weird medical company,” I said.

“Oh there’s lots of medical stuff in Seattle too,” she said. “I work for a start-up, it’s called DataSphere. We sell advertisements. The problem with advertisements these days is that nobody watches commercials because everyone has DVR. We sell ads that go in elevators. It’s really innovative.”

I kept eating my shitty pasta and tried to pretend she didn’t exist.

This was the worst, unsolicitated “my job’s actually important” conversation I was jumped into since I met someone who sold life insurance.

Our conversation went like this:

“I sell life insurance.”

“Cool.”

“Let me ask you this, what would your loved ones do if you died?”

“I don’t know. Be sad.”

“Yeah, but what about your savings?”

“I don’t really have any money.”

Cliff Jumping

On our way out of Burgos, we passed by a modern-built castle and a waterfall. We were expecting the waterfall to just be something pretty to look at, but once we rolled up we found a beautiful lagoon that was just unreal.

We instantly went back to the car to change into our bathing suits. Then we waded in the water which was 10 chilling centigrade degrees cooler than I anticipated. It took me a good 20 minutes to work up the courage to swim the 20 meters to the waterfall because I’m a huge pussy who hates cold water. Eventually I swam under and I felt better than I’ve ever felt in my life.

I swam back to the lagoon’s shore facing the waterfall, on cloud nine, everything felt perfect. Upon reaching the shore I did the soccerplayer jump/fist pump combo, which is very different than MJ’s famed post-Ehlo defeating jump/fist pump. Then I started singing P.O.D because I don’t know how else to express how alive I felt.

I was completely satisfied with life but I figured I should still double down, so I decided I’d chase after this feeling again by ascending the waterfall and jumping the 25 feet back to the water.

Once up there I remembered how much I hated cliff jumping. I said to myself “I’m too old for this shit.” Then I remembered cliff jumping with all my cousins in Laughlin 10 years ago.

They were around 25 at the time. Granted I haven't talked to them in 10 years and from what I hear they live rather... umm.. different lives, but for better or worse the memory gave me some sense of courage.

Still it took me 10 minutes to jump because apparently I’m more afraid of cold water than I am of death/heights.

All went well, but it didn’t give me any kind of swimming-under-a-breath-taking-waterfall natural high.

Some times the pursuit of jumping off a waterfall is better than actually jumping off a waterfall.

Part 17: Gijon

Not sure what this monument is for

Sarah and I set a record for messing up a meal in Gijon:

- We sat in the restaurant 30 minutes before they began serving food.
- I went to the bar to get some drinks to pass the time, I ordered 2 sidras (the typical Cantabrian drink). The waitress then laughed at me and told me to only order one bottle at a time.
- I didn’t know the proper way to pour the sidra, so I asked the bartender and she poured a small amount in one glass.
- Then I went back to the table and filled up the glass to a normal amount, the waitress and three old Spanish men came over and told us I fucked it up as you only pour a tiny amount.
- The men yelled at me 2 min later as I was sipping my sidra and not shooting it back as you were supposed to with every pour.
- Also if you didn’t pour the bottle from at least 2 feet above the glass (ensuring at least half of it splashed on your table) you got yelled at. 

So everything was kinda stressful, but the rest of the meal was great. 

Gijon Honnestly, Gijon pretty much sucks. It has little to nothing to offer and it rained the whole time we were there, yet I loved everything about it. 

I think that’s mainly because we stayed with Guillermo, gentleman who reminded me of my friend Seth. 

Guillermo is an engineer (like Seth) lived by himself (like Seth), brewed his own beer (Seth doesn't do this yet), wore a Heineken polo tucked into his jeans (maybe Seth does this?), and spent nights that he wasn’t playing organized soccer by watching soccer on TV, in the dark (just like Seth!). In true Seth fashion, while watching one game on TV, he streamed another game on his badly outdated laptop. 

In conclusion if you are homesick for Seth and you stay with Guillermo, you'll probably like Gijon. Otherwise you will not.

Gijon also has a kinda pretty blue building!

Part 14: Porto

Porto: If you think it’s fun being unemployed in Spain, just wait until you spend a week coloring birdhouses in your Portuguese garden.

Again Portugal has brought out the wanna-be-tourism copywriter in me. Granted that pitch above is slightly faulted because, generally speaking, people who are unemployed probably don’t have money for vacation… And maybe the guys who hang out all day in Barcelona’s parks have tried painting birdhouses in Portugal and they prefer their do-nothing-in-a-park routine. 

But either way, that’s just a bizarre segue for me to launch into a story about our hosts in Porto, who enjoyed their unemployed lives much more than any of the other unemployed hosts we stayed with. 

“If you think you’re having fun collecting government checks in Spain, meet Arnold!”

Sure he wishes he was still running his restaurant that didn’t survive in Portugal’s brutal economic crisis, but now he spends his days sitting in an unkempt backyard, using a compass to make intricate designs on the side of a birdhouse. After three days of making circles, he fills them in with colored pencils. 

“But aren’t his culinary skills going to waste while he colors bird houses?” you may ask.

No, he still makes a tasty soup, and if you’re lucky enough to catch his 1am veggie medley, we’ll you’re in for a real treat.

“If you think you’re having fun applying for jobs in Spain, meet Tiago!”

We’re still not sure what Tiago does. Some days he hosts jam sessions in his backyard. Other days he meticulously combs the garden for broken mosaic tiles. Then he puts them back into the soil in moderately pretty patterns.

Every day he has an awesome beard.

He’s also really good at playing mixtapes comprised of swing-versus-electro beats.

“If you think you’re having fun wondering how you’re going to put food on the table, meet Rui!”

He doesn’t quite fit in with this bohemian hippy house as he’s roughly 20 years the senior of all the other residents. He’s extremely knowledgeable in all things Portugal. He may or may not be sleeping with Arnold.

The fact that all these guys were so happy really toyed with me as I need a silly freelance copywriting job as much for the feeling that I’m doing something productive in life, as I do for the money. These guys don’t give a shit and are awesome for it.

Casa da Musica

Not my picture

Dustin sends me a lot of New York Times articles with slideshows of beautiful architecture. I click and view these slideshows. Other than that I don’t know anything about architecture. The Casa da Musica (designed by Rem Koolhaus) was amazing though. I felt like I was in the not-so distant future sitting in a meteor-shaped theater with gold-leaf digital tiger print on the side walls.

I also think that if you name your kid Rem Koolhaus, he’s going to be an architect, and probably a badass one.

Is it true that Porto’s landscape architects are a little stand-off-ish?
Not so much so, but they’re not the warmest people in the world based on my encounter with one landscape architect named Sara (Tiago’s girlfriend) who kept a landscape architecture book on a music stand in the bathroom which was weird. But her own backyard was such a mess that maybe she needs all the inspiration she can get.

Pictures

Sound-reflecting bubble above Casa da Musica stage

Astor Place Cube rip-off

My rough attempt at a panorama

Part 13: Lisbon

Belem Tower

Note: I'll be taking a vacation from writing about my vacation, so there probably won't be a post on Thursday or Friday. 

Few people in life have baffled me as much as our Lisbon airbnb host, Maria Teresa.

Upon our arrival the septuagenarian welcomed us into her ornately decorated home and prepared us two cups of tea. As we sipped our tea, we tried to make the usual small talk. How long have you lived here? What do you recommend we see first?

She didn’t answer either question but instead asked Sarah aka Dara* about her MacBook. MT then told us she had a Hewlett Packard and that her previous airbnb guest also had a MacBook and that she thinks MacBooks are great computers.

When we told her we were living in Barcelona, she said, “I was there recently for the Olympics. There were a lot of trees lining the street, but I think they removed most of them? Are there still a lot of trees there?”

Barcelona held the Olympics in 1992 and I’m honestly not sure how the foliage has changed in the city over the past two decades. Because of both of those facts I was unable to answer any of her questions, so I guess we were even in getting to know each other better.

Within my first hour of meeting her I had so many questions.

How did she find airbnb? I theorized that it was perhaps a similar situation to a kid helping their parents get on Facebook, except that instead of gaining digital friend requests, this old lady was set up to have foreign strangers stay in her home. 

She didn’t seem to need the money as her place was massive and covered in fancy-looking junk.

Despite the fact that she spoke English fluently, she wasn’t all that conversational, so I don’t think she was doing it for the company.

Unfortunately I’ll never know the answer to any of my questions because when I asked her if the tap water was OK to drink, she walked in the kitchen and began to show me how to use the ironing board.

After a night of bopping around in Lisbon’s buzzing Baixa barrio, I set my alarm for 7:40, because MT told me the parking meters began at 8 am on Saturday. 

I woke once in the middle of the night by the blaring of MT’s television. I checked my watch and it was 5 am. Damn you Maria Teresa. 

Then I got up at what had become the ungodly hour of 7:40 to roll out of bed and feed the meter. As I walked outside I noticed a lot of cars illegally parked and several others who hadn’t paid their meter. I suspected that MT had given me incorrect information, just before I confirmed that meters were not checked on the weekends. I then shook my head and told the sidewalk that I hated Maria Teresa and hated myself for not double-checking her.

Other anecdotes I want to have written down to frustrate/amuse myself in the future:

• In the center of every doorway hung a windchime that would hit you square in the face if you were over 5 feet tall and weren’t paying attention. 

• While her house was old-lady-cluttered, it was noticeably absent of anything resembling a family photo. In her laundry room, above the machine there was a large photo of a 6-year-old girl deadpanning the camera while wearing a 1960s-ish-era dress. Above that photo, hung a framed advertisement for Cool Water Cologne by Davidoff, showing a black-and-white shot of a bare-chested male laying on the beach. 

On our third day in the house, I asked MT what was the significance of the photos. And with the first mention of her children, she responded, “That’s my son and that’s my daughter.”

• During a brief moment when MT was giving appropriate responses to my questions, I asked her how she got on airbnb. She told she found it on Google. And that is a prime example of when search engine optimization goes bad. 

• We had this conversation:

MT: I’m watching this really funny movie with this hilarious black guy (pointing to The Rock, in Journey to the Center of the Earth II). It’s a very imaginative movie. Americans love using their imagination, don’t they?

Me: (Considers correcting her that The Rock is Samoan**, not black. Decides to let her live in a world where The Rock is black.) I guess we do. 

--

*Sarah introduced herself as Sarah. Maria Teresa said, “I’ve never met someone named Dara.” Sarah said, “Actually, it’s Sarah.” MT said, “That’s great Dara.” And it was Dara the rest of the trip. 

**Wikipedia actually tells me: "His father is of Black Nova Scotian (Canadian) origin and his mother is of Samoan heritage." So I guess we're both right.

Chili’s

Dara Sarah loves Chili’s. A lot. It’s her Samurai Sams, except she had the pleasure of working at her favorite restaurant. 

Therefore, when we realized that one of the two Chili’s in all of Europe was located in Lisbon, we had no choice but to go. 

We had our jackets on and were halfway out the door when MT offered to show video of Portuguese bull fighting. We told her we were on our way to dinner. She told us to sit down. 

She then cued up a documentary that showed bulls running through a field. She pointed out which bulls were black and which ones were brown. The DVR denoted that the program was an hour long. We were screwed. 

We tried to get out of our mandatory Portuguese Bulls 101 class, but the best we could do was skip to the actual bull fighting. 

MT actually knew a lot about bull fighting, much more than she let on with her narration of the bulls’ colors in the documentary. However she made us sit through the opening ceremonies and a few minutes of Portuguese color commentary, until I told her that we couldn’t understand a word and that we were really hungry. 

Thirty long minutes later we were out of the house and on our way to Chili’s. It looked the exact same inside. The menu was nearly identical, except everything was a lot more expensive. The Pepsi still came in an over-sized mug. 

Dammit, all these posts are just about wacky airbnb hosts. Here’s some stuff about the actual city we visited. 

If the Lisbon tourism board ever said, “We need someone with one year of copywriting experience and 0 years of tourism industry experience to come up with a new slogan for our city.” 

I would be very suited for that loose job description and I’d give them “Lisbon: Just as many iconic landmark replicas as Vegas, but without any of the Vegas shittiness!”

Then I’d present these photos: The Golden Gate Bridge | Ponte 25 de Abril 

The Christ the Redeemer is hiding in the cross-beams

(Interesting fact: Many people will tell you it’s built by the same company who built San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, but it’s actually built by the company who built SF’s Bay Bridge.)

Christ the Redeemer | Cristo-Rei

Ever wondered how Rio de Janiero’s Christ the Redeemer statue would look against a faux Golden Gate Bridge? The answer is not so bad. 

Arizona Water Tower | Water Tower behind LX Factory

I’m not sure there is one water tower in Arizona, let alone a famous one that bears the state flag. But still I appreciate these guys’ homage to a landmark that only exists in my head.  

Other Photos

It may appear that I’m standing atop this amphibious Portuguese navy vessel and saluting the nation’s capital, but really I’m gathering intel… just in case Portugal attacks the States.

Below is their version of DUMBO, which technically is Down Under the Ponte 25 de Abril, except nobody calls it DUP2A. 

Hipster cafes, check. Hipster flea market, check. Front Street pinwheels, Dammit. 

I’m still not sure if Lisbon’s street-art asses are the 1% of street-art asses or the 99% of street-art asses. Either way, #Occupy4Life.

This street art isn't very applicable to anything

A cool letter C

Ferari & Flowers

Not Shuttleworth

My cool shirt from the flea market

Even when I’m on vacation, I’m thinking, “How can I make Janiga’s timeline cover photo better?” That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Part 12: Silves

If Lagos is where Brits go to blackout and enjoy their youth, Silves is where Brits go to blackout and enjoy their twilight years.

Since Sarah and I are not retired Brits or Portuguese mountain men, we really had no business being in Silves and we never would have got there if it weren’t for 1957 hippie truck house calling our name. Actually it called Sarah’s name. When I saw the weird bus with a weird picture of a weird woman sitting in its weird “dining room” I said, "nope," and continued my airbnb search.

Yet Sarah insisted we stay there, so we made a reservation, they accepted, I was kinda pissed. My faux-hippiness has a hard limit, and hippie buses on a hippy commune are way past that limit.

After a drive through a winding mountain road, we arrived and were greeted by the hippy kingdom owners: a pair of British ex-pats Jason and Kaye. Jason was a stocky, soul-patched bloke and Kaye wore a tapestry as she just finished skinny dipping in their lagoon.

We were shown our “home,” the hippie bus named Shambhala (after the mythical Tibetan kingdom of pure Buddhist land). Upon trying to open the house-truck door, Jason accidentally ripped the door knob off. Once we got in, we looked at three barely single size beds that were just behind a narrow, non-operational kitchen. We lied,  “These look great...” before Jason told us those were his childrens' beds, and pointed us toward the  “master bedroom.” In the family room there was a tree-trunk table, surrounded by a bench. The table doubled as a step up to the  “ master bedroom” which was positioned over the truck cab. It really was a beautiful creature and our first set of accommodations that didn't require house keys, due to the fact that it was situated in the middle of nowhere and there was no keyhole in the door.

Shambhala kitchen

Shambhala interior. Pics of ATVs and their specs provided by Jason's son when he was 5

We happened to arrive on Jason’s birthday and we took him up on his offer of heading to a bar with cheap beers. Before we drove off, Jason, the kind man that he is, gave us gifts on his birthday. We leerily looked at the crackers slathered in his homemade magic butter, but ate them of course (this was our peak of three consecutive airbnb hosts giving us free weed). 

I’d like to say that everything got Fucking. Crazy. Man. as I chased Jason through the hills on a road bordered with steep drop offs that made me feel like I was on an insane roller coaster. But really I death-gripped the steering wheel at 10 and 2 as I tried to shadow his late 80s Ford Fiesta as he burned through the mountains while I rode my brakes.

After we all survived and made it to the bar, Jason made his royal entrance, strutted up to the bar and asked for a “extremely large gin and tonic.” 

Curious how one comes about owning a 1957 gypsy bus, I asked Jason how the Shambhala came into his life.

“It’s quite an interesting story actually,” he said.

Well. I imagined it would be.

“I knew I wanted something different in my life, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was looking online and I stumbled upon the listing for the Shambhala which at the time was called ‘The Ritz’ and was being sold by a fellow named Rob Romaine.

“I told my wife we were flying to New Zealand to get it. While I was there I happened upon a gypsy fair in New Zealand. I saw this guy selling tickets for children to enter a mini matchstick mansion where kids can step in to see rats running around. The matchstick mansion owner wore a bowler’s hat with three mice running circles around the brim (note: maybe my favorite character detail of all time). I had a feeling it was him, so I said ‘Rob Romaine?’ He confirmed it was him. I told him I wanted to buy The Ritz.

“He said you don’t want The Ritz, you want this one, referring to another custom-made bus-home with a crankshaft that opened a cocktail bar.” (note #2: in my head I’m picturing some kind of hippy-alcoholic transformer.)

Jason insisted he wanted The Ritz and shortly there after it was his.

The rest of the night was spent talking to Jason’ gang of retired British ex-pats, many of whom told me the bought their house based on how accessible it was to roads that didn’t have DUI checkpoints. 

Once you’ve retired, your house's location really should be predicated on drinking-and-driving accessibility.

Every Brit in attendance was wildly liberal and conversations ranged from hate on Bush, to hate Blair, to hate on Halliburton. Jason was like a newly-converted liberal who just discovered the internet as he kept citing YouTube videos and “things he read in an email” for his sources. 

Somehow I swung the conversation to Concorde jets, and Thom (I’m not sure if that’s how he spelled it, but let’s assume he had a proper ‘h’ in there), the most talkative Brit in attendance gave me a lengthy rundown of his experience riding in the supersonic airliner.

His explanation included a reenactment of the afterburners firing, in which he got all the sagging skin on his body to jolt back, while he sat in a patio lounge chair. Clearly this was not his first time delivering this reenactment.

It was also at this point that Jason’s butter cracker kicked in, so Thom’s tale of riding a Concorde was the most fascinating thing ever.

The guy who ran the bar was named Kev, a half-Irish-half-Tanzanian former Hell’s Angel, who Jason described as looking as if he’d been chewed up and spit out. Jason’s description was rather apt.

Although he had the body of a 140-year-old, I’d guess Kev is somewhere in his 60s. Somehow his wife is a cute looking girl that appeared to be in her 20s.

I never got her back-story, but I really would love to know the home Kev's wife came from.   

A Far From Death Experience
The next day Sarah and I hiked through the surrounding hills. After three hours we realized we had little clue where we were as each hill looked identical and they were all just tall enough that you couldn’t see more than two hills away.

We’d stayed on trails, but switched trails many times over. Because I’m a huge pussy who is far from being an outdoorsman, I began to freak out a bit in my head.

In case you're not convinced that I was a pussy, here's what was in my backpack while my mind was starting to race:

- A working cell phone
- Cherries and almonds
- Water
- Sandwiches

In case you're still not convinced I was/am a pussy, consider this fact: 
- We had seen the house in the distance from a hilltop 40 minutes prior to my worries.

Despite knowing all that, my anxiety increased after I ascended another hill only to not be able to see any semblance of our homebase.

I began to do that whole “God, if you let me live, I’ll…” but I quickly realized the situations weren’t that dire at all.

Twenty minutes later we found the correct trail back and within the hour we were back in Shambhala. Best of all I didn't owe God shit. 

Back at home after my not-so-near death experience, I talked to Jason about life, drugs, and travels. Jason told me that all you need is enough money for food, drink, and travel, and seeing how happy he was, he sold his point well. 

When the subject of financial savings came up, Jason shook his head and contorted his face into the physical definition of bewilderment, “Pfff. Savings?! Why would you?!”

Just hiding, not hunting

Summer Camp
It took me a bit to realize that we were staying at a summer camp, except we were the only campers. He had a pedal-power go kart, a concert venue, outdoor kitchen, roundhouse, saunas, fire-burning baths, teepees, fiji style hut.

At night the stars were so close it looked like you could reach up and grab the little dipper.

Getting It
Our airbnb guest review from Jason and Kaye reads: 

"Lovely guests.who totally "get" what its about to stay here.They actually turned up on my birthday and were able to come and celebrate with me.They left Shambhala spotless.like they had never been in there.Really hope to see you again soon"

I think my parents would be proud. 

Festi Kids
Jason and Kaye's kids grew up living in Shambala and attending any festival they could navigate the bus to. Having been to 1.5 festivals in my life, I was always fascinated by the little kids surrounded by the weirdest (and arguably lowest) form of humanity. One day I'd like to make a documentary on festival-raised kids – and by that I mean I'd like to watch that documentary since I will never make a documentary in my life. 

Unfortunately I never got to talk to any of Jason’s three kids, which is exactly why I need someone else to make this documentary for me.

Jason said that at the festivals, Kaye would sell arts and clothes, while Jason would juggle fire. That got me thinking about Jason's résumé and how truly awesome it must be.

He also told stories about the mini-festivals they’ve hosted at their own house, which featured an anecdote about one hippy losing her pair of dentures.

Jason then segued to a conundrum he’s having with his 13-year-old daughter, who like most teenagers – and first-world humans – is becoming interested in clothes and material items. In order to get his daughter's values back in focus, Jason is moving the whole family to Sri Lanka for the next six months. 

What's going to happen to their property while their gone?

Don't worry, Jason already has plans for a spiritual dance troupe to watch the house.