Blast from the Past ~ Spain

Multiple pantsuits, wig, and fashion hat ~ items I would never consider taking transatlantic today ~ easily fit in my three pieces of leather luggage, which I had the youthful muscle to easily carry. The year was 1971. Probably April, or whenever spring break was that year. My parents’ early graduation gift to me was a Spain/Morocco trip sponsored by my university. I went with four other girls.

Even in brisk spring air, we kept our apartment windows open to fresh Mediterranean breezes and sparkling sea views. A radio in our kitchen babbled Spanish into those breezes, because I don’t think any of the five of us understood Spanish. The DJ’s rapid-fire delivery had an exotic excitement to it, to my ears anyway, although he could have been giving weather or traffic reports, for all I knew.

Restaurant breakfast was a runny sunny-side-up egg floating in a bowl of grease; lunch was couscous, which a colleague back home had told me I must try. Whatever else I might have enjoyed about couscous was obscured by the rubbery whole octopi I fished out of it. I gamely ate it all, but the experience cured me of octopus for life. My companions apparently also had some unpleasant tastes in their mouths. All five of us agreed that for the rest of our week there, the only safe things to consume were Coca-Cola and bread, of which we purchased huge quantities. Morocco was a different story, probably because we were billeted in a French hotel. I can still taste the rich chocolate ice cream!

We made many memories. On our bus’s winding way to the Alhambra, we ate ham that had been cured underground out in the countryside. We saw farmers transporting goods on donkeys. One day we rented a car to go to a tiny hamlet up a mountain. As if five adults squeezed into a mini-mini-compact car wasn’t enough adventure, the mountain was enshrouded in dense fog.  After holding our breath through many no-visibility switchbacks, we arrived at the village, only to be trailed by two young men insisting we pay them to be our tour guides. All our efforts to shed their company failed until we finally just left to go back down the mountain. A bullfight and disco were fun, as was a horse-drawn carriage ride in Granada after an Easter parade.

My main takeaway from my first foreign experience was to at least learn enough of the country’s language to read signs and menus and say simple phrases to connect with people. Although my memories of Spain are good, they are mostly sensory ~ fresh air, bright colors, exotic sounds, different tastes. We were confused and separated from the people most of the time.

Today when I look at a map of the Costa del Sol, the names Malaga, Fuengirola, Torremolinos, and Marbella are warmly familiar, but as fuzzy as these photos. I cannot remember the town we actually stayed in. When I see on the map all the shopping malls, casinos, and water parks, I am grateful to have had a less commercial taste of Spain and view of a simpler life.