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Tuesday 30 June 2009

Si si si siesta





Doo bee doo bee doo. I am back. And the crowd goes wild.

I am not sure if it is because I have been traveling a lot lately or what, but the post-holiday blues have hit me hard this time, harder than after Vietnam.

It is a little disturbing how little my real life excites and inspires me. Actually it just depresses the crap out of me. A rut is not the word. Every spare moment I have out of work seems to be recovery time. But what exactly am I recovering from? My life is not that hectic. I wish I could do more, much more fun stuff, but I never seem to have the energy.

I do know that every time I come back from a sunny place I feel amazing for a week or so before it all seems to fade away. I have known for a while that I feel healthier, more positive and more energetic in warm countries. I have the urge to do exercise, whereas when I am cold eating is the most appealing form of exercise.

I know that the holiday I just spent in Spain would not appeal to everybody. In fact, I reckon it would be many people's idea of hell. We stayed in a refugio (which is like a youth hostel for outdoor people) at the edge of a canyon. We shared a stone hut with 9 people. It can be a bit smelly and cramped. And you had to pay 2 euros to shower, so lets just say I did not shower every night (ahem. I shall leave out the specifics here). There were bugs everywhere. We cooked pasta on our camping stove, and ate bread and cheese the rest of the time.

But it was all so good. The rock in the canyon was just beautiful, cliff after cliff of perfect honey-coloured limestone with tufas and stalactites and mites and drips and blobs. Enough climbing for months and months. The saddest thing is that I am not able to climb most of it because I am too crap, and with my feeble arm, the chances of me ever climbing it are slim. But it was still so rad. And the weather was warm but not too hot, juuuust right (said Goldilocks).

The friends we were climbing with are on a year long trip around the world, seeking two things, good weather and good climbing. And I wish so much I had the means to do something like that too.

Life becomes so simple when your only aims are to eat, climb and sleep in a beautiful place each day. I know that life cannot be that way all the time, but for a year or so it could be. If money suddenly decided it liked me after years of strained relations.


Pretty weird that my ambition in life is to become an unwashed climbing bum, but right now the whole rainy rat race extravaganza is not my bag. Not at all.


Is this not a gorgeous hunky piece of rock?

11 comments:

LadyFi said...

Sounds to me like you might want to go apple-picking around the world and live unwashed but happy for a while!

Check out the sites about working around the world and how to survive on a shoestring...

po said...

Ladyfi: Oooh not so sure about the apple picking. I did that the first two years I was here in the UK. It was fun and stuff, but my back and knees suffered and, well, I guess I would do it again if I had to but I am getting on a bit for that type of thing!

Also they don't hire backpacker types much in the UK any more, they hire Eastern Europeans

Spear The Almighty said...

What is good about these kind of hollidays is that you actually "get away" from it all. Glad to have you back on the blogs though. :)

Helen said...

Yay! You're back! Are you sure you don't have SAD or something (which means you get to spend an hour a day standing in front of a lightbulb, thinking about things...).

I don't know how you can live in the UK, I've been there a lot, and my body clock gets totally messed up, particularly in winter when it feels like midnight at about 9 because it's been dark for so long...

And you can totally lift 2kg, you'll be climbing in no time!

6000 said...

I think that what you must realise is that (apart from the silver spooned few), you work now and you play later or you play now and you work later. Moderation now leads to rewards later.

Either that or you die heavily in debt.

Cam said...

Welcome back Poski. Glad you had a good holiday.

po said...

Spear: yeah but can I go back now please?

Helen: I totally have SAD. I know I should feel settled in the UK after all these years but I keep thinking I should move mostly for health reasons cos I seem to need to photosynthesise or summing.

6000: Yes, I do know this, hard as it is to accept. I think what worries me is, what if I work now, and then don't get to play later? Cos of kids or lack of money, or old age?

My friends who are traveling for a year are in far better financial situations than me. In theory I could do it now, but the future seems so precarious... specially with the work I do at the level I am at.

Ches: how is your knee?

Dash said...

sounds like you should start up your own rock climbing wall and spend all day hanging out with people who share the same passions you do (climbing walls and being smelly) and none of the boredom.

are you in on this nabloPOmo stuff?

Louisa said...

Maybe just moving to a place with nicer weather might help. I'd recommend SA of course, but recently it's been f-ing freezing here (well freezing in Africa terms anyway).

po said...

Dash: yeah I thought of that. The problem with these ideas is that I am not keen on doing that kind of work any more. What I want is to be like my friend, super clever and in demand so he can tell his work he is working remotely this year and then just bugger off and go travelling while he works. That to me is ideal. And never gonna happen :)

Louisa: we plan to move, but in the next 2 or three years, who knows. And as to where, we have no idea, but the main requirement is definitely sun :)

AngelConradie said...

Well, if your holiday was intended for climbing and sunshine then it sounds perfect.