Letur, March 28th

Today was a wonderful sunny day with a temperature of 24 C. At the moment we’re with 12 people at Luis’ place. There’s Luis of course, his German girlfriend, her parents and 2 sisters and one brother, a German volunteer, an Israeli volunteer, a friend of Luis and the 2 of us.

Yesterday evening they all went to Mula, to see and hear the tamborades, the drumming processions, part of the Easter traditions. Apparently everybody gathers with drums and as soon as it is midnight, they start drumming. We had gone back home earlier, because of Moos, but because the others didn’t get back till 2 am we didn’t have a working day today :-) We ended up doing only odd jobs around the house, cleaning up, sowing some seeds, planting some plants...everything in a very easy pace.

The work here is pretty relaxed, some is physical demanding but not too much. You can make it as demanding as you want. Luis is a great host, with so much knowledge. He explains every job well and also the context of what it is he wants you to do. This way you pick up a lot of information about farming. 

Most days we have worked close to the house of Luis’ parents. All those days his mother cooked lunch for us. Every lunch is like a 3 course meal. Amazing what she can do. Everything has been delicious! And his father turned out to be the musician of the family and played on the 12 string lute and sang a few songs for us the other day. Such friendly and gentle people....

Behind Luis’ house there’s a hill and on top of that is a big water reservoir, the size of a swimming pool. Three days ago Luis noticed a stream of water behind the house where there shouldn’t be a stream! Turned out the pool was half empty! There was a leak somewhere. Luis decided to further empty the pool. We filled as much bottles as possible with water before we had completely run out of it and Luis started looking for the source of the problem. He found it pretty quick. A connection had somewhere gotten loose, probably because of the temperature differences in the past week.

The pool now completely empty had left a layer of mud on the bottom of the pool. Monday’s job for a few people: clean the pool. Corné, the Israeli volunteer and me offered to take this on. Our rain boots would finally come in handy :-)

It was a messy job, not too bad actually and we were able to clean most of it, apart from the last bit. That was cleaned yesterday by a few others. All together we were out of water for 2 days, so no flushing toilets or showers. Fortunately we had bottled enough water to flush toilets and boil water for tea and cooking. And Luis’ parents were so kind to let us all have a shower at their place.

Our visit here is coming to an end. We will leave Saturday. Our next work away starts in 2 weeks time from then. I have found that what I need is a holiday. The 3-4 months before we left were tiring, having to get the house empty in time plus all the administration involved when you move (I sold my house), so I left pretty worn-out and although I feel better now, especially since the weather has improved, I feel I need a break. So for the next 2 weeks no work away for me. Corné will try to find a work away opportunity for one week on our route to Penela, Portugal. I will find myself a nice, comfortable camping close by and .....relax.....get into a rythm of doing my physio exercises in the morning, take Moos for a long walk and make a start with the books I planned to read.

But first we have to get out of here...haha... The dirt road is dry, so no slippery, muddy stretches, but it’s mostly climbing from here to the village of Letur. There also are 2 hairpins with hardly an opportunity to create momentum to ‘conquer’ these uphill hairpins. Our strategy will be to have the car and caravan as empty as possible. Luis will take our stuff with him in his van. In case we get stuck, we have 11 people, a donkey, a goat and Moos to push or pulll us out. Keep your fingers crossed!