Puebla de Sanabria

Today I left Zamora, a really lovely town, and crossed over a Medieval bridge to my next destination, which is Puebla de Sanabria, just a bit over 100 kms away.

As I tend to maintain a rather leisurely pace of around 20kms an hour on average, this is another short riding day. I try to keep things as fluid as possible, in the event that I detain myself over some detail, or I have a particular interest in some location. The elevation chart indicated that today's riding profile had elevation gains of less than 50 meters until Tabara, where I stopped for lunch, and after that there was a mild 200 meter gain over a 40 km stretch until reaching Puebla de Sanabria, where I had booked a "pension rural" for the night. Essentially, a perfect day of cycling in an almost windless setting, temperatures in the low 20's, and mostly flat terrain. Thus I will spend some time and write a bit about how I travel, and why.

Usually, I get up around 8:00 or so, and have some churros with chocolate at a local bar, typically in the main square of whatever town I happen to be in. Then I'll cycle for two or three hours and stop at another town and have a break, typically just some mineral water and some olives with a bit of bread, also typically at a sidewalk cafe in the main square. There is a consistency to Spanish towns that predates fast-food, 7-11's, and multinational chains by thousands of years: the main square always contains a fountain or a statue in the center. At one end is a church or cathedral, at the other, city hall. All along the periphery in the arcaded colonnades are shops, bars and restaurants, thus without having to do a great deal of searching, all the amenities I am likely to need are close at hand and obvious.

Typically, I usually don't even look at the menu anymore, just ordering some mineral water, some shrimp fried with garlic, or some olives, or manchego, or fried new potatoes in olive oil with garlic and onions. Every bar has the same things, it's always delicious, dripping with olive oil, and exactly perfect for a quick snack. Tapas are a blessing for the solo traveller.

Then I'll cycle again for a few more hours, until the next town appears, and have a light lunch, typically a salad, though a mixed salad in Spain is fairly substantial and makes an ideal light meal.

After lunch, I'll ride around the town checking out the sights, and continue till my final destination for the day. Once checked in, I'll quickly wash my shirt, socks and underclothes in the tub or sink, have a quick shower, and either go for a swim in the hotel's pool, if they have one, or else explore the town. If time permits I'll sit down and answer some emails or write up a blog, and then I'll go out for dinner, which in Spain starts very late, 9 or 10.

Today, my first stop after breakfast was Tabara, a reasonably insignificant town of a few hundred people. I say insignificant because to the average, jaded North American there is absolutely nothing here that would catch their interest. For me, on the other hand, these tidy little towns often hold some detail which makes them magical. In Tabara, for instance, in the year 220B.C., Hannibal showed up with 22 African elephants and stayed for a month. Other interesting things of this "insignificant little town" include a Mozarabic mosque from the 9th century, long ago converted into a church, and most interesting to me, the remnants of a Visigoth church from around the 6th century. As is the usual case with the adaptive reuse of buildings throughout history, the portico and tower have been added at some later date, probably around the 11th or 12th century, judging by the construction technique and design. The town appears to have been far enough south that it was almost continuously changing hands between the Moors and the forces of Christendom, being pretty much on the front lines.

I always make it a point to read as many of the inscriptions as possible, since out of tiny little towns such as these have come historical characters that have later had a profound influence on history.

After lunch I pushed on for a few more hours over a landscape of scrubland punctuated by the occasional green field. Things are starting to get a bit greener, over all, and tomorrow I will be in Galicia, which is very green indeed.

The final climb today was exactly at the very end of the ride, up to the fortified hill city of Puebla de Sanabria, a charming town where one could spend several days if so inclined, just relaxing and soaking in the atmosphere.

The town has a lovely main square at the very top of the hill, at the foot of the castle and the church, a lovely medieval pile in the Gothic/Romanesque style dating from the 13th century. The castle itself is much later, dating from the 1400's, and has been fully "museumized", which is to say, one can walk around and interpretive plaques describe the function of various architectural details. Usually these are aimed at the non-specialist, so rather obvious for someone like me who has studied medieval fortification technology in detail, but the fact that the site is well preserved is always a welcome touch.

My lodgings tonight are at a lovely "pension rural" which overlooks the main square.

The secret to travelling inexpensively in Spain is to always book ahead, even if only by one day, and always use a web discount service, such as Expedia.ca. Typically, a room at a 3-4 star hotel in Spain will cost around 60 to 100 euros if you show up unannounced. If booked ahead and online, however, the price drops to 30-40 euros, and often includes perks, like access to the breakfast buffet and free internet wifi. As well, since I'm travelling in the low season, nothing is ever booked to capacity, and the rates are significantly reduced from high season. Such is the case for tonight's place, which boasts high speed internet, breakfast, and one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in.

In general, the way I travel, though modest in terms of actual expense, is in other ways entirely decadent when compared to the hardships which typical pilgrims on their way to Compostela endure.

Typically they fend for themselves in markets, eating bread rolls stuffed with whatever hams, cheese or sausages are available, and on reaching the albergue, will go shopping at the local market and make up whatever the cooking facilities allow. A note on albergues: these are typically run by the municipality or the local church, or both, though there are private albergues as well. An albergue is essentially a large dorm room, usually but not always segregated by gender, and there are usually bunk beds, often as many as fifty to a room. As is expected with the communality which makes up the entire camino experience, meals are shared, stories are told, clothes are scrubbed, and essentially it is a step above sleeping under a bridge. Sheets typically are not provided, and though the system runs well as an honour based facility, since 1998, the minimum "donation" is 5 euros, though private albergues will charge 15 euros or more, depending on facilities. Doors typically close at around 10pm, so there is no possibility of late night excursions, meanderings, or for that matter late meals, and everyone gets kicked out the next day by 8:00am, and one is only allowed to stay for 1 night (as if anyone wanted to stay longer). Many do not have hot water, and only crude, again communal, showering facilities are provided.

I have nothing to prove by staying at albergues. I have been swimming in glacier cold lakes in the Chilcotin, and slept under the stars with little more than a blanket. When I was younger I would stay at the most ridiculous hostels because they were cheap. At this stage in my life, the comforts of a firm mattress, a bathtub with unlimited hot water, and a local fine eating establishment are far more important to my well-being than the comaradarie formed by fast friends on the camino.

This sort of hardship is also somewhat non-sensical from an economic perspective, since the cost of traveling using the albergue system, versus traveling the way I travel is inconsequential: a typical peregrino might spend 20 euros a day. I spend perhaps 60. However, I travel three to four times faster than they do, spending less time on relatively uninteresting landscapes, and relatively more time on historic monuments. There will be those that will argue that the after-dinner metaphysical discussions which take place at albergues is an important component of the trip. I would answer that I have been to several of these discussions, as I often pass by albergues in the late afternoon to get my credential stamped, and have often been invited to stay and rest for awhile. Almost invariably, the discussions have been about what is most missed, how much they're in pain, how their feet hurt, etc. etc. etc. Albergues, by and large, are for pilgrims in their 20's or perhaps 30's. Those of us in our forties will find far more interesting conversations with people of our own age, who rarely stay in albergues, but who I will often encounter in places which I frequent, namely, sidewalk cafes and fine local restaurants. There will be those that argue suffering and hardship are part of the Camino experience, and I'm trivializing it by approaching it like some 19th century English traveler in search of fine linens, exquisite clarets, refined cuisine, warm baths and fluffy towels. To these people I would say that suffering is over-rated. Pain is psychological, and suffering is a conscious decision. In the end, I will still have the same framed Latin certificate on the wall, but the memories of exquisite architecture, lovely hotels, and an appreciation of the local cuisine will be far more vivid to me than if I had done nothing but stay in nasty albergues and eaten ham and cheese sandwiches for a month.

My own private porch in my room overlooking the main square.

Yesterday I had lunch with Heinrich and Frida from Dusseldorf, both retired teachers, who speak excellent Spanish (like most Germans, very crisp) and we had a lovely talk about the euro, and the future of European unity. Like most Germans, they are seriously wondering if the economic benefits of easier trade are making the tradeoffs of bailout payments really worth it. I was of the opinion that in the long run, Germany would probably leave the euro, since the northern way of thinking, that is, living to work, was irreconcilable with the southern way of thinking, which was working in order to live. While milage may vary ( the rest of Spain calls Catalans "the Germans of Spain", and in terms of transfer payments this is painfully true) there are economic basket cases like Greece that are beyond hopeless, and will never be anything like what a modern, industrialized, secular western democracy should be like. The Greeks simply do not have it within themselves as part of their national character not to find ways to game the system.

Afterwards I rode with them for awhile and when they stopped some kilometers ahead, I bid them a good afternoon and continued. I took careful note of their bicycles and equipment, most of which I was familiar with, having done quite a lot of online shopping in European bicycle shops in order to upgrade my own bicycle. They both had enormous Ortlieb panniers, which, while being first rate in their quality, weigh a veritable ton. They also rode fairly heavy hybrid bicycles, which are very popular here in Europe, combining the ruggedness of a mountain bike, with the faster speed of a road bike. I think they may find these a bit delicate once they reach Galicia, however, but they may well plan on sticking to the roads rather than the camino. In general, most German bicycle equipment is built for durability, with little or no consideration for weight. It's all excellent quality, but stupendously heavy.

My own approach resembles early 20th century British touring kit. I wear wool breeks (+4s!) and long wool argyle socks, and I do not use panniers but rather just have a waxed canvas saddle bag which quickly detaches and converts into a valise. I take good care of my equipment, and the ruggedness of heavy canvas and leather is sufficient for the more genteel touring I am accustomed to. This set-up does not provide as much room as a pair of nylon panniers, but again, having so much room is just an invitation to overpack. I find that having just a complete change of clothes, some light rain gear, an extra pair of socks, and some minor toiletries and electronics ( like this iPad), is ample enough baggage: just a touch over 12lbs including the bag.

I have been asked what it's like traveling alone; many people who take on the Camino do so as a group of friends, or will meet up with people and travel en mass. In terms of finding spiritual meaning in the exercise of pilgrimage, such as it is capable of being found, historically pilgrimages were almost universally undertaken by individuals on their own, for obvious reasons, thus I question the sincerity or intent of those who travel as a group. As Leonardo da Vinci so elegantly put it:

"If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of their conduct, and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight."

Other keen long distance cyclists, such as T.E. Lawrence and later Henry Miller made the same observation; traveling alone is a luxury, and not a hardship at all.

Furthermore, the many hours of introspection inherent in traveling thousands of kilometers is conducive to some form of meditative flux, certainly, though the idea that this leads to some transcendent state of Christian piety is laughable for anyone accustomed to protracted periods of abstract thinking in an academic setting; I get more from listening to a good lecture on quantum mechanics than the most erudite sermon on the fallibility of the flesh. I have noticed that most pilgrims on the Camino, again, young people, invariably have earbuds firmly installed and are no doubt listening to the latest Metalica album. Again, let no one talk to me about authenticity with regards to bicycling the Camino. For me, transcendence is a secondary aim, and the pursuit is to strip away the accretions of semiotic Hyperreality, and enter that elusive state of perspective where magic is possible, stone carvings can come to life...

...animals can talk, music is only heard in churches, a horse and rider are the fastest way anyone can travel, and the ethereal blue light coming through a stained glass window is more than just a beam of sunlight hitting a pane of molten silica impregnated with cobalt salts.

Almeria; The Good, The Bad, and the Absurd

Again, due to an unexpectedly short bicycle ride and another fortuitous wind, I find myself with extra time on my hands after showering, doing some laundry, and taking a swim in the hotel's pool. Therefore, in my never ending attempt to keep this blog up to date and providing you, dear reader, with the details of my peregrinations, I am now talking about things which happened more than two weeks ago. So far, I have made pilgrimages to Velasquez birthplace, Columbus' tomb, Pizarro's birthplace, and several other sites I have yet to write about. This trip is all about pilgrimage, but not just to Santiago de Compostela, though that is the general direction I'm heading. - J.

Today I'm going to talk about my pilgrimage to the filming site of The Greatest Movie Ever Made (tm) according to Quentin Tarantino, who we should take seriously, at least with regards to the sincerity of this belief, since almost all of his films are very similar in pacing, cinematography, music and flow as the film of which I'm about to write. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", (Italian: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) is a 1966 Italian epic Spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The very familiar soundtrack theme has now become the subject of millions of cell phone ring tones. It is the third film in the "Dollars Trilogy" following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965).

The making of the movie is as bizarre as its location, a tiny town called Tabernas in the middle of Europe's only desert, a tiny pocket where so many movies have been filmed which require desert scenes that almost all the rock formations are now, at least on a subconscious level, quite familiar to almost everyone; I had a weird feeling of déjà vu when looking over the landscape.

Fans of the movie will wonder how an Italian film, filmed in Spain, with Spanish actors playing American confederate soldiers, Moroccans playing Mexicans, and the American lead characters all communicated. This is almost a hilarious story onto itself. Sergio Leone spoke some English, badly, but enough to communicate with Van Cleef and Eastwood, and Eli Wallach spoke some French, which Leone spoke very well, and that is how they communicated. All of the dialogue was overdubbed in the studio afterwards, which is why only Van Cleef, Eastwood, and Wallach move their lips in synch with the audio, and everyone else has very badly out of synch speech, since they were speaking in Italian. Various reasons have been cited for this: Leone often liked to play Morricone's music over a scene and possibly shout things at the actors to get them in the mood. Leone cared more for visuals than dialogue (his English was limited, at best). Given the technical limitations of the time, it would have been difficult to record the sound cleanly in most of the extremely wide shots Leone frequently used. Also, it was standard practice in Italian films at this time to shoot silently and post-dub. Whatever the actual reason, all dialogue in the film was recorded in post-production.

Most of the Western scenes were shot in Almería in the south. The production required elaborate sets, including a town under cannon fire, an extensive prison camp and an American Civil War battlefield; and for the climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build a cemetery with several thousand grave stones to resemble an ancient Roman circus. The Spanish government under Franco approved production and provided the army with technical assistance; the film's cast includes 1,500 local militia members as extras. Ennio Morricone composed the score. Leone was instrumental in asking Morricone to compose a track for the final stand-off scene in the cemetery, asking him to compose what felt like "the corpses were laughing from inside their tombs", and asked the cinematographer Colli to creating a hypnotic whirling effect interspersed with dramatic extreme close ups, to give the audience the impression of a visual ballet.

Eastwood was not initially pleased with the script and was concerned he might be upstaged by Wallach, and said to Leone, "In the first film I was alone. In the second, we were two. Here we are three. If it goes on this way, in the next one I will be starring with the American cavalry". Eastwood played hard-to-get in accepting the role (inflating his earnings up to $250,000, another Ferrari and 10% of the profits in the United States when eventually released there.)

Wallach and Eastwood flew to Madrid together and between shooting scenes, Eastwood would relax and practice his golf swing. Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. Wallach mentioned this in his autobiography and complained that while Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes. For instance, in one scene, where he was to be hanged after a pistol was fired, the horse underneath him was supposed to bolt. While the rope around Wallach's neck was severed, the horse was frightened a little too well. It galloped for about a mile with Wallach still mounted and his hands bound behind his back. The third time Wallach's life was threatened was during the scene where he and Mario Brega—who are chained together—jump out of a moving train. The jumping part went as planned, but Wallach's life was endangered when his character attempts to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) henchman. Tuco places the body on the railroad tracks, waiting for the train to roll over the chain and sever it. Wallach, and presumably the entire film crew, were not aware of the heavy iron steps that jutted one foot out of every box car. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have decapitated him. The bridge in the film was reconstructed twice by sappers of the Spanish army after being rigged for on-camera explosive demolition. The first time, an Italian camera operator signaled that he was ready to shoot, which was misconstrued by an army captain as the similar sounding Spanish word meaning "start". Luckily, nobody was injured in the erroneous mistiming. The army rebuilt the bridge while other shots were filmed. As the bridge was not a prop but a rather heavy and sturdy structure, powerful explosives were actually required to destroy it.

The city which was built for this movie still exists and has been recycled several times in other Spanish and American movies, and it is to here that I have made my pilgrimage through Hyperreality . The place is now referred to by locals as "Western Leone" and is two kilometers out of Tabernas, the closest town. "For a Few Euros More", an old hunchback who speaks with a heavy drawl will be glad to show you the place. At first I thought he might be an actor putting me on, but no, he really does suffer from this crippling affliction, poor fellow... As might be expected, the humidity here is none existent, and one of the first things I did before setting out into the desert was purchase several large bottles of water, as just sitting in the shade is dehydrating.

Wooden structures here likely will last forever if they have some paint on them since rot is not an option. Louis pointed out the various buildings and described them in terms of where they were used in the film. Inside the saloon, some men dressed up like cowboys were sitting around the table playing cards. As I was the only one around, they paid no attention to my wandering about, but I noticed shortly after my arrival the sound of a small generator started up, and then the sound system started playing the familiar Ennio Morricone theme from the movie: all for my benefit I'm sure, and the only electricity in the whole place. Everything was very crudely put together, as is normal in movie construction, so many of these buildings have in fact been slowly improved to add to their permanence. In the height of the tourist season, when dozens of people might actually show up, they stage scenes from the film, including shoot-outs, complete with horses and gunslingers coming out of the saloon firing cap guns in the air. There is something mildly depressing in the fact that there is so little happening in Tabernas that they have to survive off the ruins of movie props built nearly half a century ago. It's all rather pathetic and desperate, right down to the white- washed reinforced concrete Indian teepees on the hill.

One really wonders at the Post Modernist mindset required of the Spanish people whose job it is to re-enact 19th century Wild-West American gun-slingers as portrayed by an Italian director in the psychedelic 60's filming in Southern Spain, all for the benefit of English and German tourists. Still, as an exercise in absurdity, it is a fascinating place to visit, more for the people than the place. Tabernas itself is a tidy little town of a few hundred people like so many thousands of other little towns of a few hundred people throughout Spain. There is absolutely nothing at all to recommend it and nothing even remotely different about it except for the local tavern, which doubles as a temple of worship for fans of the sacred Leone trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns. In this bar, the walls are covered with fading posters, most of them signed, and lots of faded sepia-toned photographs of locals helping out with the production of the movies. The woman who runs the place, infact, informed me that her father was one of the extras and personal horse assistant to Mr. Eastwood, and she even showed me a signed photograph of them together. Leone himself would occassionally come in for a quick bite and a beer between shots.

I asked if there was any hotel in town, and the owner said there wasn't, but she did rent out rooms upstairs for 15 euros a night with a shared bath down the hall, but I was the only guest, so I had it to myself. I said "yes" right away. Where else can one sleep in a Temple to the Blessed Trinity for 15 euros a night?

 

 

 

Trujillo; in the Land of the Conquistadors

Today there is a general strike, which means nothing is open, pretty much everything is closed (except essential services) and that, as they say, is that. This affects me very little, or not at all, since I am pretty self contained, and I have my hotels booked for the next few days. I think four star hotels are pretty much an essential service, at least they are for me. I have discovered another essential activity after a long day's cycle: swimming. The various hotels I stayed at throughout Andalusia all had roof-top terrace pools, and I made good use of these after I had cleaned myself up in my room and showered. After several hours in the saddle, swimming really helps limber things up, and is just the thing before prowling about the narrow streets of towns looking for a place to have a formal sit-down dinner. Dinner here starts late, typically after 8:00, and most places serve until midnight, after which it is customary to have a bit of a walk about, read the paper, etc. then retire for the evening. In any case, there is a general strike today, which means that most places are closed, and I might have to dine at the hotel: worse things could happen.

It does mean I have extra time on my hands which I can dedicate to catching up this blog and regaling one and all with more of my cryptic ramblings. "Oh joy" you are probably thinking, "more tortured and turgid prose with meandering tangents and verbose descriptions." But you would be wrong, my little pumpkins, and that reminds me of the time many years ago when I was at the very first Folkfest at Point Grey, and I left to get a falafel. When I returned, security wouldn't let me bring the falafel back to where I was sitting. Therefore, I was forced to consume the falafel in great haste so as not to miss the plaintive chanting and rhythmic gyrations of the troupe of folk singers from Mongolia accompanied on yak frame drum, or whoever was on stage at the time. However, in so doing, I accidentally consumed my ticket stub along with the falafel (it's easier than you'd think to eat a tahini-soaked ticket stub without noticing it), and it took a great deal of cajoling on my part to convince the security person to authorize my return. The reason I mention this is that today ( which is not today, but let's pretend I have dutifully been keeping this blog up to date for the past week) I find myself in Extremadura.

Extremadura is one of the poorest regions in Spain, though these days that typically means that a farmer has to make do with a 10 year old tractor rather than a new one. As the name suggests, "Extrema", or "edge", and "dura", meaning "hard", is the tough edge of Spain, a hard land that breeds tough men, tough women, and tough little furry dogs. In order to break up my almost continuous and exclusive diet of McDonald's hamburgers (I am kidding) I make it a point to eat native cuisine and try each regional dish at least once, no matter how repulsive and disgusting it is, or how much it reminds me of the taste of a tahini-soaked Folkfest ticket. On today's menu is the regional specialty, "migas."

Migas consists of stale bits of bread (fresh bread won't work) pan fried in pork fat, with a bit of paprika, garlic, bits of chorizo sausage and fried red peppers. Needless to say, there is almost nothing in this dish which could be considered "healthy" or "low carb" or even "low calorie" and I was hard pressed to finish even enough not to insult the waiter, who was probably raised on this and has a tear in his eye every time he remembers how his mother used to prepare it. Fortunately I keep a small Canadian flag pin in my pocket for just such occasions, and thus after discretely installing it on my lapel, politely indicated to the waiter in exaggeratedly broken Spanish that he could bring on the third course, which was a more conventional asparagus and mushroom egg scramble. While eggs and omelets in Canada are typically reserved for breakfast, in Spain they are served typically for lunch, and never at breakfast. Needless to say, I am very much missing the decadent restaurants of Barcelona...

The restaurant itself has a lovely patio overlooking the aforementioned hard land of hard people and hard animals, filled with ridges, hard rocky soil, and stunted sun-baked foliage. While waiting for the next dish, it occurred to me to think of alternative history lines where all the conquistadors had not actually come from Extremadura. Cortés, Pizarro, Orellana, Vasco de Gama, Núñez de Balboa, Hernando de Soto, Alvarado, and Valdivia, a veritable who's who of the Conquistadors, all the major ones in fact, were all from this area, which is the size of Switzerland, but even now has less than a million people. Things were a great deal more desperate then than now, which is to say that they were suffering more than just from old tractors, and leaving this for the New World was an opportunity. What is staggering is that with medieval technology, little education, and an apparent belief in their ability to do almost anything, they conquered a continent of millions of people. Francisco Pizarro, for instance, was indeed an orphaned, poor, illiterate swine herder with no formal education. Yet with 168 men, he took on a battle-hardened army of 80,000 Incas, fresh from having fought a civil war, and won. Before anyone romanticizes on the Rousseauistic idea of the "Noble Savage", let us face the facts. During many days of marching, Pizarro and his men had many times come across pyramids covered in blood, with human remnants scattered about which made his men more than a bit frightened and sick.  They fully realized their fate should they be captured, which seemed inevitable and yet they pressed on. The Inca belief was that the high priest summoned the sun to rise every morning, and to do this required a human sacrifice which was a beating human heart. The reason New World pyramids have such steep steps is that after being "disheartened", the bodies were rolled down the sides and it was important that they didn't get caught up since other priests were at the bottom to interpret the auspices based on how the body eventually landed. There is evidence of ritual cannibalism in both Inca and Aztec religious practice, so the highly idealized, peaceful and agrarian societies so often portrayed as some unspoiled paradise was far from that for the average Inca.

Prince Atahulpa knew full well the Spaniard's intentions, and also knew that they were not gods. Through his network of spies and those who had closely followed the Spanish upon disembarking, he knew that they were a small force and lightly armed. We know this because the meeting between Atahulpa and his generals is one of the few documents from the time period written from the point of view of the Inca which survives. It was his intention to capture all of them, relieve them of their steel swords and armor, and kill them off one by one as sacrifices to the sun. What happened next is something which staggers the mind. The night before the battle, Pizarro's men lay shaking under blankets because they saw the hundreds of camp fires of the enemy lighting up the horizon, and the various journals kept by Spanish soldiers all concur that grown men wet themselves in fear. Yet the next day, the battle was over in a matter of minutes, Pizarro and his men had killed hundreds of Inca and captured the king. The greatest empire of the Americas, the Inca Empire, the Romans of the New World, taken over by a band of illiterates led by a pig farmer.  It is too ridiculous to even consider, yet it actually happened.   How anyone could screw up with 500 to 1 odds is amazing thing number one to consider: all the Inca had to do was divide themselves up into groups of 500, and have each group pick a single target and pelt that one guy with rocks, spears and arrows, nothing more. Having to deal with 500 rocks launched at high speed, never mind arrows, spears, poison darts and everything else they had would have made short work of Pizarro and his men despite their armor. However, the Inca army was highly centralized and by capturing Atahulpa they essentially shut down the chain of command. Second amazing thing, probably more amazing, is why Pizarro thought he could take on a force which outnumbered him 500 to 1. Was he crazy, stupid, or a military genius? Probably a bit of all of the above, but that battle of 1532 must stand out as one of the greatest upsets in history.

Statue of Pizarro in the main square of Trujillo.

"80,000 Inca soldiers? No problem.

Fry me up some migas, lads, as I'll have this Inca Empire thing wrapped up by lunchtime."

Seville, And How The Divine Dali Earned His Mustache

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais' character has made this city world famous, though that was hardly necessary; the city is a collection of amazing temples and monuments. Christopher Columbus' remains rest in the Cathedral here.

The largest Gothic Church in the world is here,

attached to the amazing Moorish Girandola, with it's spinning wind-vane, and ramp tower that can be reached on horse-back for an unrivaled view of the city.

There is also amazing modern architecture, including this plaza canopy by the German architect Jürgen Mayer.

Naturally, there is the food, and freshly picked fruit that surpasses the most elaborate dessert confection that any baker could ever create by skill or artifice, so perfect and sublime are nature's creations.

The architecture is beautiful, the weather is beautiful, the food is beautiful, and the city is beautiful.

Signs in bars espouse universal truths.

The women, well, for a Northerner like me, the Spanish equivalent of the American Southern Belle, with all her coquettish charms and native grace only temporarily hiding her fiery Andalusian blood... the combination is irresistible.

But my pilgrimage here is different. I'm here to pay homage to something greater than anything that actually ever happened in Santiago. I could end my journey here and be emotionally satisfied. Amidst all of this beauty, I seek that place where someone first saw beneath the surface and depicted it; how things really are. Recently, while strolling through the streets of Barcelona on a perfect Spring evening, I had just such a conversation with my friends Pablo and Anna. Anna pointed out that the reality depicted in Woody Allen's recent film "Vicky Christine Barcelona" is only one side of the coin, and there exists the reality depicted in Iñárritu's film "Biutiful", both films, ironically, starring Javier Bardem. To really appreciate beauty, we must expose ourselves to every facet of what makes something beautiful, and that can often be disconcerting.

I move silently through the narrow streets, some not much wider than the handlebars of my bicycle.

Through these very streets walked someone who would change the world forever, who would change our way of seeing things. He was a minor noble, and regularly was in the king's presense, but in his lifetime he achieved only passing fame. It would take 250 years before his genius was understood and only then fully appreciated. The streets widen and become a confused tangle.

I ask directions, no one has any idea... Nobody knows, so familiar are we to His discoveries that we've always assumed the world was like this... I move restlessly through the Catholic streets.

Slowly I triangulate on a small area that contains a street that is just one house long, and there it is, I see it.

I move reverently towards it, I consider dismounting and approaching on my knees, The Divine Dali would have, but decide against it; at this stage I can't risk an injury. I approach, with temerity, almost trembling at the sublime transcendence of the moment, like my own personal Temple Mount wall, there is only the murmur of the city in the background, I am alone. I anticipate that electrifying moment of tangible contact with reality.

Do you see it? Look closer...

Still closer ...

Here, gentle reader, no less a personage than Diego Velázquez was born in June of 1599, and the world has never been the same since. He painted with bold strokes, anticipating the Impressionists by hundreds of years, and suggesting enormous detail without actually painting any of it. It's as if he's saying, "Do I really have to spell it out for you? Have you never seen lace or a silk shirt before?" We believe we're actually seeing something that isn't really there, and thus the illusion comes around full circle, that alchemical transition between the beauty we percieve and the reality we know. Both in his choice of subjects and in his technique, he invites us to admire all that is beautiful in the world, but as well to see behind the beauty, and to appreciate things for what they really are, and then appreciate it all the more on this much greater level.

* * *

Oh, yes, I'd almost forgotten, Dali and his moustache... He stole it off the self portrait of Velasquez depicted in "Las Meninas."

" Detail from Las Meninas"

 

Link to photos