Squid Ink: The Book of Costa Blanca – a Spanish travelogue

Indian Saying: pyar hota hai–love happens

Like an arranged marriage, you will learn to love it.

Introduction

Americans get addicted to ideals. We become obsessed with a picture of what we think is perfect. This mental picture includes a Lake Wobegon view of ideal jobs, perfect husbands, smart children, a second home in a foreign country surrounded by idyllic village people wearing wool cardigans. I never had a dream to buy a house in Europe when I was a college student. Cultured people lived and worked in Europe. Professional bike racers and movie stars bought old ruined castles in European villages and drank wine in the shade at lunch. Computer executives bought apartments on the Champs Elysees. I don't speak a foreign language and I have rarely visited a proper castle on all my trips to Europe. When we fly across the Atlantic, we go to visit specific rock climbing areas and to escape cell phones and computers. The ideal destination for me has wild scenery, good limestone, dirt trails to run on and warm sun.

What happened during one of these remote, crazy climbing trips is that I got sucked into some black hole by the bitterness of a Cruz Campo on a warm day and by the inner cogs of a small Spanish town. My husband is also a master salesman and worked his magic on me. We went to France and to Germany many times and then we went to Spain. The more we went to Spain, the more he wanted to go back and the more he convinced me I wanted to go back. Even when we started to get cell phone reception and internet connections, we still wanted to be in the Mediterranean fog on the Costa Blanca.

Spain became this revered place that we yearned for when we were at home doing everything else. It became the ideal. Maybe it is that rush of middle age that makes you want to actually do those 100 things before you die. Maybe it is all things weirdly Spanish and the pull of somewhere so different that I could be whoever I wanted to be. Maybe living in anonymity or ignorance is easier. Or maybe it's just the pull of paradise, wherever that is for the moment.

Meanwhile, this is the story of our ideal place and how we ended up with a village house in a tiny town where we don't speak Valenciano Spanish. I want to write it down because it seems so crazy when I try and talk about it and writing it down, somehow, makes every travel adventure, every search for a personal holy grail, seem saner. And I want to write it down because everyone keeps asking us where to climb and what to eat in Spain. This is meant to be an inspiration to dare people to go where no tour buses go and where the soul of Valencia still shows.

This is not the lovely tale of a sunlit town in southern somewhere inhabited by beautiful starlets and Cambridge graduates who spend long afternoons dining at quaint country inns. We like to be out in the country hiking or camping. We are climbers and tick by the climber's clock. If lunchtime is at 2 or 3, we will miss it because we are out climbing or running when the sun is shining or when the temperature feels right. The plot centers on a couple of Coloradoans getting out of the cold winter and eating crusty white baguettes out of a plastic grocery bag at the base of another Spanish limestone crag. Everyone has their own idea of bliss.