Spain - Barcelona

Barcelona, gem in the crown of Catalunya!  

Barcelona, sparkling city by the sea!

Barcelona, Mediterranean Mecca of culture and cathedrals!

Music, dancing, art, architecture, tapas, vino - where you can turn the corner and stumble into a sculpture, or a festival, or a concert, where the plazas come alive at midnight and life spills out onto the streets, like a desert flower releasing its fragrance into the night.

Alright, enough of that.  

Barcelona was our little tourist binge.  Full disclosure, I hate being a tourist.  But of all the places to be a tourist in the world, life as a tourist in Barcelona is pretty fantastic.  It’s full of surprises, and full of adventures.  

Sure, it’s a difficult adjustment.  Shops and restaurants open and close at weird times (like pretty much whenever they want), especially the ones that don’t just cater to tourists.  And while there is a lot of great food here, the tourist places are pretty boring.  Most of the major attractions are overrun with tourists, all hours of the day.  

We crammed ourselves into a tiny AirBnB room in a tiny apartment, in proper Barcelona style.  It wasn’t comfortable, but it was authentic, including the ceaseless noise (music, construction, general yelling and shouting) at all hours of the night (and day).  It’s not cheap here, but it’s not outrageously expensive.  And getting to walk the streets of the Gothic quarter and feel like you’re in a surreal time warp movie set is incomparable.  Then you see the Segrada Familia and feel like you’re staring through a tear in the time-space continuum into an alien space opera.  Worth it!  

Fun fact about Barcelona - Spanish really is not the primary language.  It’s Catalan!  And Catalan is very different from Spanish.  I think it’s closer to Portugeuse and Italian, especially in pronounciation.  Most people speak Spanish and Catalan, but it is disorienting to constantly see signs written and hear conversations in Catalan.  Catalonian pride is big here, along with the constant push for independence from Spain, and people are not shy about repping their Catalonian nationality.  

It’s also a lot harder navigate here without any Spanish.  In Portugal, almost everyone had  functional level of English, but not so here.  Not even in shops and restaurants, though for sure in tourist info kiosks and whatnot.  Thank goodness I did some Spanish practice before we arrived.  Although I did get thrown for a loop when I tried to listen to people’s conversations and didn’t realize they were speaking Catalan… I just thought my Spanish was really bad!  After about a month here, I could pretty much immediately differentiate between the languages, but it took a lot of eavesdropping-- I mean ear training ;)

Still, Barcelona is a big, tourist-filled city. I think we both agree that we crave something a little more... relaxed, private, and off the beaten path. So we pushed onwards after a week in Barcelona, to a tiny village (150 people) near a tiny medieval town, just a bit further South in Catalonia. But we'll save that for next week, and for now, you get to chew on these great PICTURES!!

Alright, I know Park Guell is cliche... but this is a cute pic :)

Candyland?

Love the mosiac

L'il Catalan dragon friend

The tile lizard

It's a tourist trap, but it's beautiful

I think these two guard buildings are the best part actually.

Some of the tiling and colonnade plaza below... I actually thought it was a bit creepy down there!

Adorable!!

Richard and Kathleen - we found your leather work!!  Thanks for leaving it for us in Park Guell :)

Just a quick sense of the tourist denisty

The girls who took this picture made us do a pose - great idea.

Our first meal in Barcelona - empanadas!  Fue muy rico!

One of the many random sculptures you might bump into at any time
as you roam through tiny winding alleyways

Enjoying the full moon on the beach - the clothes came off and the swimming started after this :)

SEGRADA FAMILIA

I think this side is even crazier - it's like the gothic facade got swallowed by a monster with 5 jaws

It's still under construction - it was started almost 100 years ago!

The Mothership...

Or a giant membranous portal?

Or how about this incredible park with a giant fountain palace sculpture dedicated to the sacred feminine trinity?

Definitely Aphyna's favorite

Not extinct - just vacationing in Barca, like the rest of the world

Barcelona breakfast - cafe con leche y croissant!  Tastes good, feels awful

Portugal - Pico Island, Azores - SCUBA part II

Me and Pedro posing for a diving shot ;)

What Aphyna and I both experienced in this set of dives, in the ocean, the Atlantic ocean, the endlessly deep and wide ocean, is that the belief we land-creatures hold that the ocean is a treacherous, frightening place that humans are not welcome in, is false.  The idea lives in your mind, which sees the water world as unknowable, and different, and dangerous, thus something to reject.  But the real gift of diving is that you get to experience the ocean as a place that is also your home.  

It’s not that we could, or should, survive in the ocean forever; it’s more a feeling, an intuitive sense, that there’s nothing to be scared of here.  That life is going about its business - surviving and growing, eating and being eaten, minute by minute, wave by wave, day by day, year by year.  And when you see something huge, something unique, you are hit with a wave of wonderment.  Fear can bubble up from time to time - but it’s something you bring with you, not something that is waiting in the depths, threatening to swallow you up.  That’s something our culture has made up and conditioned into us.

Even sharks, the classic representation of the tales of terror beneath the waves, are vastly misunderstood.  Far from being bloodthirsty murderers, they are incredibly keen sensory hunters that play a critical role in the food chain.  They eat the old, sick and weakened fish from schools that would otherwise cause disease to spread rampantly in their colonies.  They have excellent eyesight and even better olfactory receptivity.  They would never mistake a SCUBA diver for a meal - they know exactly what you are, and to stay away from you, especially since fishermen and harpoon divers have killed so many of them.  They trust humans very little at this point, and rarely come close to divers (they surely will see you before you see them, and swim in the other direction if they’re not interested), even with chum in the water.  They aren’t mindless killing machines, driven into frenzies - they know exactly what they’re doing.  

Even if a flailing human on the surface looks like a seal, and they go in for a bite, they have sensory receptors in their gums, that give them immediate feedback on whether what they’re biting is actually a meal they want to eat - and when they taste human blood, they let go right away.  Unfortunately, they often sever an artery or take off a limb with their bite, so one bite is enough to create a story that sharks are vicious killers.

Ok, relax, we didn’t see any sharks on our dives, but we did see some incredible creatures.  First, we were surrounded by a school of Galley jacks, who came pouring over the lip of a sheer rock cliff that dropped from 20m to 35m.  They were with us for 5 or more full minutes, swimming back and forth to check us out, coming close to each of us in turn, and suddenly changing direction.  It was stunning to behold - it was impossible to count the number of fish in the group, certainly 100 or more, and many of them were quite large, a meter across.  But it wasn’t the size of the fish or the group that was so astonishing - it was the way they moved.  It sounds cliche, but the best way to describe it is that they were one organism, made up of many small individuals.  When they changed direction, they all changed direction at once.  How do they even do that?  It’s miraculous.  Watching them, and being in their presence, was surreal.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  But that’s what’s amazing about diving - we more than saw them, we met them.  There was nothing separating us from them.  We entered their world.  It was both humbling and exhilarating.

A manta ray!

Then, a totally different but equally stunning encounter (oddly enough, in the same exact spot) was with a giant manta ray.  Our divemaster tapped me on the shoulder, pointed, and there it was - HUGE, gliding towards us.  In the water, things look bigger and closer than they are, so I can’t say exactly how near it was. But that manta looked BIG, and CLOSE.  Its wings widespread, its mouth wide open, carrying two (large) fish on its back, it was a mix between an angel, an alien, and aircraft carrier.  My first thought was, “this can’t be real.”  The little librarian scientist in my mind just had nowhere to put this creature.  And the fact that, again, there was nothing separating us - we were meeting it, face to face - is probably the most surreal part.  I was just hit with a wave of awe.  All we could do was hold on to the rocks and gape.  It hovered over us, it passed in a wide, arcing circle, completely effortlessly, and wheeled off into the blue.  

There were far too many other memories to detail: we encountered everything from octopi cowering in crevices to horrific snaggle-toothed moray eels (one as thick as my thigh, no lie), barracuda, spider crabs and sea slugs and phosphorescent krill, chains of plankton and parrotfish and spearfishers.  But the truth is, there’s so much magic down there, and there’s no end to it.  The ocean is not what we generally think it is: an endless blue abyss.  It’s full of life, and not just life in the abstract sense.  It’s full of creatures, each one unique and alive, with its own peculiarities and idiosyncrasies and story and destiny.  And it’s full of curiosity, as well - it calls you in and has a good, long, look at you.  Hopefully, it spits you back out.

We’re back on solid ground now, drying out and decompressing.  It was a wild week, as exhausting as it was exciting.  We did do other things besides diving - including eating some of our best meals at a lovely restaurant, Ritinha (not even on tripadvisor!), just downstairs from our apartment, where the change the five-item menu every day, and you better get there early because they sell out of the best things fast!  We made friends, which was a treat, learned some Portuguese, and I got a recipe for Arroz Doce, Portuguese rice pudding, directly from a true Azorean mum (her son had to translate it for me step by step).  And of course, the sunsets.  

I need a little more practice but my arroz doce sure was delicious (and pretty)!

Good times reading tarot at sunset

Our “official” honeymoon has come to an end.  We appreciated it to so much, two weeks of truly just relaxing and enjoying the buzz of being married!!  But our honeyLIFE is just beginning! Who knows where it will end?

Our next chapter is upon us, now - Barcelona!  We’ll be staying in an AirBnB as we explore the city, putting on our tourist hats as we try to take in what the town has to offer.  We’re excited, and nervous - two very closely related sensations.  Back to the big city from the tiny island!  Will we survive the hustle and bustle?  Will one of Gaudi’s architectural masterpieces come to life and eat us?  Will we join a circus troupe, Aphyna as an aerial artist and Alex as, of course, a crossdressing clown?  WE DON’T KNOW EITHER!

Tune in again to find out! :)

Portugal - Lajes, Pico Island, Azores - SCUBA diving - pt I

We spent our next week on the lovely Pico island, about an hour flight (300 km or so) from Sao Miguel.  Immediately the differences between the islands were obvious - Pico is far more rugged, and is covered in jungle-like growth of gnarled trees, from shore to summit.  And oh, there is a summit (though it was completely shrouded in fog the first day we arrived) - Pico (which means Peak in Portugese) has the tallest mountain in Portugal (also called Pico), at 2351 m.  Which doesn’t seem like much - but if you remember that the mountain continues to drop steeply down into the ocean, and that you’re only seeing the tip of a 5000m mountain (or taller), it’s a bit humbling.  The mountain towers over the rest of the island, making it, and you, feel tiny, and setting the backdrop for some of the most gorgeous sunsets we’ve ever seen.

The islands are quite spread out! 

This is the view from just outside our house in Lajes

Ugh.  Too beautiful!

Arriving at the (tiny) airport in Pico

And, in true Azorean style, the people have made the most of the island.  It’s far less developed than Sao Miguel, owing to its harsher soil and rockier terrain.  But towns, fields, and even vineyards have been hacked free of the wildness of Pico.  They even have a system for growing grapes that uses walls made of stacked chunks of black volcanic rock, surrounding nearly every grape vine, to protect it from the salty sea wind.  It’s extreme - and extremely beautiful.  

The towns vary from tiny to decent sized villages, and all are fully in the Azorean style of red-tile-roofed houses sprawling over the steep and rocky shore.  Aside from the scattered supermarket or factory or marina built in a more modern style, you feel like you could be walking through another century, or through a town that has no desire, nor need, to change.  The towns, the homes, and the families in them, have the feeling of having been around for so long, they have grown from, and grow into, the landscape, the island itself.  The rugged lifestyle, carved into cliffs and sculpted by the wind and sea, fit the rugged island perfectly.

A view from an overlook - the weather here was almost as rugged as the landscape.  I can only imagine in the winter...

Plus, it’s the best island to go SCUBA DIVING!

Mainly because it’s got very interesting rock formations all along its coastline, which are easily accessible just by driving to different locations, putting on your gear, and jumping in.  So that’s what we did for the entire week!  We did nearly 10 dives in 5 days, and got to see some truly incredible stuff, from colorful sealife to underwater rock arches to a lighthouse that fell off the pier in a massive storm, and now sits 20 m below the surface (and is now colonized by hundreds of thousands of tiny shrimp).  But more particulars and pretty details in a few.  First, I want to say thanks to our dive shop, instructor, and guide; then I want to share some reflections on diving that Aphyna and I had during this wonderfully intense week.

We dove with Brizacores Dive Center, one of the several dive outfits on the island, and we couldn’t have been more satisfied.  The staff was so friendly and welcoming - from the moment they picked us up at the airport, Joao (most awesome foreign interpretation of “John” I’ve seen so far) and Pedro made us feel like a part of the community.  Plus their English was great (and entertaining at times), so it was easy to communicate with them (very important for dive safety!).  Joao was our instructor, and he was a true professional - always calm, clear, and focused, someone you could really trust (in the water, at least - outside he was a goon).  And Pedro was our guide for many of our non-instruction dives, and he was a blast, energized, but experienced and level-headed. He had an underwater camera, too, so any of the photos and videos we have are thanks to him!  But more than anything else, they were our friends, and when you’re strangers in a new place, there’s nothing better than a friend.

We were going for our Advanced Open Water Certification, which doesn’t involve a lot of instruction, but requires you to take on a series of dives that push your dive skills - a deep dive down to 30+ meters (100+ feet for you metrically challenged), a wreck dive, and a night dive (exactly what it sounds like), among others.  It’s a really valuable certification, and is it is required for a lot of special dive sites around the world, and its a prerequisite to continue to train as a rescue diver or guide.  It was a good balance of helping us grow as divers, while still being mostly just focused on diving, which was what we came to do!  

Joao (left) and Pedro (center) getting frisky

One of the beautiful dive locations - the rock formations are just as beautiful underwater!  I jumped off one of these rocks, about 10m - so fun.

The transformation begins....

Good times huddling for warmth between dives

Ok, now on to diving itself.  It’s one of those things that is so difficult to describe, because it’s so far outside the realm of everyday experience and its associated language.  It’s one part meditation, one part hallucination, one part transformation, one part extreme adventure sport, one part pure insanity.

For me, the rituals of diving create a sense of metamorphosis - from your normal existence as a two legged, gravity-bound, walking/talking human being, you become a flying, silent, watching, sea creature.  The rules of existence change completely, and you are now some cross between a cyborg and a mermaid/man.  You put on new skin, and a new shell, and suddenly, you have superpowers: you can breathe underwater.  You can fly in any direction.  Light moves in different ways, making things seem bigger, sharper, discolored, or just materialize (or dematerialize) into the hazy distance.  But you have new limits: you have to be aware of everything around you, which might be fragile or poisonous or have big teeth.  You have to learn how to control your buoyancy, which changes with every breath, like constantly walking on a balance beam.  You can only go up or down at a certain pace, or else you are subject to extreme pressure change pain, or worse, decompression sickness (the bends) which can kill you.  At depth below 20m, nitrogen narcosis can make your body betray you, ignore your commands.  You are becoming a new creature, and stepping into a new world.  It’s friggin awesome.  

It also initiates a psychological transformation, because when you’re diving, you have no choice but to be fully present.  Getting out of the present moment becomes a challenge, because this moment is so overwhelmingly stimulating - if you try to think about what you’ll have for dinner or that one time your friend’s sister said to you-- WHOA!  What was that??  Something pulls you back in.  You’re so completely unhabituated to this world, you can’t help but see everything with new, wide-open eyes.

The immediacy of the needs of your body hits you in a totally different way.  Probably because your body is experiencing something completely different from its normal set of stimulations.  Your ears and sinus cavity are being put under intense changes in pressure - you need to attend to them, all the time.  Your body is fully submerged in water, which is pressing in on you.  You have fins instead of feet.  You’re moving through a medium much denser than air - the simplest movements, like getting from point A to point B in a straight line, become totally fascinating.  You’re relearning how to move; you’re rediscovering how to exist in the world.  It’s all strange, almost like a lucid dream.  But a new sense of focus falls over you, and calmness - that is, if you can control your mind and keep from panicking.

Which brings me to the breath.  It’s the first thing to change when you start to panic - you breathe shallowly, you breathe a lot, and your air consumption increases rapidly.  And when you start to panic underwater, you feel it, right away.  The water world itself is not frightening at all - there’s nothing to be scared of, you’re safe, just as safe as on the surface world.  But when you start to panic down there, you realize that you are the source of your own fear.  There’s no denying your panic, there’s no escaping it; you’re alone.  There’s no way to speak underwater - you can only use hand signals.  It can feel very isolating, because if you aren’t close enough to touch someone, you can’t get their attention.  And if your own mind is not a safe place to be, that panic will take you over.  Then, a piece of you wants to run, and scream, and throw off all your gear, and take in great lungfulls of seawater - but you can’t.  You have to stay focused.  You have to stay here, in this moment - or you’ll die.  It’s as simple as that.  So presence no longer becomes a luxury - it’s a necessity.  

Deep, slow, steady breaths.  

Calm down.  

Everything is ok.  

Just breathe.  

Nothing else.  

You’re here, and breathing,

That’s all you need to be,

All you need to do,

All you need.

And just like the panic, falling into that state of presence is something you feel right away, as well.  When the bottom drops out of your fears, and you finally realize that you are here, in this totally new world.  And you start to enjoy it.  There’s always that moment for me in the dive when I finally relax, and I feel like I’ve arrived.  Breathing, buoyancy, movement, it all comes naturally and easily.  I can find the sweet spot of my buoyancy where all I have to do is breathe in deeply, and I rise up; exhale deeply, and I sink down.  Then, I just breath in and out, and coast.  I’m just flying.

That’s when I start to take it all in.  The overwhelming abundance that is life beneath the surface.  

Part II coming in a few days - stay tuned!

Portugal - Ponta Delgada, Azores - Dolphins

As if our time in Sao Miguel wasn't awesome enough, Aphyna and I did one of the coolest things we have ever done: DOLPHIN SWIMMING.

Now, there are many places you can swim with dolphins - the carribbean, Hawai’i, the Florida keys, Mexico, even Turkey, Egypt, and the UAE.  But most of these are in “Dolphinariums”, which are just what they sound like: dolphin aquariums.  The dolphins there are friendly, used to people, well taken care of, even trained, and probably more or less happy - but they’re in captivity.

That’s why what we did here in the Azores is so special: we swam in the ocean with wild dolphins.

It was pretty simple: after a small briefing about best practices for entering the water quietly and calmly so as to avoid scaring away the dolphins, we took a small zodiac boat with a marine biologist and a skipper and 4 other people out from the marina and along the south coast of the island.  We didn’t have to go far out at all, but that’s what’s amazing about the Azores - the parts above water are the peaks of a giant complex of huge volcanoes, one of the largest mountain chains in the world.  So then barely half a kilometer out from the shore, the depth is suddenly 3 km.  Wow!  

And, just like that, 15 minutes from the marina, we saw them: pods of wild Common Dolphins, one of the many species of dolphins you can see off the coasts of the islands, and one of the most colorful. They would swim within meters of the boat. We would try to get ahead of them, then slide into the water as they were passing, and with any luck, they would swim right past you if they were curious. Often, they would dive down below the boat, but come back up to the surface to give you a second looking-over (and you didn't splash around too much).

There they are - as few as one or two and as many as 10 or 12!

But now, in the wake of this experience, I am left a bit baffled by trying to write about it.  It just seems like something beyond the realm of the left brain, the logical/rational mind, which would so like to talk about the dolphins, what they looked like, how they swam, how many we saw.  I can even show you this video, and you can see them popping up out of the depths.

But that wouldn’t capture it at all.  Not even close.

How can I describe the magic of the dolphins?  

I asked for some help from Aphyna…

Only two at a time were permitted to slip into the water from the boat, allowed to enter their world.  Immediately we peered underneath the surface and swam toward the school of dolphins - sometimes they swam our way, sometimes they came near and then dove down. Other times they went in the other direction - leaving us with only a glimpse into their ethereal world. It was the most incredible thing watching a dolophin watch you - locking eyes with you - a connection that is indescribable, yet undeniable.

And their songs. You could actaully hear them talking to each other, an echo of sound so mystical and magical. You couldn’t tell where it came from - it was everywhere when you were submerged in the water. I will never forget the family of dolphins swimming right by us as we were floating, watching them under the surface. The baby kept turning to look straight at me - then it would straighten out to continue on with it’s mother, then turn and look at us again, full of curiosity. As if her mother kept saying “not yet, little One. One day when you are older you can venture closer.” But the baby’s curiosity did not fade. It was pure magic. I felt like a sea-being acknowledged and accepted by the dolphins.

And she inspired me...

First, you see them break the surface from the boat,

So close your breath catches.  

And already, in that instant, there’s contact.  

You want to go to them.

Of course, they know you’re there.  

When they breach, and jump, they’re looking at you.  

They are curious, not afraid - this is their home, their world,

You barely skim the surface of it.  

So when they look at you, it’s because they’re choosing to look at you.

When they look at you, it’s a gift.

And you feel it.

You feel their wildness.

You feel their playfulness.

You feel their intimacy.

They speak - you hear them inside your head.   

They stir the ocean inside you.

If only you could follow them.

If only you could stay.

I can’t stop seeing them.  

That image of a family, suspended in their blue atmosphere,

Flying, floating,

So connected, so complete, so whole,

Needing nothing.

I thought I would be terrified of the open ocean,

The endless abyss, a gaping emptiness like the sky,

Nothing to stop my fall.  

But something came over me in there.

The water was warm - it felt like home.  

The light danced; it brought the ocean to life,

Revealing that the ocean is not empty at all.

When you enter the water,  

Life becomes only what you can see, and what you can feel -

All I saw was beauty, beyond imagination, and endless;

All I felt was joy, joy in body, joy covering me and holding me and lifting me up.  

The fear was swallowed up.  

The ocean had a hold of me.

Maybe that was the dolphin’s gift.  

We're still taking in the dolphin's gift, but one thing is for certain - being here on this island, right in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, is giving us lots of inspiration.  And that's why we're so excited for our next week - SCUBA DIVING!  We're flying over to Pico Island, northwest of Sao Miguel, a much smaller and less developed island, where the diving is superb.  And you'll get to hear all about it soon!

Until then, keep your fire burning and your juices flowing!

With love,

A&A