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So, been having some great conversations with Paulo and Edna. Living in the Algarve in a bizarre mix of abundance and simplicity and love. Their home is a flat in a rundown villa. They have a circle drive, a beautiful pool and majestic patios. The furnishings are simple and well used. There are animals galore and kids, laughter and crying. There is a toilet that we keep getting locked into because the doorknob refuses any attempts to repair it. There is really weird plumbing (dont want to go into that one).
Paulo and Edna lived in Porto, in the north of Portugal. He had a thriving Tattoo business, 20 years of clients that kept coming back and referring their friends. He was doing 14 tattoos a day. Lots of fame. Lots of money. He came down here to the Algarve to have a life with less tattooing, less money and more time with his family. He has just opened a small tattoo parlor on a back street in the poorest city in western Europe when he could have opened one In Faro where all the money is.
Edna was a model. She celebrated finishing her modeling career by getting her first tattoo on her ankle. She is now pierced, tattooed and head shaven. She says those days of being a model weren’t really her. With a twinkle in her eyes she says she was never really much for caring what other people thought. BTW she also turned away from fame and money. Lately, she has been offered a full-time job doing really good things of helping poor people in the area. She said she doesnt want to do it. “Don’t need the money and I would miss my time with my babies, the mornings I have with Paulo and when nice people come and stay at our house I wouldn’t be able to spend time with them. I can also still help out but I dont want to work away from home full-time.” And she does help out – alot.
You know what I am going to say. They have had what so many want- money, fame. They turned away from it for a happier life. Kinda different huh. I tell you, I think they have the right idea. Sure, their lives arent perfect. They celebrate the uniqueness in themselves and each other and the world around them. They celebrate simple small joys. They even celebrate smelly dogs and nappies. They live unique lives where they celebrate the life in the big and small, the ups and downs of life. What a wonderful family.
Well, I finally did it. After over 12 years of talking about it I finally got my tattoo. Paulo worked on it for 2 hours. It did hurt – alot. He would still like to do some more colour. But, this is the one I have been imagining all those years. It is the tree of life with a wild vine wrapping around and from it. I am Sooooo happy.
I guess I never thought it was the right time because a tough guy stranger etching a permanent mark on me that represented my spiritual journey was just not the image I had. But, when I met Paulo I knew I trusted him and I respect him and his own spiritual journey. Just seemed the right time and the right person to do it. I have been talking to Paulo about doing it since May. I have found out that Paulo is not just a great person but one of the best tattoo artists in Portugal. He has been doing tattoos for over 20 years. He said that when he first wanted to do tattoos you couldnt buy a tattoo machine so he made his own out of a blow dryer.
He did many sketches in November before finding one that we both liked after about a month of efforts. It is a different sort of thing combining a tree and a vine I guess. So, I went into Spider Tattoos in Olhao today with Paulo and Serge and have come back with “ink”. Andrew and Sam are kinda jealous I think. I am so pleased. Paulo said it might not seem like my arm, at first, when I see it in the mirror, but actually, I recognize it. It has been in my imagination for so long and is perfect. I love it.
 Today was Hannah’s 12th birthday. It was a day filled with joy, happiness and drifting with tasty smells of chicken and banana cake. The Jones family tradition consists of the birthday person getting to choose the food that they want for breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. Hannah chose English Breakfast, tuna sandwiches, banana and chocolate milkshakes, Lemon and Thyme chicken, passionfruit Sumol and Banana cake with chocolate fudge frosting. What she didnt ask for is the special candles that kept relighting themselves. She got lots of great gifts including a nano, rain poncho, a very cool bag that Edna made, and a plastic teaset from Paulo that the boys were also enjoying.
Christmas in Portugal. We are staying at the Conscious Earth Eco-village. We will ask them to heat up the sauna for Christmas day.
They also have an outdoor kitchen where we will cook out our rolled turkey in raisin and orange sauce. Yes, we are in the middle of an orange grove so finding oranges is pretty easy.
Its a nice place to be this Christmas.
Hanging up some washing on one of the tipi bases. Continue reading Christmas in Portugal
Last night there was a hurricane. Serious, no exaggeration. First the teenager report than the official one from the news guys. Me and Andrew had a great time watching the light display and hearing the music of the rain from our bed through the night. A bit worried about Samuel and Alana (Donald stayed back because he was a bit under the weather and Elizabeth stayed back because she didn’t understand the attraction of an all nite party). They went off with Eddie and Rubin to an all nite beach party. Turns out that they didnt go to the beach but opted to stay at a shed outside a Dutch and Jamaican household who happen to be dance instructors and gave them dance lessons well into the night. Samuel announced triumphantly this afternoon that he had learned to do a headstand while dancing.
So anyways, away from the very clever teenagers that avoided a beach front performance of a hurricane and back to our would be romantic evening from our Maggie if it wouldn’t have been for the 5 young people sleeping in the truck. So the truck rocked like a cradle all nite. The light display and rain gave way to winds that kept sucking our door open, so we locked the door, seemed sensible. That was it. The next morning the bridge at the edge of the land was out, the river was overflowing and a very large electric metal tower thing bent over midway across a house to get the road into town closed during the day.
I started thinking. As I do too much. We had so much fear of being so vulnerable while we lived in our motorhome and here we are riding out a frost, an earthquake and now a hurricane. All this within a week. Why should we be afraid. I believe in a loving God who holds us affectionately in his arms. How many times does fear keep us from doing what we want to do. Fear keeps us from living a life filled with passion for living. Why should we be afraid. We have been in an earthquake and a hurricane in one week in our beloved Maggie. Way vulnerable but way protected.
We went to Silves, Portugal and met some more nice people, including Klaus, “Like Santa he says”. We looked around a bit. We like Silves but were feeling really scruffy and were kind of dissapointed after determining that the pool was way over priced for us. It also required speedos for men, one piece suits for girls and bathing caps for both. Lizzy had a sort of ’sour grapes’ response and decided we didnt LIKE the pool anyways because they had too many rules and decided to look for other options. We agreed but were still feeling scruffy. Looking to the internet for answers in the WIFI zone next to the pool like others would look into a crystal ball, Andrew came bouncing back to the truck. “I have found the place. The best place ever. Debbie, you will love it. It is called ‘Conscious Earth‘ and is only a few km away.”
Conscious Earth is the “grooviest campground in the Algarve’ so we just HAD to see it. Our GPS proved again to be clueless so we went old school. We noticed on their not-so-detailed map that the place was north of Silves. OK, north, so we drove on unmarked roads, through the ancient village of Silves with our giant truck trying to keep to the north of the village looking for the road that nuvi said didnt exist. I tried to resist images of last Easter Sunday in the north of Portugal and join Andrew in his enthusiasm. We finally found a 2 lane unmarked road going north into the hills and decided to take it. After going up a ways and finding several potential wild camping spots we started looking for a place to turn around and was greeted by the driver of an oncoming car. “We knew you would be coming. I saw you in Silves this morning and knew you would be coming to camp at our place.” We looked into the back of the truck and saw the looks on the kids faces. Mixed looks of disbelief, joy and shock. He and his wife turned around and took us over the next hill to ‘Conscious Earth’. Oh yeah, Andrew was right. I think this is the best campground ever for us.
So, we are now camping at Conscious Earth in the middle of an orange grove with Hammock island, Teepees, Outdoor kitchen, pizza nite, wood-fired sauna, all you can eat oranges and…..this little piece of heaven is run by…
a family that lived on the road for 4 years with their New Zealand housetruck! No lie! So we are having a great time here – all of us.
We have the local eccentric, Adi and his 16 year old dog (TJ figured out 112 in people years). Seen here burning 2 days of packaging. He says that if you compress your packaging into a cube it can create alot of heat and keep the elderly warm. He said he got 45 minutes heat from one cube of packaging. Worth thinking about. He has a 4 berth camper. He sleeps on one bed and keeps his recording studio on the other. Complete with speakers, amps, lights and electric instruments.
Living here is a great family with 3 kids +1 that our kids get along with great. Jason is the dad and here he is, hosting pizza night with his glorious pizza oven.
It was so cold that we had severe frost one morning, we had an earthquake in the middle of the night and we have again brought our rain curse, oops blessing, they need rain here.
Still, having an amazing time.
So, it is post-RockonChristmas Festival and we are supposed to be in Morocco. We are being held up by paperwork. But, you know we have been working hard so decided to take a bit of a break. We started discussing among ourselves, “You know people come to the Algarve that dont know Edna and Paulo. There are other great things down here”. We have reluctantly flown the nest to see the Algarve. We are tired, broke and dont like touristy stuff but we decided to go out for a look anyways.
Our explorations brought us to Armacao de Pera. OK I guess there ARE very touristy areas of the Algarve.
We still find interesting things to do – like… uh… torture ants.
However, it seems always possible to meet eccentric gems with words of wisdom. Like Sebastian. He has been on the road for over 20 years. Said he went into a house for 3 days and started twitching. Had to get back to his truck and the road. I was talking to Sebastian about our electric problem giving the appropriate excuse that we dont have alot of confidence with the electrics because we dont have alot of experience with it. With a smile on his face, he says, “Confidence comes AFTER the experience. Don’t you know, with small successes comes confidence. You never get confidence before.” Ouch, I needed that.
Next we went away from the coast because try as we could to take in the coast with style it was COLD and well, touristy.
So, feeling a little bit wiser, we ventured away from the famous coast on a long and winding road that our Nuvi declared did not exist and spent the nite at Dam 1, Barragem do Funcho.
We had the beautiful place all to ourselves. It was great but after a few accoustic experiments (talking in normal voices off the top of the dam to be heard at the truck) we decided to venture on because, hey, we are exploring. We soon found dam 2, Barragem de Arade, and seeing it was already inhabited by a couple of impressively tough overland trucks and their german owners.
We were surrounded by tough old germans that had been doing this for 8, 10 and 16 years. An impressive lot. Andrew refused to accept any alternative but to spend a couple of nights here to hang with the big guys, practice a little german and learn from some tough overlanders. We have realized that overlanders, however, are not a very social lot. I am beginning to think they might have overlander, go anywhere vehicles so they can run away from people.
This place was also great because it was next to an abandoned restaurant that the 18 year olds used to set up camp.
We also took this opportunity to try out a new Friday Nite pizza recipe. We tried pizza on a stick. We put some pizza dough on the end of an oiled stick and when it was cooked we took it off and filled it with cheese and sauce. Yummy. So, everyone at the dam was talking about Silves as a place to get water, food, internet and a pool so we continued our adventure and checked it out.
 Here are some photos of Alana. She wanted to travel and is now travelling with us. She is very colourful and very clever. She is American but has spent most of her life in Europe. In addition to English she is fluent in Portuguese and Italian. She loves learning languages, cartooning and customizing her clothes. We met her with her family at Freakstock about 4 years ago. We are really looking forward to getting to know her better.
  Promised some photos of Rock on Christmas and Alana and here they are. I am blogging from Cafe Chinta in Armaceo de Pera. The nice gentleman who runs this cafe says, “tell all your friends to come to my cafe and get free internet.” Anyways back to the photos. Our truck became a billboard. We covered it with posters on 3 sides and parked it at the edge of the street in front of the warehouse.
 The stage came around on Friday morning.
 Next came the generator. Andrew was drooling. Then he realized the generator had an inferior engine to Maggie’s engine. His mind started spinning about Maggie generating enough energy for some future festival in some sort of obscure location around the world.
 Now time to bring in some musicians. 8 bands worth. Great people to hang out with.
Hannah “helping out” Rob Cassells with his sound check.
Sam and Donald … uuuuhhhh … working hard on video.
Look who came to see us. Cindy! We love cindy. Me and Andrew met her when she was 14 in Australia. We are so glad she is still in our lives!!!
Rock on Christmas is over and done with. The warehouse is bare and ready to get the partially restored cars back inside. We had a great time! All of us worked so hard. Havent got all the technology and adapters and readers back together to be able to post pictures.
Photos: I will give you some of my favourite in word pictures since I am technologically challenged today. Lizzy and Alana shimmying up the poles of a bilboard to put up some Rock on Christmas posters – and arrows! All the jamming together – playing instruments together and singing as easy and profound as talking together. Sam, Donald and Alana in the “mosh pit”. All my kids but one on stage with the rapper. TJ and Hannah asleep next to the food stalls with heavy metal music blaring. Dang, was it loud. Many of us without voices and exhausted but what a great honour to be part of this festival. What amazing, selfless, crazy people those musicians were. How great to meet them. To see the older “father” musicians encouraging the younger ones and it warms my mother’s heart to see the impact they had on my kids.
Tip: Not exactly a travel tip. If you ever decide to plan and help with a heavy metal festival with your family ensure you have enough good quality earplugs for your family and some friends. It prevents the need to stick rolled up serviettes (napkins) in your ears when you are overcome with the reality and internal monologue of, “Dang, this is loud. I dont remember music being this loud when I was a teenager. Am I really that old?”
Other news, no I am not pregnant!!! Alana will be joining us. Where will she sleep? We have several ideas, not sure what we will go with. We love Alana. We have known her for about 4 years and she seems just crazy enough to travel with us for a while. I was going to find one of our old pictures of her but cant even get my act together enough to that.
We are going to go to a campground now with our extended family as is our family tradition after a festival to rest and regather.
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