Three weeks ensued when I fixed up my van and passed it through the MOT before I started the long road north on my LT28 to north Spain with an Israeli girl called Hadar who wanted to share the trip with me. It proved good to get some surf in Algarve and meet up with Marc who I had also met in Morocco while in the east we found some interesting eco-farm communities caught up among traditional villages which celebrated their patron saints with style, inviting us to a party with local produce for everyone called Santiago (and us, who weren't). We then continued the road to Leon, the mountainous province where we would be at the rainbow gathering for Spain. Having been there getting to know travellers from around the world was a real privilege though the esoteric nature admittedly put me off a bit as usual. Too much energies and Mayan calendars for my liking...
After two weeks oscillating between the camp and the town to do my work on the internet, these good times came to an end as we danced around fires naked or performed dramas, ran to rainbows hand-in-hand and saw some beautiful sunrises, swam naked in a nearby lagoon, or hung around farting and squirting liquid shit from our vegan-only arses.
Moving west with a motley crew of an Israeli couple and two Slovenians for company we connected with some couchsurfers in La Coruna through the msn and that same night hung out with one of the coolest guys I met. Oscar took all of us into his home for five memorable days never without a dull moment as his music-making and reggae-DJing took us into another dimension. With Patrik from Hamburg who was also Csing with us and his cool neighbour Ana we spent some great days and nights enjoying the Galician warmth of personality. After that we went to the Ortigueira festival, a folk festival which has very little to do with that if you do like most people and head for the forested area on the beach and party all night among tripping young people and various food and ornament stalls. The beach area was particularly spectacular, a small islet floating in the middle of this serene bay with a perfect mouse-sized A-frame breaking in the middle of it – a perfect spot to watch the sun rise or set.
In the end time caught up with me and I had to drive to Gijon, Asturias to leave my van with a surfboard maker (shaper) friend and then catch a bus back to Santiago to catch a ryanair flight to Liverpool at zero euros (plus 40e of taxes of course). Getting there at midnight and hanging with some cool Poles in the airport until morning I arrived bang on time that same morning at my brother Mark's graduation. It was cool to see him graduate with his classmates and along with the rest of the family enjoyed the ceremony while chilling in a beautiful countryside cottage in the countryside. Of course, it was impossible to get there but after some miracles managed to arrive there where we stayed for a whole day and left the next morning with a hire car to drive the family down to a slightly impromptu holiday in Florida, our first time to cross the pond to our much maligned superpower 'ally'.
Getting there we found the Americans to be much more agreeable than I expected, incredibly open, warm and friendly. They were particularly charmed by English accents and it was a pleasure to meet different echelons of society from varying backgrounds. From the rural dwelling Bible-belt Bush-fanatical family we stayed with to the arty single mum of 2 in the city, I found people who had a generally healthy outlook on life.
There were many immigrants from Latin America, many of whom were not even able to speak English and each with their own story to tell – one rowed for 11 days in a self-made dinghy across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to get to the US by crossing through its only southern land border. Maybe the USA gets judged too harshly and looking at it from their standpoint its easy to see how they can get imperialistic, arrogant and naïve to other interests. Their military power is such and their infrastructure is so advanced on every level, from communications network to financial freedom to quality of life it must be easy to forget the rest of the world exists and that they have to care about anything apart from their own feelings like the rest of the Western world. Even issues like global warming and the global distribution of wealth must be so inconsequential to them they are unable to grapple with the concepts involved. I suppose it is a common evil for us in Europe, the Middle East and other countries to demonize them to excuse our own behaviour even on a private level. But the truth is we are just as bad as them and its also possible that some of their interventionism is also based on an idea of getting their hands bloody so that other countries can have a system that is more like theirs. I however cannot just stand by their super-consumerist culture which I found so awkward and unfamiliar, even among the alternative crowd, while the social tensions found in the ghettos are clearly the crunching point of social degradation which makes America a much more racist country than other systems in Europe, even though the nation is inherently an immigrant-populated country which is now closing the door to this stream of open hands.
But on the whole it was good to see some people confronting some of the issues and being open in heart and mind to listen what we had to say. Perhaps ignorance is bliss after all but how can you change a blissfully ignorant nation anyway, if bliss is what everyone wants?
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