Going to the Great Unknown

Sunseed Desert Technologies

Los Molinos Spain

August 10th-20th

We left Granada full of excitement for our next adventure-our first eco-volunteer program/vacation. As we headed south the landscape become more and more arid to the point that I am not sure anything is capable of growing in this region. Per our instructions from the program we connected in Almeria to catch the local bus to Sorbas Spain. When we arrived in Sorbas which is a town of about 1000 we were dropped off at the bus stop which was basically at the side of the road next to the bar in town. I am not sure how someone is supposed to know this is the bus stop because there is no sign indicating such. Nevertheless, we found it. Our next instruction was to go into the bar and use the payphone to call Sunseed and see if the van was in town or we had the choice of walking to the village of Los Molinos or taking a cab. Well the bartender was not very helpful and would not allow us to use a phone so we trudged into town and found the visitor center and hoped maybe they had a phone or could help us. The lady was very helpful and when I told her we were trying to get to Sunseed she pulled out her own cellphone and called a cab for us. Within minutes he was there and we headed down the windy curvy road to the Village of Los Molinos de Agua. The cab dropped us off next to an abandoned rundown half-finished building on the side of a desert canyon and said we were here. Roby and I looked at each other and wondered what had we gotten ourselves into. Thankfully I had remembered that we needed to find the house with the blue door which I noticed was a bit further down the dirt path through the village. We were greeted by Sophia the sustainability coordinator from New Zealand. After she showed us to our room and dropped off our bags she gave us the grand tour of the project. We learned where the compost toilet (Vietnamese style-for those who don’t know, there is no toilet just a strategically placed hole in the deck) was located aptly named the “jungle loo”. Oh did I mention this is a British Charity Project so the majority of the staff members, in fact all of them except Sophia are British. We were shown where the shower, kitchen and laundry facilities (I.e. bucket and clothesline) along with being given the rules of which water lines (both river and rainwater) to use for cleaning, showering and brushing your teeth. With the village being completely off the grid there were very detailed methods of how the facility ran down to the three bucket process for washing dishes. The project had several different types of solar cookers and they had just completed a rammed earth type oven the previous week. The electricity was powered solely by solar along with the water, and the waste systems were all compost with the water being recycled and filtered through a reed bed system which then watered their organic garden and then back to the river. They did have a propane stove which handled most of the cooking but they did have a haybox system set up to keep things warm or cold depending upon what was put in it. There was no refrigeration and the once a week purchase of eggs or cheese had to be consumed that day. The project in promoting its sustainability and healthy but basic lifestyle only serves a vegetarian diet. It was truly amazing what wonderful food we had during our visit and they have converted us into eating less meat. Everyone is required to pitch in with the household chores choosing whether you want to clean, wash dishes or cook a meal. You were feeding anywhere from 15 to 20 people per meal so no easy task and you have to be creative because you are limited on the ingredients. On our third day there Roby and I along with James the Technology Manager from Wales were cooking lunch. Luckily we were on egg day, so I was the Top Chef and wrote the menu and the boys helped prep the meal. We made a great egg, vegetable, and potato soufflé along with baked zucchini and homemade tomato/garlic sauce and a fresh cabbage salad and fruit salad with a honey mustard dressing. (Sounds like a 5 star meal). It turned out awesome and we were accepted into the Sunseed Family! One of the helpers, Enriquo , who had been a volunteer at Sunseed in the past and loved the village so much ended up staying there would make us several meals while we were there along with his girlfriend Lucy from Britain. We were treated to some real Italian style food because Enriquo is originally from Venice. He has traded in his gondola for a tent along the stream in the Los Molinos Canyon. We just fell in love with the staff members and other volunteers. You could not have found a group of people from such vast backgrounds together supporting the same cause and belief system-to live simple and have a low impact on the environment. Our first friend Theresa was a fellow American volunteer from of all places Brooklyn, New York. We were labeled by the Brits as “The Americans” while Roman, Aurora, and Samantha were collectively called the “French people”. Theresa was only there for a week but we managed to do a couple of nice walks together, a swim in one of the neighbors makeshift pools (which by the way was really cool-he built a round stone structure which had a concrete canal system that brought the river water to his house and it would fill up in the pool which had a spillway when it overflowed and it went to water his garden.) and we even went together to one of the furthest southern beaches near a town called San Jose. We cheated that night at dinner and had chicken enchiladas at a Mexican food restaurant in San Jose. This was our first experience in the Mediterranean Sea and we were hooked. The water was divine and the temperature was a perfect 82 degrees. You could not ask for anything better. We ventured through several of the small beach towns along the way taking in the desert mountainous landscape. It is definitely drier than Arizona but has its own beauty.

Each day at lunch each staff member would advise what type of project they were working on for the next day and you had to pick one to help. The newest person was always allowed to pick first and then so forth. Roby became the designated painter and he helped VJ scrape and paint the main room of the main house for several days but he did go off and help in the organic garden for a few days. I did several different jobs, I helped make jam and jellies, I helped do some research on education grants for sustainable projects, I went on the weekly grocery shopping trip and I helped in the garden and in my downtime I helped Roby scrape and paint. We fell into our routines with ease, the morning wakeup at 7:15 which was difficult on a few mornings when we had a few late evenings, breakfast at 8:00 consisting of oatmeal or “porridge” as the Brits call it and Tea or homemade bread and jam (they go through a lot of tea at this place), then off to your assigned tasks for two hours. We then took a break at 10:00 with a quick snack and Tea again and then back to work for two hours before we settled down for lunch. If you were on lunch duty you did not have to go back to work after break, you got to start cooking. Everyone looked forward to the meals because as mentioned before the food was outstanding. Each day someone assigned to the garden would harvest vegetables and fresh fruit (figs, blackberries and plums were abundant along with grapevines growing everywhere). Everyone should have a fig tree in their yard. It has become our new favorite fruit. We even used the fruit from the agave cactus in several of the meals. One of the neighbors in the village had a special tool and showed us how to pluck them off the cactus without thorning ourselves to death. Once lunch was over the afternoon was yours. Everyone would venture to the swimming hole down by the stream which was a good mile walk through the jungle but once you found it the cold water was delightful. It was quite hot in the village and no AC so this was our way of cooling off. One day Roby and I ventured to a different section of the stream called Los Tessoros where there were several larger pools of water and a small waterfall through the canyon walls. Several of the staff members gave us directions and after some route finding and about an hour later we found them. Heaven. You could not have asked for a cooler spot and since we had it all to ourselves it made it even more special. As you will see in the photos we went Native. Most afternoons also consisted of a siesta especially after a tough morning of working!!! Then it was time for dinner. Did I mention how great the food was.

After supper there were usually different activities going on in the village or in the town of Sorbas that we would partake in. Every Tuesday Timbay, one of the local villagers who lived in a very cool renovated adobe style house with some more modern conveniences but still completely off the grid, hosted an open house where he showed off his museum of artifacts and products he made out of the agave stalk and served Ethiopian Coffee (which according to Roby was excellent). His parents were activists who built a school and sponsored programs to help improve the conditions in Ethiopia. Timbay continues to help them and is in the process of finding funding to set up agave groves in remote poor villages throughout Africa and the world. He showed us several films he produced which were dedicated to his agave business and the school his parents started. It is amazing what incredible things can be made out of agave-musical instruments called digidoos, furniture, flooring, and drum sets. He is pretty talented and maybe some day we will read about him. He lived in a home owned by Dave “the self-appointed” mayor of Los Molinos. Dave is one of the original villagers who came to reclaim the abandoned village. He has been there for over 25 years and is an expat from Britian. In fact the majority of the people who live in the village are British or American. His homes have been featured in several magazines as examples of how you can live off the grid and still enjoy the luxuries of civilization (music, tv, radio, hot shower). He is a great guy full of wonderful stories and the best outlook on life. He just hangs out and enjoys life. He told us one day-”there is no wrong way-just a different way”. Words to live by. In fact that is how everyone in the village lives. A simple life with good friends, good food, and good times. We are hooked.

Rod the resident “Dad” of our group, set up a star gazing presentation for us during one of the best meteor showers. He is from England and about 70 years old but he stayed up later and had more energy than most of us youngsters. He got along famously with the villagers and as any good Englishman he helped them polish off the beers. At about 10:00 pm he gathered us all together to watch a slide presentation relating to meteors and the constellations and then we headed out beyond our village to watch the meteor show. We were all lying on the ground looking up and screaming when we saw one shoot through the sky. A great evening.

It seemed like there was an event going on every evening. We timed it right and were in town while many fiestas were going on in town. It was amazing how much time and effort went into preparing for these events especially in such a small and remote town. One fiesta we attended was to crown the Princess of Sorbas and the other was to celebrate one of the many catholic saints. This event was huge and everyone from several villages attended because it entailed the annual bagel throwing event. As several of the villagers walked through town carrying a replica of the saint, the residents stood at their second story windows and threw bagels at the crowd. People were knocking others down and shoving and pushing to get the bagels. These were not soft bagels either and I was beaned in the eye with one and the back of the head. Sophia suffered a bruised foot and a cut on her finger. But we did manage to collect over two large sacks of bagels so we were set for bread for the next week. We ate bagels with everything. They were creative at meal time-bagel bruchetta, bread pudding, bagel chips, bread soup, pizza bagels, peanut butter and jelly bagels. Nothing goes to waste at Sunseed. This celebration in Sorbas went on until 3:00 in the morning. The Spanish know how to party. Even the kids are up until the sun comes up. We were allowed to have a late start the next morning due to the festival. Roby was in charge of making lunch one day and his partner Marlena a young German girl of about 18 who did not have much experience cooking so I pitched in to help them out. We made a great risotto with mushrooms, tomatoes and amaranth leaves from the garden along with a beautiful salad. It was gobbled down within minutes. Everyone is a good eater at Sunseed.

Our last couple of days were our best. James and his friend Aaron who came in from England to help with the wind turbine course gave us a presentation on their company V3 Technologies and the process they were going to teach on how to build a low-tech wind turbine. The slideshow was incredible and we wished we could have stayed for the course. He did give us a name of a company in Colorado who is similar so we are going to check it out when we get back. After the presentation we went over to a different village which was located about 40 minutes from Los Molinos near what they call Little Hollywood. This is the area where they filmed a lot of the Clint Eastwood movies-The Good, Bad and the Ugly, and A Fist Full of Dollars. One of the ten residents of Desert Stars has a private restaurant and movie night at his home. His home is located about 15 minutes from the main highway of which you have to travel down a dirt road which is actually a dried up river bed so you have to watch for flash floods! Once you arrive you are greeted by Lawrence and his wife outside their home which is under construction and probably has been for years. The home is basically a makeshift yurt but with an open front so you have an unobstructed view of the mountains. He has his “clubhouse” where he entertains and serves his meals and then just outside of the dining area are couches and chairs set up under the stars with a huge large movie screen where he shows either the Spaghetti Westerns that were filmed in the area or other popular films. Lawrence, a trained chef, served us an incredible meal of chicken and mushroom pie, carved chicken, eggplant, sautéed vegetables and a mushroom soup. Then for dessert he made apple pie with English cream. His wife was the bartender and we enjoyed our new favorite cocktail called the Tinto Verano which is red wine and lemon soda. It is similar to a sangria and they go down like kool-aid. We learned about them from Roshini (VJ’s girlfriend who was visiting him from London). She is a great girl and we had a fun time hanging out with her and VJ. She met him on a different conservation project and has come to visit him a couple of times while he has been working at Sunseed. She was getting ready to start her first year of teaching back in London. She has a great English accent and I think we learned a new language from her. In fact it was rather funny because we understood the German volunteers Marlena and Tim when they spoke English better than the Brits. We had fun with each other with our American phrases vs. the British phrases. They thought it was funny when we were heading into town and someone had to sit in the way back of the van and we said we would “ride dog”. Rosh loved it and I think it has been added to her vocabulary.

I think I have digressed a bit and forgot what I was writing about-oh yea- The dinner and movie night at Desert Stars. After our wonderful meal and before we watched the movie we were entertained and mesmerized by Lawrence and his stories about his travels through Europe and the Middle East in the 60’s & 70’s. He then told us he had written a book called “How to Build a Flying Saucer”. We all thought it was a fictionally story about his life but it turns out it really is about how to build one with the use of a gyroscope. He pulled out all these drawings and gave us an hour lesson on the science and physics of how it can be done along with his story of the prototype he has built. He was amazingly fascinating with the myriad of stories and knowledge he possessed. He reminds me of my friend Mike (I will leave out the last name to protect the innocent) who know everything about anything. He then changed topics and told us about the different levels of mysticism and showed us some more drawings which were incredible. He definitely confirmed you never judge a book by its cover. I think we could have sat there and listened to him all night but it was getting late so we decided it was time for the movie. We watched “Water for Chocolate” . We capped off the evening with a farewell drink and then headed home by the glow of the night sky. It truly was an epic evening and a perfect way to end our two weeks at Sunseed. We made some new friends and had an experience we will never forget.