In the last couple of months I got to shoot a few “assignments” — not as a professional service, but as a friend shooting a friend’s event. I uploaded the photos here.
Gil Tzallach's bachelor party
Gil Tzallach's wedding
Yehuda and Yael's engagement party
Cuernavaca, Taxco, San Blas, Puebla, Cholula, Veracruz, Isla Mujeres, Cancun
Who said airports are boring? Sometimes that’s where you start the adventure. Standing in the baggage claim area with all the other people, squinting at the entrance hole of the conveyor, hoping to see your bag finally roll out… Sounds familiar. Until you realize that everyone else has already left and you’re standing there all by yourself. And then the conveyor belt stops. Does that sound familiar too? Ugh-oh…
The one that was missing was our large duffel bag containing all the camping equipment. Thankfully it wasn’t lost — it just came out on the “special baggage” belt at the other side of the hall. That’s how big it was. We nicknamed it “jumbo”, and the security guy on the return flight asked the obvious body count question immediately as he saw it. Thank God we didn’t have to carry it on our backs.
Next stop: car rental. Here we paid for being cheap by having to stand in the longest line. (Mean waiting time at the Europcar booth: 2 minutes. At the Avis booth: 3 minutes. Solmar: 30 minutes…) But there was a reward at the end: after fumbling in the “C” drawer for a set of keys for about a minute, the clerk closed it and opened the “D” drawer. Out came the keys to a brand new Citroën C4 Picasso. We loaded the car with all our stuff, and realized that if it wasn’t for the upgrade, we would have had to sit in the car with half of our things on our laps. The shorter your vacation, the more stuff you take with you…
We took the car out of the parking and set out on our way to Espot, the little town near which we would camp for the first night. The way was amazing and very rewarding, if a bit tiring. Our GPS was feeling creative, and we certainly saw a lot more of the countryside than we expected. We stopped for dinner in a nice little village called Organyà, familiarized ourselves with the concept of siesta (nobody to talk to in any of the shops between 2 and 5 PM), and when the siesta was over, got ourselves a bottle of wine and some stuff to cook in the evening.
By sunset we found our camping site, and pitched our tents. It was getting pretty cold. There were a couple of caravans around us, but we were the only crazy people with tents. Ready to make some hot tea, we unpacked our brand new gas stove. Lesson number one: test your equipment at home. Fitted with a new gas canister, our stove let out a fluttering flame for a few seconds, and promptly died. No amount of tinkering, even by two men who love tinkering, would bring it back to life. We took out our wine bottle. Lesson number two: don’t leave your equipment at home. My well-tested corkscrew was no good if it remained in Tel Aviv…
Luckily, camping grounds in these parts of the world are much more than just grounds: we had at our disposal a whole dining room with a well-maintained fireplace and an owner who was more than happy to keep our tea glasses full. The cork gave way to some pushing and dropped into the bottle which we quickly proceeded to drain. A couple of lazy card games later, we went to sleep.
The place we were staying at was next to the Aigüestortes national park, and that was our ultimate destination. Entrance to the park with a private vehicle is prohibited, so we took a jeep ride from Espot to the trail head inside. The jeep climbed a steep road up into the mountains, and soon we realized that as we’re gaining altitude, we’re going right into the snow. The jeep dropped us off at a frozen lake, set against an enormous wall of a snowy mountain ridge. The view was unbelievable. We spent a few hours walking along the trail and taking in the crispy fresh air. The way back down was half on foot, half on the bottom, but everyone got back safely.
In the evening the same cork pushing routine was successfully repeated. But we did get a new stove, so the girls cooked a superb dinner while we were busy with the tents. In the course of being busy with the tents we also found out that our car lacks a spare wheel. Never occurred to us to check that at the rental agency. No more off-roading for us…
If the first night was cold, the second was even colder. We found the proof for that on the roof of the car in the morning: it was covered with a layer of ice. Since my sleeping bag is rated at +2 Comfort / -4 Extreme, I guess I got a tad on the extreme side on this trip. In fact it was so extreme that I had to sleep wearing everything I had, including the raincoat. After two such nights, we seriously needed a break.
The second day we spent on the other side of the park, trying to repeat the heroic deeds of the first day on a different track. This one proved much harder. We parked the car by a pond and started climbing the mountain, but it was much steeper and the patches of snow on it prevented us from going very far. We were alone on the slope, and it was easy to see why. After an hour or so we had to give up. We decided to use the rest of the day to get out of the park and start driving eastwards, in order to close the distance to Costa Brava where we wanted to spend a few days later.
Eventually, we found ourselves again in Organyà, where after much looking, we found an amazing apartment for the four of us for a very reasonable price. This was an evening to relax, take a hot shower, and sleep in a proper bed. It was not easy to get up from that bed, especially since outside the window an unwelcome surprise was waiting in the morning — cold, dark weather with a heavy rain to boot. Our plans to do some serious walking that day were foiled. We were forced into the car, and started driving east again.
We spent many hours in the car that day, passing through tunnels, on bridges, through mountains and valleys and small villages on winding roads — it was fun, maybe not as much fun as walking, but a different kind of fun. We got as far as Figueres, the city of Salvador Dalí, and visited his museum. It was easy to guess that he built this museum for himself; it is designed in the same insane fashion as anything he’d ever done, and contains samples of different works, including paintings, sculptures, pianos broken into pieces, boats on pillars of old tires and many other items which I’m sure have perfectly good explanations for their existence. Overall I thought the museum was a bit overloaded and tiring, but undeniably educating at the same time.
At night we camped in an area called Zona Volcanica, unsurprisingly situated next to a group of volcanic cones, to which we hiked the next day. Joined by several school trip groups of various ages, we climbed into the caldera of one of those volcanoes, in the middle of which a small forlorn church marks the spot where… well, apparently where lots of teenagers gather on school trips and play music on their cell phones. The weather didn’t look promising so we didn’t stay to listen.
Indeed after a little while it started to rain, and the last half hour down the mountain turned into an hour-long trek on slippery mud and wet rock. We stopped for a potato chips lunch near another church (in blissful silence this time), passed through a magical beech forest, and returned to our car.
The next night was to be our last before returning to Barcelona, and we decided that if we didn’t get to spend time in Costa Brava itself, we should at least see it from the window of the car. We turned east again, this time with the intention to go all the way, and camp somewhere along the coast. And so it was: a couple of hours later we were at the ocean, driving along a line of cliffs illuminated red by the sunset, dotted with villages and the occasional resort or hotel. (Or rather, dotted with resorts and hotels and the occasional village.) As the sun set we started to look for a camping.
They say Costa Brava has more campings than all the rest of Catalonia, but strangely while the campings up in the Pyrenees operate year-round despite sub-freezing temperatures, the ones in Costa Brava, where the climate is more temperate, are open only during the summer season. Fortunately after passing a few that were surrounded by chain-linked fences, we found one which wasn’t locked, and got inside. The last night of camping passed much like the ones before it — a freshly cooked dinner and another cork pushed down another bottle neck. (We never got a corkscrew.)
The next day we got up early and drove straight to the apartment we rented in Barcelona. After dumping the car’s contents onto the sidewalk beside the house, me and Dana took the car to the airport, returned it to the agency and took a train back into the city. The apartment was on the sixth floor, without an elevator, but that was its only disadvantage. It was roomy, filled with light and in a great location, just a few minutes south of the city center. We set out immediately to see Barcelona.
To get a feeling of the place, we started with a stroll along the streets of the old city. To me this is the most effective way to appreciate a city, the guidebook’s highlights checklist notwithstanding. We wandered into a random photo exhibition inside a medieval building in the Gothic quarter, rambled around the Ramblas, and when it started raining, took shelter in a pub and helped ourselves to a couple of pints. That afternoon was great fun.
Towards the evening we decided to start ticking off the checklist. First came Gaudi’s Casa Batlló, which is amazingly lit and a real treat after sunset. After that we bought tickets to a flamenco show in the Tarantos club on Plaça Reial. That was, in my opinion, a genuine experiment in bad taste. This club caters exclusively to tourists, “checklisters,” and puts on the same show thrice daily; the audience on our shift — the third one — consisted mostly of American youngsters. The band was very talented, but giving the same show three times a day can wear out any artist, and it did. Never mind… Everything is an experience. After the show we went back home to sleep.
The next morning we started with Park Güell. It is indeed a special place that is easy to appreciate, even if sometimes hard to enjoy, due to the sheer number of people trying to do it at the same time as you. That’s the unavoidable curse of many great places. Either way, our hunger pushed us out even faster than the hectic crowds, and after dining on two fine paellas, we split our group in two — me and Dana went to the MACBA, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, while our friends went to the Barcelona Football Club stadium and museum.
The MACBA, unfortunately, didn’t leave as big an impression as we expected. It is rather small, and I found one of the exhibitions interesting, but on the whole it was quite underwhelming. Our next stop, and the last for the day, was something else altogether: La Boqueria market.
Although it’s probably as much a checklist item as any of the other places, this one was pure delight. Stall after stall of beautifully arranged fresh produce of all kinds, a festival of smells and colors, a pure pleasure. We stocked on a variety of products, and loaded with bags, made our way back to the apartment. That night the four of us prepared such a big meal that we couldn’t eventually finish even half of it. But the fun was in the process. Stuffed beyond capacity, we went to sleep with our bellies up.
The next day was the last one of our trip. With that sad fact in mind we woke up, folded everything back into the bags, and took them to the central train station to put them into storage for the day. (Mr. Jumbo was a little bigger than the biggest locker they had, but gave in to some pushing to which we were already accustomed.)
Our last few hours in Barcelona started in the Sagrada Família, a remarkable structure if there ever was one. I’ve never seen anything quite like it; a single building that is as monstrous as it is beautiful, as awful as it is awesome, it certainly leaves a lasting impression. Under construction for over 120 years and not expected to be complete for at least another 15, all this time being built according to continuously changing plans, it embodies the dreams of many generations of architects and artists, starting of course with Gaudí himself. This shows greatly in the different styles of the building’s parts, incongruously sharing the same foundations, most notably the completely divergent designs of the two facades. All this is forgotten upon entering the church and looking up: the tree-like columns which support the ceiling are a conspicuous signature by the Master of All Architecture himself, and from what I’ve seen, are his greatest creation. Even the Coca-Cola vending machines right underneath them hardly manage to dilute the grandeur of the place. We left the church awe-struck and duly impressed.
After the Sagrada Família, our architecture-viewing capacity for that day was spent, and even La Pedrera wasn’t attractive enough to make us stand in the long line for the entrance. We decided to have a good-bye walk around the Gothic quarter, and after a while, found ourselves sitting on a bench on one of the streets, watching a few elderly couples dancing to Cuban music, drinking the spare bottle of beer that was left in our bag, and playing cards. As the sun went down, we waved for the last time to this great city, and boarded the train to the airport.
The Barcelona airport would not let us be bored. As we went through the check-in procedure, it was discovered that our bag contains an almost full bottle of wine, and a variety of cheeses that we had bought in La Boqueria but never got the chance to eat. They wanted to take the wine, the bastards, but we wouldn’t let them. After checking in all our equipment, we found ourselves a free bench, unfolded our treasure, and gorged on a considerable amount of fine Spanish cheese and wine. Couldn’t ask for a better finale.
Adiós, España, nos vemos pronto!
Mexico City
Wadi Dalton