The Husbus Adventures - Part 7 - "Black Jesus And The Animal Graveyard."
Welcome Back or Welcome for the first time maybe !
This is a blog from when I decided to leave society and go travel in a van with no financial backup whatsoever. I intend to firstly document my travels on a website where it should stay for a while with no problems like on facebook etc so that I have it saved somewhere. And secondly I want people to read it because it can inspire others who want to get out of the mad house we were born in.
Ive had a non existant internet connection for the last 5 days, the futures not looking bright for people living outside of the citys! and so its been a wait to carry on the story.
Tarragona, Spain.
Another day in true freedom had started.
Maybe some of you are thinking " But wait a minute, his not entirely free as he must pay insurance on the van? and tax?"
The answer to that question is that I had paid for a years insurance and then after 2 weeks of paying it the insurance company said that I wanted to go abroard but they said I wasnt insured for abroad. So I asked them if I cancelled it and got one for abroad how much would I get back. They offered me 5% of the year that I paid and I remember telling them, "Well looks like ill be having no more insurance then" and I hung up the phone. Fucking criminals.
I gave them 800 gbp and they wanted to give me back like 50 GBP and then charge over 1000GBP for a years insurance for Europe. My tax disc would soon expire but I just found someone when it had run out who sold fake English tax discs and insurance papers. And anyway in 2 years I only had to show insurance and licence one time, another perk to having a "stealth camper".
I had only been living like this now for under 21 days and it was already my new lifestyle. I had absolutely no need to go back to the old lifestyle and absolutely no want either.
We woke up around 10am and had the usual disgusting instant coffee and a cigarette. I hate cigarettes - the taste is wrong, the ingredients are also wrong, and to top it off theres no real effect from the drug anyway. We had not even 5 euro to spare from pancake selling, and it was definatly time to get some weed. We hadnt met anyone as the place we parked in was quiet as not to get clamped or moved on , or robbed.
After a tour of the city we hadnt really seen anyone who looked like they smoked.
A couple of hours later back at the van, 2 guys walked by and I decided to ask them if they smoked because I had seen them walk by before with red eyes. They were very skeptical and replied in Spanish, me and Ryan had no clue but the Mex translated and they said they will walk by again later. Sure enough just before the evening they did and we smoked a joint or two. They couldnt speak much English but after a while they were hanging out relaxing after realizing that yeh we looked strange , but we were nice company to otherwise boring day for them.
After a while I asked if we could go buy some and they agreed. We went on a "Bimble".
A Bimble is a walk to an unknown location. We thought that we would be walking to a set of houses or appartments atleast to go get some smoke, but instead we walked a while through the middle of now-where and then came to a huge abandoned factory. The whole place was unused for decades it seemed everything was rust brown with lots of old trucks and cranes still parked in the small parking area.
We started to climb on the old vehicles and took pictures whilst one of the Spanish rolled another joint. There was a grain storage shed full of what I thought to be shells from some grain, a huge mountain of it now home to a million pigeons and rats.
This place was a bit creepy, would have made a great scene from a hill billy horror film. I went and took a look around for things I could reuse and found a plastic water container and that came with but apart from that there was nothing else. We smoked all sat on the huge bonnet of some old rusting american truck and then we headed off.
We walked in silence mainly because of the language barrier and plus we were all so fucking stoned. Spanish people make joints that ruins you if its indica straight away.
We then joined onto an old unused train track and followed it over a huge old dark green iron bridge where the track ended but we had to keep going over the bridge shimmering on the very dogdy beams and wooden planks.
Shortly after that we left the old train tracks and turned left into a huge open area. We were walking on small mounds of like chalky stone, very interesting- almost like how volcanos are its flowed and set again, but a very light grey colour instead.
The Spainish guys pointed and told the Mex that we were heading to the building that was across this huge open space and they carried on walking over to the colourful building. Ryan and I was fascinated at these mounds of rock and anyway headed in the same direction behind the other 3. I had to ask the Spanish what these moulten piles of white rock was and they told the Mex that it was a graveyard for big animals such as horses. This was weird. I had no idea that these animal graveyards existed and this one was huge.
So we were walking and hopping from mound to mound, of solidified animal bones. We then realised that the rain over time had melted them and added like eroding effects which had made them look very trippy.
This was for sure one of the top random place ive gone to to go get smoke, secondary to being taken to a back office of a fish market in Nairobi Kenya.
We had nearly got to the place.
From afar it had looked like a building, but as we got closer we saw it was all made from trash and odd bits of wood. There was a huge compound and it was like being teleported to Africa.
The Fence was 3 meters high, full of graffiti making it very colourful mix of corrigated iron and pallets and wood of different kinds. The 2 spanish guys told us all to wait outside whilst they went in to ask if we could also go inside. They took some time and we just checkout out the insanely constructed wall built of everything possible it was really facinating, would have definatly kept zombies out for a good while. The door opened and the spanish guy came out, but we were good to go in and followed him into the big fenced compound. I really did feel like I was back in Africa. There was art , wood carvings all creating a real African feel to the place.
Then sure enough, an African man came out with an old white woman behind him and they greeted us and his name was Jesus.
He was a very happy man, and had obviously lived there some double digit years. Inside his home it was big, and just as creatively built as the high fence around the backyard. I cant remember much apart from it was dark inside and we waited for Jesus to light the candles. When the candles were lit, it was like being in Aladdins cave of worthless treasures, a huge array of small random objects. He showed us a bench like thing to sit on with a table between so we sat.
Out came some weed and we gave him some euros and started to make a joint. I really wish I could remember more about what we spoke about and where he was from etc, but I have no clue. We stayed a while and then got asked if we wanted to eat with them. The Spanish had already gone home but this place was so fucking random that we had to stay. The reggae music was turned on on and old vinyl player and we looked in awe at the collection of objects that had obviously been found in trash and were now legendary historical objects such as a Walkman.
It was now dark outside and the women had lit a fire in the backyard and there was plastic chairs for us to sit on.
The backyard was huge and they definitely had a great place to live. We stood at first as Jesus went back in to the house, and then I noticed there was a dog in a dog house looking at us from the edge of the compound. I like dogs so I went to say hello and the thing went mental at me and I was lucky that it was on a chain. Jesus rushed out from the house and told me the dog wasnt friendly, which I had already figured out. Plastic chairs sat under the stars away from the city light pollution waiting for the food laughing at the randomness already after leaving Barcerlona.
And then it came smelling of delicious meat. We were passed a bowl and it was a watery soup - we hadnt eaten meat in ages and were happy. I clearly remember this moment though whilst complimenting on the food , I wanted to break the silence and asked what meat it was as it was very tasty. I was expecting him to say lamb as it was really tasty and Jesus said "oh theres no meat its just blood!"
Fuck it , it was cooked and it tasted great . Me, Ryan and the Mex just looked at each other waiting for a reaction from one of us , but then there was none so we just carried on eating it.
It was getting late and we were outstaying our welcome, well we proberbly wernt but anyway it felt time to head back to the van. We thanked Jesus and the woman and they said if we wanted more smoke then we could just go there again.
Just another random day to go get something to smoke. And the weed wasnt even good anyway!
It was time to sleep, and as we lay in our places, we started to plan when to leave Tarragona.
Hope you enjoy following the adventures! I will do next part 2 of The Workshop - very soon, maybe before I sleep tonight!
If not NOW, when? If not YOU , then who?
Catch-up on previous parts if youd like to !
Part 1- An Escape Pod To A New Life
Part 2-Waves Goodbye
Part 3- Lost In BCN
Part 4- Still In Barceloca
Part 5- Finally Able To Move On
Part 6- Tarragona, Spain
