Sundays for me are both the beginning and the end of my work week. This morning, at 8, I said goodbye to 8 amazing guests who I had a fantastic week riding with last week. We hugged, made promises to keep in touch via facebook and waved furiously as Andrew drove the van out of the driveway and off to the airport in Malaga. As soon as the car was out of site, Rhiannon and I exchanged the look of “here we go again” and instantly kicked it into high gear.
Sunday’s are our busiest day, for sure. I ran out to the back parking lot with Smoky my trusty Belgium Shepard in tow. I climbed in my horse car, my old 1995 Mitsubishi Pajero (yes that is the car that caused a huge marketing stir when it came out as it was named for a wildcat in Argentina called the Pajero, but without checking their sources and selling the car in Spain, the Japanese quickly realized that the word is slang here for “wanker” – great job guys). Smokey runs alongside the car as we drive up to the horses for their breakfast.
Feeding 22 horses takes me about an hour and a half, depending on how easily they let me catch them. Each horse in our yard is tied to a tree and they are given individual buckets of grain. After I’ve mixed each horse’s blend of grain, bran and suppliments and distributed the buckets, I wheelbarrow bales of hay out into the field for them to eat during the day. Sundays, I also have to clean out all 6 of the water baths which reside in the fields. I clean out three now, emptying the water and scrubbing them with a brush to get the grime and mold off. I leave them empty for now, as if I filled them up, the horses would only drink from the clean baths and I’d have 3 full dirty baths when I return in the afternoon – and I ain’t no matter waster. I untie the horses after the hay is scattered and they are all finished with their breakfast and head back to the house.
While I’ve been out, Rhiannon has stripped all 8 guest rooms and has placed the bedding for this week on each bed. After a quick bowl of muesli to tie me over, I grab my cleaning bucket and my iPhone and get to work. I spend the next 4 hours meticulously cleaning each room from top to bottom which I will go into no further detail on because it’s boring and… boring.
SmokeyAt 2, it’s time for horse dinner. I load up some new bags of feed in my trusty 4x4 and head back up to the ponies with Smokey in tow to ward off any pestering corgies or strange Spanish men. Feeding is the same in the afternoon, except I have to fill up all 6 feed baths which requires excellent time management as each takes 10 minutes to fill. So if I forget to start this before I start feeding, it can mean I have to sit idly at the end and wait for them to fill. But I nail it today, and remember to spread the hay close to the front of the field so when the new batch of guests comes up to see the horses this afternoon, all of the babies are close to the front fence for them to see. I make a stop on the way home at Miguel’s for a beer and a quick chat with Jack and the other local men just getting off work for the day – a ritual I enjoy immensely.
When I get back to the house after feeding, it’s time for me to get fed. Andrew got back with the guests while I was feeding and has moved them all into their rooms. We then all meet for lunch on the back patio where we feast on salad, tortillas, chorizo, manchego and fresh bread. Oh ya and summer wine, my favorite beverage in the world, a mixture of red wine and carbonated lemonade or Sprite. I have two glasses today as I’m thirsty and gearing myself for my siesta.
Rachel comes around at 4:30 to take the guests up to see the horses and suss out their riding ability. When she gets back, we sit down and assign each person to a horse and then load up the van with the saddles and bridles for the next day. After confirming the projected start time for the next day, I bid her adios and peace out to my apartment where without stopping, I shred item after item of clothing and crawl into my big comfy bed. I nap for 3 hours today, as it’s been an exhausting day.
I wake up at 8:20, just in time for dinner: Spanish chicken and rice. I sit with Jack and eat dinner while we watch Southpark and chat about the plans for the evening. Of course, they’re generally the same – going to Miguel’s, as he’s closed on Mondays and the thought of not stepping foot in that bar for more than 24 hours is… well… too much to bear.
I walk to Miguel’s with Jack and Vinnie at 10. We sit at the bar, taking our usual seats and greet the other locals present: Miguel’s uncles Paco and Antonio, Paco’s son Paco, Jose’s uncle Juan, Miguel’s brother Juan, Vinnie’s friend Braulio and his brother… Juan, my friends Francisco (who, as it turns out is Jose’s second or third cousin) and Ishmael and Ishmael’s uncle… Juan, my friend Clair and her landlord Alberto (neither of whom are related to anyone else, or so I think) and finally Banana or “Creepy” as I nicknamed him… whose real name is… yup – Juan. There’s one table of men sitting playing cards, usually a nameless game that plays like Gin but with only 8 cards dealt instead of 11. The rest of us sit outside or at the bar people watching and shooting the shit.
Courtesy of AgnesAt midnight almost like clockwork, Miguel’s 4 year old son, Miguel (or Miguelito as he’s called by most) comes out and begs me to play a game of foosball with him. He always wins (because he’s amazing, and I suck) and talks serious shit. The kid teaches me most of the Spanish profanity I know – which I really appreciate because the older men find this much more entertaining and I kind of feel like that exchange student out of “Can’t Hardly Wait” almost daily. So eager to learn, but not so bright sometimes.
Tonight, we’re pretty chilled out, so Miguel asks if we mind being thrown out at about 2 AM. There are only about 5 of us in the bar and he bribes us by knocking a beer off each of our tabs and offering a shot of Ron Miel or honey rum, as one for the road – or “una para las espuelas” here, literally “one for the spurs.” It’s such a horsey culture that even drunk phrases assume that you’re riding a horse home, not driving a car.
So we take one for the spurs and the three of us hooligans, a quite unlikely trio, a 15 year old Spaniard, a 24 year old American and a 30+ something (I’m feeling sweet today, so I won’t reveal his real age) Mancunian, arm in arm, singing Radiohead in the middle of the campo in Spain.