Getting used to it - quite happily

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1PM
Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize that this is actually happening. I look around the boat and everything looks the same and then the phone rings and it is a gypsy wanting to party. Our disappointment with the local peña has been replaced with the delight of finding an enthusiastic clan of gypsies who are crazy for flamenco as we are. The major singer is Miguel - Gitano de Bronce, who has some CDs and sang for a year in New York. Second most enthusiastic is Angél, also known as Negro. All these folks are from the Agujetas family, coming from both sides of it. This is a very famous gypsy family that has produced some of the finest and purest flamenco singers. Miguel and Angél are solidly in that tradition - just what I like!

Here they are, Miguel on my left and Angél on my right.

Here is Angél singing - he is the son of the late Gordo Agujetas and sounds very much like a recording we have of Gordo.

Miguel invited us to his house and when we got there, we found that he had arranged a big party with lots of wonderful guests, great tapas, everything. I was the only guitarist and apparently they don't often have access to a guitarist because they kept me playing all night. When it got too late for the neighbors, we went off to a nearby bar. Could it get any better? Yes, the next night when we were at the Fiesta de la Buleria in Jerez, Miguel called to see if we could come to a BBQ that night. Well, unless Newton was wrong, we couldn't be in two places at the same time, but were certainly gratified to be asked back so quickly.

A constant source of pleasure is the food. Andrea makes a wonderful tortilla and we've got some of my gazpacho in the refrigerator. We have two kinds of olives to try and 4 different kinds of chorizo. In the store, we walk right by spices that we would have hoarded before because we know that we can always get them. Andrea just made an ensaladia rusa (sort of a potato salad) that was sooooo good that she could go into business selling it to every bar in town. (they all have it). Hers is so good that they would just throw theirs away if they tried hers.

We still don't have internet, so I have to go to the library to send these posts in. You can reach us via sailmail instantly, however. Hope this isn't boring. If you read this for the sailing, I'm afraid the slant will be heavily flamenco for a while.

Happy to be here......

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
We've been settling in to regular life in the marina and in Rota. Except for the feeble flamenco scene, we are loving it here. One of the high points has been the cuisine. We've been shopping in the local markets, especially the open-air market and with all the right ingredients, the food really tastes right. Andrea just keeps coming up with one delight after another. It's wonderful. And of course, going out to eat is fabulous.

One of the things that has been pleasing is that shopping here is probably less expensive than in the US. I didn't expect that, but even the Euro has been dropping against the dollar, ($1.41 to the Euro this morning) so we may not be quite as worried about money as it seemed before. With a little care, restaurants won't kill the budget either. When I filled the gas tank the other day, it took 26 Euros. that's about $38 which is a lot less than I spent filling the tank of the van in North Carolina.

We took a road trip the other day to the Feria de Utrera. A feria is an annual fair. Almost every city has one. They go back to the old days when traders and caravans would come and set up outside the city. Animals and goods got traded; there was food and entertainment. In the last few centuries, the Feria has become a unique part of the Andalucian (the southernmost "state" in Spain)tradition and gives opportunities for socializing and for the "horse people" to show off their horses and riding outfits - both of which are gorgeous.

Here is a carriage and driver. Notice how beautifully turned out the carriage is.

Here is a typical feria street. It is early in the evening still - by 11PM there will hardly be room to pass through the streets. On either side of the street are "casetas" which are basically tents with bars and kitchens. Some of the food they generate in simple kitchens is amazing. The casetas all have loud sound systems and play sevillanas at a deafening level. If you want to talk, you have to find a quiet one.

In this particular feria, we visited the caseta of Inez and Luis, gypsies from the same family as Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera, two legendary singers who we had the good fortune to know. Most casetas are all about Sevillanas, but this one is all about flamenco. They had a regular performance set up as well as the unofficial "fooling around" that we participated in. We're including a little video here that shows a few seconds of the performance. Unfortunately the singer wasn't singing at the moment. The artists were singer/dancers Javier Heredia and his wife Fabiola, and guitarist Antonio Moya. Unfortunately, Blogger seems to be constipated today and I can't upload the video. I'll try again. (After 4 days of trying, here is a still)