The Ramacastanas Trip

This is waaaay old news by now but I felt compelled to let family and friends *cough*Eric*cough* where I've been going this semester. A Spanish friend, Antonio, invited us up to his house in the country pueblo of Ramacastanas (pronounced: rah-mah-cah-stahn-yahs) in September, and we took him up on his offer. Awesomeness ensued.

The first night was dedicated to drinking, since, after all, it's the country and there is nothing in particular to do. I proved why God doesn't want giants to ride children's bicycles when I crashed into something and banged up my something else. Okay, God, point taken. Then we engaged in storytelling, interpretive dance, acrobatics, and wind tunnel. For those who don't know, wind tunnel is when you shake your head back and forth really quick while relax your face muscles, and then take a picture, with the intention of getting a really bizarre photo. Props to Marisha for showing me this game originally.

The next day was spent at the river. We bought the bare necessities (beer, horribly greasy potato chips) and some actual food and took in more of the gorgeous scenery. I believe Alex decided the correct this to do after eating and drinking was jump in the river. We all agreed that this was excellent advice and followed suit. Some other tourists took our picture, during which time I cursed at them effusively in English to hurry up because my man-parts were shriveling on account of the unexpectedly arctic water temperature. So then we decided to head up a trail and found edible berries along the path. I think they were blackberries. We got to the mouth of the river and climbed up inside, where it looked like a little grotto or a natural day-spa kind of thing, carved out of rock and only a foot or two deep, so we chillaxed there until Alex and Rachel and I think Liz got bored and climbed up one of the rock walls and jumped into the lagoon below. Then on the way home Antonio dropped me and John off near his house and told us to follow this trail, because we could get fresh spring water at the end. Sure enough, a couple hundred meters down the trail it ducked into the foliage, and we crossed a little bridge and there was a couple meter-wide pool of fresh water, creating a little creek to the left. There were water skaters on the surface and the rocks kept floating up and back down in the middle, indicating that fresh water was bubbling up from underground. Very cool and nothing I had ever seen before. We drank our fill then filled the jug and headed towards Antonio's house.

That night was, for me, the highlight of the trip. We made spaghetti and accompanied it with cheap wine, and then we all grabbed blankets and seeping bags and went and laid out under the stars. It was beautiful. If you have never been out in the middle of nowhere and looked at the stars, please plan to do so soon, because it is amazing. It reminds you how very small you are and how very big everything is, and that sense of being overwhelming beauty is missing a lot in the city life, where you can only catch glimpses of it here and there. We played a game where we each say a song lyric in a row. It was really cool because people chose lyrics that demonstrated their personalities, and thus we expressed who we were by letting other people do the talking. I translated what the English lyrics meant for Antonio. Then we discussed the nature of love and other such nonsense before finally retiring indoors (too bad...sleeping outside might have been nice). Antonio later called the trip "one of the best experiences of his life;" it's definitely up there for me, as well.

There are a million other snapshot moments in my head that I'm equally fond of, but really don't make sense out of context; what I remember most about the trip, though, was the incredible sense of beauty, tranquility, and peace nature ceaselessly offers. It served as a reminder that while I may be irrevocably a city-boy, a part of me is always wild at heart.