Funes, we're coming!

After spending a great time at the Dune of Pilat we needed a bit of refreshment. Suprisingly, we couldn't find any publicly available shower, even at the gas stations and huge parkings by the motorway. Finally, after crossing the Spanish border, we found a camping where we could take a shower and get rid of tonnes of sand from our bodies and clothes which we collected during our various adventures at the dune.

Then we jumped into the car and one of my biggest dream was about to happen. According to our schedule, the next stop was Funes, the place where over one year ago I left "my second family” and I came back to Poland. Funes is a small town in Navarre ( northern Spain) which will always take a special place in my memory. My Spanish family was waiting for us from the early morning. The most impatient members of the family were Unax and Gaizka- the children who I was looking after for six months. In that time there was a Spanish feast called "FIESTAS”. It's kind of festival where everyone is dressed in white during the whole week.An obligatory element of the outfit is a characteristic red ribbon or sort of red cravat or shawl.

We came to Funes in the morning when the Corrida was taking place in the middle of the town so a lot of people were celebrating on the streets. Boys decided to welcome everyone from the air so they flew on paragliders over the city, holding Polish flags in their hands! It was such a spectacular moment! I was so excited to see my Spanish family after such a long time so we quickly went to their house to hug them!

Damian, thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1twwTBEERY

To present some of my trip reports, I would like to share with you a song which accompanied us throughout the whole journey. Moving from place to place, we proudly screamed its Polish words, even while being on parking lots or gas stations. It helped us overcome tiredness and stopped our drivers from falling asleep. The author of that song is Damian Syjonfam. Damian, thanks for being with us for those two weeks ;)

lyrics in english:

Let the River rise here,

River next to which I could live.

The River from which water I could drink,

Like those who were here before me.

Let the driver does not wait, I'm staying here.

I will be part of what is going to be here,

I will celebrate ordinary customs,

Like those who were here before me.

A place will rise here,

A little bit better than the others.

It will be open,

For people of good will.

For the simple people of the village,

Who will leave their cares.

We will meet on the town,

All of you, just bring, good word

That is more valuable than the bread,

Harmony of spirit is what we need today.

Make your mind to be like rich soil

Don't try to understand it, just feel it.

The world is yours.

Don't try to understand it.

(second time)

Let the River rise here,

River next to which I could live.

The River from which water I could drink,

Like those who were here before me.

Let the driver does not wait, I'm staying here.

I will be part of what is going to be here,

I will celebrate ordinary customs,

Like those who were here before me.

A place will rise here,

A little bit better than the others.

It will be open,

For people of good will.

For the simple people of the village,

Who will leave their cares.

We will meet on the town,

All of you, just bring, good word

That is more valuable than the bread,

Harmony of spirit is what we need today.

Make your mind to be like rich soil

Don't try to understand it, just feel it.

The world is yours.

Don't try to understand it.

we are unknowingly rebels

We drank a couple bottles of beer, then jumped into our sleeping bags and felt asleep underneath the stars. That night was really cold and windy.

When I woke up, I saw something that I found quite weird... I saw several bunches of people, some of them standing next to us, staring at us, some of them looked like they were on the school trip. It was 10 a.m. and we wore warm clothes and hats while all those people around had flip-flops and short sleeve T-shirts. Initially, I thought it was a dream but as it turned out soon later it wasn't a dream ... We realised that we were in the limelight...

We started looking around and the view we had ahead of us was like a big screen of National Geographic Channel - the immensity of the ocean with many small islands way off in the distance took our breaths away. Tomek and Bartek, our impatient paragliders, ran as fast as they could for the equipment to start their dream, long-awaited paragliding adventure! It's difficult to describe their feelings at that time and what they had experienced in the air, but their huge smiles after landing told us everything!

After a long, exhausting day, full of excitement and different activities, we returned to the car. Bartek went to the machine to pay for the parking. He prepared 4 Euro as this price we saw by the praking entrance. To our huge disappointment, the machine said: 48 Euro. What was our reaction? Everybody screamed like a choir: "Whaaat?!". We would spent this money on at least four dinners!! We are not materialists but our expenses were carefully calculated so 48 Euro was like fortune for us. It turned out that 4 Euro wasn't a single fee but the price for one hour...We spent there 12 hours which gave us 48 Euro.There is a common saying in Poland which perfectly matches this event: "a Pole is wise after the event" ... well said.

In addition to this unexpected information, the lady working at the car parking told us that we had been sleeping in the National Park which is strictly prohibited! 

Rebels!

The Dune of Pilat

The Dune of Pilat (officially known as Dune du Pyla) was our next stop. Dune du Pyla is a real paradise for paragliders (two of them we had in our car). The tallest sand dune in Europe - this sentence made us feel extremely excited.

We got to the place late in the evening. We found a parking in the middle of the forest where we saw a caption: "4 Euro". Thoughtlessly, we parked our car there. Suddenly a question arose in our minds: "Does the price include overnight stay?". Unfortunately, we didn't care about the answer ... Having changed our clothes we started to explore the greatness of this place! We pumped up our mattress, then we did a quick bath and dressed in layers as the weather at night was very windy. We started to climb the dune. The darkness didn't allow us to precise our exact location, but after 40 minutes of scramble, we landed on the top of the dune. At that time, no one of us could realise what would we see in the early morning ..

a part of Poland in the middle of France

I’m ashamed to admit, but we (the female part of our trip) slept through almost the entire journey until the first stop. It was probably caused by the excess of emotions and endorphins on one hand and tiredness on the other. After 13-hour-long travel, we stopped in Oignies, France, to visit Bartek’s uncle - Cezar. He is of Polish descent. Uncle Cezar emigrated to France 30 years ago. He joined the association of the Polish community and helped in establishing a Polish Roman Catholic parish. Now he is in charge of organising meetings for Polish pensioners living in foreign country.

He welcomed us with a glass of real French champagne and prepared a special French dinner for us. The starter comprised of a melon with a cored hole in the middle, filled with Portuguese red wine.

Uncle Cezar told us how much he missed Poland. He told us about the history of Polish emigrants during the Second World War and the actual situation at that time in France. His longing for home country was clearly noticeable in his eyes when he talked about Polish culture and history and also when we looked at his home decorations. We could listen to Mazowsze music played by a gramophone that he bought in Poland many years ago.

The aura of this meeting let us go back into the times that we only know from school books. Having left some Polish souvenirs for uncle Cezar, we set out on our onward journey. 

I think this visit was a great lesson of history and patriotism which will stay in our memory for a long time.

Uncle Cezar, thank You for your hospitality and bottles of champagne which you provided for us (It was enough for the whole trip!)

7 6 7 6 k m

Spain has been the target of our annual two-week-long tours for several years. We were planning this trip for months but there was always something which stopped us from moving ahead. We either lacked the courage to face certain kinds of danger or didn’t have sufficient budget or proper equipment to visit at least half of the places we had planned to see. This year, to our big surprise, we manged to arrange everything what we needed to embark on the journey to Andalusia.

The crucial component of any venture is strategy and related preparations. We formed a group of five people: three girls (Kasia, Daria and me) and two boys (Bartek and Tomek). Then we divided tasks according to individual interests and abilities. The female part of our team was tasked to take care of aesthetic aspects of our adventure such as creating personalised T-shirts for each of us and buying Polish souvenirs for our friends in Spain, focusing on what Poland is mainly famous for: vodka and ‘ptasie mleczko’ , a traditional Polish goody which is pretty similar to a British chocolate covered marshmallow.

We made a list of all the necessary things which could help us to survive such as practical wet wipes, gas cylinder, ‘Chinese’ instant soups, films for ‘old-fashioned’ cameras and other brilliant inventions of our civilization. Bartek and Tomek took care of more practical matters. They checked the technical condition of our car, replaced the tyres, prepared trailer to transport the paragliding equipment and cooking equipment such as portable gas stove and at the end they checked the condition of our tents. We thought that we were very well-prepared and everything looked perfect. Unfortunately, we were wrong….Later, it turned out that something had escaped our notice (I’ll write about it later on).

A week prior to our trip we sat down together and developed an action plan and calculated the best possible route. Obviously, in the course of our journey everything was changed. Luckily, all the modifications were positive. Then we supplied our portable refrigerators with kabanos sausages, potted meat, bottles of beers and other nutritious foods.

In the early morning (14.08.2015) we dressed our ‘expedition T-shirts’, hopped in the car and our long-awaited 8,000km journey started, thereby fulfilling the dream of each of us.

again

Having unpacked my backpack and printed photos of extreme summer adventures, it's time to go back to reality and face the challenges of student life. The energy batteries are fully charged, ready to beat the autumn blue and look back at the last two months. Now it's time to reminisce about the trip that I had always dreamed of - welcome to Andalusia!