...and so La Alpujarra

I came upon La Alpujarra while my husband Michael and I were looking to buy a property in Granada city, in the days when Orgiva was referred to as "A village in the mountains" and anything from Bayacas and beyond as "up in the high mountains".

I remember our first visit to Almuñecar, having decided to go on the bus from Granada rather than drive. We passed through the narrow High Street of Lanjaron where the branches of the trees lining it acutally touched the sides of the bus so that I instinctively pulled away from the window. Past the village, looking up the hills and mostly down them, there were, scattered here and there, cortijos barely fit for living. I asked myself: "who the hell lives in a place like this? ".

I now live in one of those, only in one that you can't even see from the main road while driving above Carataunas and then down a 2km dirt track. But my cortijo is new.

In 1991 Finca La Panorámica seemed very isolated. I remember telling our shocked families and friends that we had bought a fistful of heaven that God broke off and threw down on earth where noone could find it till we came about.

Right opposite on the next hill, was the Ermita de La Fatima, built on the finca belonging to what became known as Cortijo de la Fatima and whose owners retained the key of the little chapel and hosted its yearly fiesta. About the time we bought La Panoramica, an Englishman, Douglas, had acquired the property. He took his role seriously and played it to perfection.

Down in the valley, lived Serge, a Lithuanian with his American wife, Phyllis. He was a real citizen of the world: no ID, no papers, no official fixed abode and the only passport he ever owned was an American passport given to him posthumously. Sadly I have never met him.

Just below La Panorámica in Cortijo Las Flores, lived Jurgen, an ex German policeman whose help and advise during the building and after were invaluable. He still lives here with his wife Beate.

Above was Egon's Cortijo El Limón. Egon spent several months a year here, a solitary figure who spoke nothing but German. He could hardly see, but I supposed he enjoyed the sound of silence.

Then there was Grete, an amazing Danish woman who lived with her two dogs in two caravans in the Cerro Negro, the valley on the other flank of the hill where The Fatima is. When we first met her, she was rehabilitating a ruin, stubbornly insisting on using the old method of stones and mud. Because she had no car access, she had to take all materials on a wheel-barrow and so began the story of the house that Jack built: whenever it rained the walls collapsed...but she persevered and did it...some twenty years later. What was incredible is that Grete, who at the time didn't have the facility of a bathroom, served meals on fine china crockery and silver cutlery with hand-embroidered table linen. She still does but now in the home she calls her paradise.

The Olsens, at "El Corral" just past La Panorámica, were ones of the first to buy a property in this area. A lot of my information came from Inge Olsen. She knew Dominguez and his family long before Chris Stewart bought his property, in the days where Spanish and non-Spanish socialised, not allowing language to be a barrier.

Past El Corral lived Gitte and Bernhard, aslo from Denmark.

Now Julia. Until recently, I only knew her by sight: a slight figure that walked faster than I could ride on a bicycle. She and her architect husband bought and built the property I look at from everyone of my windows at about the same time as the Olsens.

The rest of the cortijos belonged to those born and bred in the Valley, Ramón and his family, Juan Días and his family, Dominguez and his family, Antonio Carmona, whose son has just published his biography in a book called "Clarito".

The equivalent of "the local" was Los Llanos, a bar restaurant run by Paco and Carmen. The food was excellent, the tapas generous and when there was a special occasion, it was at Los Llanos that it was celebrated.

Now in 2010, I sit on my sunny terrace and look at the breath-taking views of the hills and the valley below where rivers meet and ponder on how lucky I am to be in this place where it is so easy to forget that one is not actually living in heaven.

A friend from Brazil once said to me: "you should bottle the silence and sell it". On the warm and clear nights of Summer, I often stretch out my arm to pick a star or two, breathing deeply what is said to be the cleanest air in Europe.

Slowly I discovered the white villages cascading down the hillsides of the natural and national parks of the Southern slopes of Sierra Nevada and, despite the passing of time, I have never tired of them nor taken them for granted.



Photo 1, Michael & I on our discovery trail
Photo 2, The hilltop that's La Panoramica
Photo 3, Inge and Antonio (Clarito)
Photo 4, Erik Olsen & Dominguez
Photo 4, When language was no barrier
Photo 5, La Panoramica today, Photo taken by Daria Brasseler