Beneficio

Hi Babylonians, how are you? I am feeling as happy as ever again, after some amazing days especially in the community of Beneficio in Orgiva. It took me a couple of hours walking and hitchhiking to reach this place 30 km north from my cousin in Motril. The place is situated in a relatively green valley northwards of Orgiva where 20 years ago some English hippies started the community by squating and later partly buying the abandoned land. Others were invited to join and one lived next to love and peace with some rules of no alcohol, no dogs, np open fire and no fixed buildings. Nowadays, the place has converted in complete anarchy and is occupied by all kinds of people. The magic words are freedom and ganja/marihuana. Almost everyone is stoned the complete day, but still in a communicative way. In my opinion the art of freedom that is lived here is mainly getting away as far as possible from the capitalistic world which everyone calls Babylon. The place hosts a lot of travelers like me, some of which are staying for months or one winter, but some people have lived here since the start with their complete family. Some act very social and close to nature wheras others live their life very isolated in a bunch of plastic garbage. Some live in tents or tipi's, others have constructed their complete houses. Some are probably very wealthy, others are extremely poor. To resume, it is a complete chaos. After one day though I found some people that did fit my state of mind somewhere up in the forest and spend some great nights with them, the fire, chestnuts, tea and ganga. The thing I didn't find much was the feeling of a community in harmony, because it hardly exists anymore in this place. This is the main reason that I didn't feel like staying for a long time. But then again, I spend the morning that I left with a Dutch girl somewhere near her tipi situated on an extremely quiet place, higher on the mountains, sharing our lives, enjoying the sun and nature, and swimming in an amazing home-made swimming pool. It left me with a fairytale in my mind and a feeling of going back some of the days that lay ahead. I am very interested in what will happen... At the moment I am in Madrid, saying hello to some friends, and afterwards I think I will be heading to Murcia to pick up the route to Cabo de Gata where I ended by bike. In the meantime my plans have changed a lot and I am thinking about sending the bike to Holland and continuing walking/hitchhiking through Africa. My idea is to invent myself some internet-job that gives me the opportunity to work and travel together for a long time, but I will only start working on this theme when I have returned in NL maybe before next winter. Enfin, that's about my story for the moment. Please don't hesitate to share some interesting things of your life if you think of me one day. Un abrazo for now, G