Dear Caminoheads,

Thank you all for the stoicism! What a cool thing to post after so long and get comments! You made my day!!!

I had something interesting to share with you from my vacation time; maybe you already knew it, but to me, it was an unknown fact although it is a pretty obvious thing when stopping a minute to think about it. There is a phenomenon called “Calima”, it is a meteorological phenomenon characterised by the presence of sand, dust and clay and at times also ashes in the atmosphere  and the environment becomes “opaque”.

Here in Spain, and mostly in the south, it is the product of a storm in the Sahara. When on vacation in Granada, in addition to experience rain to no end, we experienced a Calima. At first, I thought the soil in Granada was clay like and the red color everywhere was coming from it, but I had been in Granada before and the red clay soil was not a memory I had. We stayed in Granada 3 days and the 3 days we complained about the red-dirt in our shoes and trousers, but what was odd was that our jackets, raincoats and our hair too had red spots… Then, the last day, walking under the rain in search of a gluten-free bakery for my friend to get some goodies, the mystery was solved: we stopped in a newspaper shop to shelter from the rain and the cover of the newspaper was announcing: “El Sahara en España” (The Sahara in Spain) and I kept reading the news and then it was when I learned that with a dust storm in Africa and a Southern wind, the Sahara sky relocates to Spain.

It was a cool thing to see, and to think about; it made me realize how close I am from places I was so far away before, and it also makes me think how interconnected we are, how true it is that the minimal event in one place affects all the rest of the world… People in Granada were not happy… the owners of white cars and houses painted in white were the most unhappiest of all! In my case, it was helpful to make the decision that my Nike shoes needed a replacement. And definitely, it made me realize that nature is way more smart than any filters…

Orange loves,

Cris