Costa del Sol: Land of Sun, Storms and Silver Linings

We've settled back into winter in Spain and I finally have a chance to write on this blog. For the last few weeks I've been writing my business blog and dedicating more time to writing a novel that I started nearly a decade ago. With renewed faith in the story, I'm finally back at it, but after making some necessary revisions to the characters. More on that in a future post...

If you live in North America, it isn't likely that you heard much about the recent floods in Spain. I struggled to find any news of it in Canadian newspapers. So to fill you in...a week ago, the area where I live in the Costa del Sol was hit hard by two weeks of unusually heavy rains and disastrous flooding. Many of our friends and neighbours are still reeling from the destruction. 

There were three deaths and hundreds of houses, restaurants and businesses in the region were knee-high in water with much damage to furnishings, cars, garages and structures. Farms just north of us were wiped out as all their crops and belongings, including many animals, were washed down to the sea. 

The beach at the bottom of our street.

Broken sea wall in Sabinillas and destroyed beach

Our favourite 'China-store', the huge one where we get all our dog, electronics and art supplies, was under water for days when it sat trapped in a low area between a hill and the wall that lines the highway. They suffered extensive damage to their inventory, but within hours of the news, there were dozens of volunteers hovering near their doors looking for a way to help the owners dig out from under it all. Others took to Facebook and generously offered strangers elbow-grease, rooms in their homes, working cars and dry clothes. It was incredible.

Flooded A-7 highway and China-store.

The highway underpass near the China-store was flooded, leaving cars stranded or diverted around the town. And so much water ran through the town of Sabinillas that the crews had to knock down the beach wall in order to provide an escape route for the water. As a result, the sand and many beach structures have been heavily damaged.

For those who lost much, the recovery will take a while - both physically and emotionally, but one of the truths I have learned about Spain is just how resilient and optimistic its people are. And how willing strangers and friends are to help out anyone in need.

Though the beaches are still thick with bamboo stalks and garbage, the clean up has begun, and fishermen found a way through the debris to launch their boats in calmer waters. 

And of course, this being the Costa del Sol, the sun is once again shining, adding to the feeling that no matter what people here may go through, there is no storm cloud that doesn't come with its very own silver lining. 

Typical Spanish storm cloud

Peace and blessings to you all.

Well that happened...

After telling ourselves over and over that we wouldn't do it, we did it.

We bought an apartment in Spain.

The reasons not to were numerable: we could continue to rent for 20 years and never spend the amount of money that it would take to buy a place; we could move around and winter in other cities or countries; we could change our minds and go back into the regular work force in Canada, blah blah blah. These are all good, solid reasons.

Instead, I listened to the little voice inside that said "You should buy a place because it's the insane thing to do. Plus, you're getting a great deal! (rational justification was necessary)." It is that same little voice that made me buy a cottage in 2001 as a single woman when no one was buying cottages, the same voice that made me quit my well-paying, secure day job and move to Spain, the same voice that makes me ride my motorcycle way too fast - jeez, it actually made me get my bike license 20 years ago. And it's the same voice that made me fall in love with Andrew when we both said we wouldn't. So far, listening to that little voice has worked in my favour. Fingers crossed that this is another successful adventure!

The apartment is a European-sized (meaning small but sensible) one bedroom penthouse apartment in a beach-side community. It has an enormous sea-facing terrace that is almost as large as the apartment itself, and came completely furnished and outfitted except for patio furniture which we'll need to buy. It also gives us a place to store our stuff when we're back in Canada.

The plan is to rent it out to the vacationers (SHAMELESS PLUG) who (apparently) travel to the Costa del Sol in droves during the summer. This should help off-set our carrying costs. That's the plan anyway. We've never done anything like this so there will be a big learning curve for us. Now we need to get insurance, a property manager, start listing the apartment on rental websites, blah blah blah. But really, we bought an apartment so we had somewhere to store stuff.

The bedroom

Living room and kitchen

The large terrace facing the Sea

Swimming pool outside the front door

 

"You've only been in Spain for five months and you're renting a furnished apartment. What do you really have that you need to store?", you may astutely ask.

Well....for some reason, we have an abundance of sea glass and sea pottery. I swear we only picked up a few pieces here and there, but the stuff seems to have multiplied considerably. It's everywhere in our apartment. We collect it because each piece is unique and interesting and seems to fuel some desire that we have to create art with it.

So....we started making cool stuff and selling it through an Etsy shop (ANOTHER SHAMELESS PLUG) and kept the name Reflections On Spain. This week, I made my first sale! So far, I've made pretty sea glass earrings, necklaces and bracelets; Andrew has made a cool sea pottery mosaic. It's all very hippie dippy. But the thing I love is that Etsy is just the most brilliant online market I've ever seen. Way back in the 90s I used to buy and sell stuff on eBay and Amazon, and I regularly buy stuff today from Aliexpress, but in terms of connecting creative-minded people selling unique stuff, Etsy has it going on.

Some of the bracelets I've made

One of my necklaces

Andrew's sea tile mosaic

The only problem that we've encountered trying to sell stuff has nothing to do with Etsy and everything to do with the Spanish mail service, Correos. For some reason, the costs to ship items anywhere - inside or outside Spain - are exorbitant. We're talking two to three times the cost of sending items in Canada (and the US, Australia, and other EU countries from what I can see online). It is for this reason that we can't really list Andrew's heavy tile mosaic for sale.

One comment I found online was made by a Spanish t-shirt manufacturer who was lamenting that it was going to cost him more to ship a t-shirt to an out-of-country buyer (20 Euros!) than what he could sell the shirt for. It was limiting his ability to expand his business and income. It seems so unnecessarily short-sighted to me that the Spanish government would allow this. When all the surrounding countries in the EU manage to cost-effectively ship things via their government-run mail services, why can't Spain? Sadly, our way around this will be to bring items back to Canada with us when we go home in the spring, make the larger items there and ship them via Canada Post. Very disappointing all around.

So that's the big news with us. 

Check out our Etsy shop when you get a chance, and please share it with your friends. I'm adding new items all the time. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ReflectionsOnSpain

And this summer when you want to experience a different kind of summer vacation, consider renting our little apartment in Spain. It's just 70 meters away from a fabulous beach on the gorgeous Mediterranean Sea. I'll post a link to the rental website as soon as we have it.

Can you tell that we're doing what we can to avoid having to go back to the real world any day soon?