I want to start this story by saying thank you, thank you, thank you to Jonas and his family for providing a haven in Spain during the pandemic. Their family is incredibly gracious, forever welcoming, and this trip couldn’t have happened without them. Also, Jonas’s dad is an executive at a pharmaceutical company that’s working on a COVID-19 vaccine; remember that for later.
Our tale begins in a tiny village in Spain called Benimarco. There isn’t much there. Houses don’t have numbers. The hills are covered by fruit trees. There’s no grocery store, but the best paella around is just up the street. It seems that a light breeze is always blowing in from the ocean and the sun is always shining—at least on this trip it was.
On our first morning, the five of us piled into my tiny red Seat Ibiza rental car and made our way to what Jonas and his sister Tara said would be an idyllic reservoir tucked in the coastal mountains. It felt crazy to go away from the coast when world-class beaches were only 15 minutes away but I trusted my hosts and held my tongue.
I started to regret that decision as the GPS guided us down a tiny one-lane road that was riddled with potholes. Going down was easy enough but I realized that the car’s 1-liter engine might not be enough to get us back up the hill. Before it was too late I cut my losses and turned around, nearly getting stuck on the rocker panel under the car in the process. I urged the car up the hill but it was no use, not enough power. We were stuck. I kicked my passengers out of the back seat, revved the engine, and dropped the clutch. The little Ibiza mumbled softly under my feet and slowly decided to roll up the hill. Any slower and we would’ve been rolling backward.
I realized at this moment that if I stopped at any point on my way up the hill I wouldn’t get going again. I held my foot to the floor and whispered kind words to our pathetic steed while whipping around hairpin turns. I swerved around potholes that could have swallowed the tiny wheels before we came to a flatter part of the road where I pulled over and gave the Ibiza a rest. Jonas and I walked down to meet the others and we all made our way down the rest of the gravel road to the Guadalest Reservoir. It turned out Jonas and Tara were right, it was just as beautiful as they described. We dropped our stuff and jumped right into the silty turquoise water to cool off. We quickly realized that the banks dropped off almost instantly under the water’s surface so we swam to the other side and scrambled up its crumbly banks to jump off.
We had no issues with the car on our way out of the reservoir and made our way back to Benimarco with the windows down and the wind drying our hair. That evening we gorged ourselves on paella and martinis before passing out with full bellies and sun-kissed cheeks.
The next morning we woke up early and made our way to the harbor where we connected with some of Jonas’ old friends at the local scuba shop. They outfitted us with the proper equipment, gave me a refresher on underwater scuba etiquette, and we piled into the boat. After a twenty-minute motor, we dropped anchor and tipped back into the depths below.
Our guide led us 12 meters down to the ocean floor and we followed as she meandered through underwater rock formations and caves. We chased after flying gurnards along the ocean floor and coaxed an octopus out of its den before slowly returning to the surface. We boated back to the harbor and drove back home for the afternoon before we returned to the harbor to hop on their 38-foot sailboat for an evening of sailing and swimming.
As soon as we left the harbor our captain—Jonas’s dad—got a call about a new vaccine study for COVID-19 and he had to read it as soon as possible. He handed me the wheel and told us all how to pilot the boat in between paragraphs of the dense scientific paper. We successfully made our way out to sea while Jonas blasted the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song and his dad continued to read. After a quick sail out and back we dropped anchor in El Portet bay where we jumped into the clear water and dived to the ocean floor. We inspected fish and stingrays as they meandered through the water and paddled around the anchored boats on a paddleboard. When Thomas finished reading the vaccine report he jumped in to cool off before pulling up the anchor and returning to the harbor.
~ Interlude for working remotely, it can’t all be fun. ~
A few days later on our last evening in Benimarco, we attempted to repeat our success on the boat before returning to Berlin. We made our way to the harbor after work and clambered aboard right as Thomas’s phone rang. Another vaccine report was released. Rather than returning home to work he graciously took us out of the harbor and instructed us in the background while he read. I have no idea how, but he managed to read a scientific paper on an iPhone on wavy seas for the second time in three days.
After more Pirates of the Caribbean and a quick trip past Cap d’Or and back, we returned to the same pristine bay and taught Lena how to dive. Which meant watching her belly flop and trying to hide our laughter as she resurfaced. She was a real trooper and didn’t give up until she got it, kind of. Just before we pulled up the anchor I realized it might be a year before I had the chance to dive into those crystal clear waters again so I joined the belly flop contest myself. After the painful impact, I struggled back to the boat and climbed up the ladder with my chest on fire and a grin from ear to ear. We pulled up the anchor and motored towards home with another good trip on the books.
I said it before but I’ll say it again: thank you a million times to Jonas, Tara, Lili, (Captain) Thomas, and Aparajita for the endless hospitality and another amazing trip to Spain.
Video footage by Jonas Breuer.
