I now say to the matronly Spaniard woman staring up at me, wearing typical “grandma glasses” you know the kind, they have large, round lenses and thin wire frames. Anyway I casually announced to her that I’m old. She says prove it to me. I whipped out my passport. She takes a hold of it and starts to ring me up a ticket to visit the MUSEO DE ALTAMIRA. I now say how much? SHE SAYS NOTHING. ITS FREE FOR YOU! What. I didn’t expect this. If you look online the ticket prices are only 3 euros. So I walked away leaving a five euro donation.
The Altamira cave where I am at now instead of possibly carving up some more twisted roads in northern Spain is famous for its magnificent prehistoric paintings and engravings.
It is situated 19 miles (30 km) west of the port city of Santander, in Cantabria provincia. Altamira was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.
Like I said on yesterdays dispatch. Beam me up Scotty! I’m now ready to go back home. Perhaps I miss the little women or perhaps like Gump; I’m now just plain old tired and not of the same mindset as the others. My kool aid has been drunk and I just woke up from its effects.
SOMEONE ELSES WORK NOT MINE: Do you live your life only to get to the end of it?
In the manic society that most of us experience, people exhibit a frantic, neurotic behavior I call ‘Destination Addiction’.
This addiction is a major block to success. People who suffer from Destination Addiction believe that success is a destination.
They are addicted to the idea that the future is where success is, happiness is, and heaven is.
Each passing moment is merely a ticket to get to the future. They live in the ‘not now’, they are psychologically absent, and they disregard everything they have.
Destination Addiction is a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is somewhere else. We suffer, literally, from the pursuit of happiness.
We are always on the run, on the move, and on the go. Our goal is not to enjoy the day, it is to get through the day. We have always to get to somewhere else first before we can relax and before we can savor the moment.
But we never get there. There is no point of arrival. We are permanently dissatisfied.
The feeling of success is continually deferred. We live in hot pursuit of some extraordinary bliss we have no idea how to find. ~Robert Holden
(Book: Success Intelligence https://amzn.to/3ERkrsK)
I absolutely wouldn’t change my day today. I set off by myself with a plan to go visit the Altamira Caves and it was truly an amazing visit. The earliest known guide book published for a visit was back in 1928.
I stopped at the local well stocked gas station and purchased two bottles of cider after my fill up. The river is full of trout and I can reach out and touch the canyon walls. The air smells wonderful and since everyone is moving so slowly it’s easy to look around. Earlier I saw two large openings way up in some granite walls.
And sometimes the timing is such that we need to help one another. The temperature earlier was nearly 31 degrees celsius, a combination of altitude, temperature and possibly diet.
Our support driver went down and I just happened to be on hand, to lend some companionship. I got to ride in a Spanish ambulance. I spoke to the 17 year veteran medical specialist. I saw all the best that Spain has to offer in the way of medical care socialized medicine and best of all it was absolutely FREE.
This probably wouldn’t work back in my USA but, it sure does here. Viva Espana.
End
Trawlercat Chronicles 