h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Imagine "La Mancha", Spain, 1991.
On holiday with my Dutch girlfriend.
We both the same age, about 40 years.

After first being alone for a few weeks in the Spanish Pyrenees (Lerida and Vall d'Ager) we would meet in Valencia.

First I went on my own to the harbour of Valencia because of some very impressive memories that I have (from roaming Spain, especially Valencia) and I had not been there ever since.
Most things I could hardly recollect there, but a small fountain -where I used to brush my teeth - yes, I díd remember that.

In the street a couple that pulled an old barrow,loaded with old cardboard, passed by. I went straight to the woman and gave her a banknote of Peseta's and she - by reflex - turned it over immediately to her husband. They both laughed and after twenty meters she turned her head to look at me for a second.
Now I felt free to leave the harbour and took the bus to a hotel at the border of Valencia where I would meet my Dutch girlfriend. And we did.

The next morning we left for "La Mancha".
It is very hard to describe this huge wide and open landscape of dark red earth , very low hills and white windmills. When I saw this, one of the roots of my deep love for Spain was born.
The beautifull colour of the earth, where the Terra Cotta colours come from.
A countryside, so wide open, so huge.
A silence, so calm and dominant. Nothing to hear, not any person, not any car, although we could see a brand new road.
La Mancha to me is the inside out of the heart of Mother Earth. I can't describe it any closer to my experience. If it would have been healthy, I would have loved to eat that dark red soil. La Mancha.

After many hours of walking in that place of calm and wideness we reached a brand new road of asphalt. In the passed few hours I'd just seen óne car passing by.
We had to cross it to continue our walk and while we crossed it, my girlfriend suddenly said; "why don't we dó it in the road!?".
"Yes, why not?!" I enthousiasticly replied.

And so we did "it" in the road.
In the middle of La Mancha.
In the middle of the Day.

Nice memory.

(I would never give it a bureaucratic name like "Alfresco Sex", not éven "Alfredo Sex" .
It all sounds very bourgeois to me. I couldn't get an erection with that word in mind!)


(But hót, making love above asphalt! This is a medical warning!)


Alfredo, Amsterdam, september 2002