Wild Wild West in Spain

It was a travel day today – two hours north sits the Wild Wild West –  a lunar landscape discovered by the Americans who thought it was a great place to make movies back in the 80’s.  To get there we headed north, over the 17 viaducts and through 11 tunnels (in just over 80 kms) and headed for the hills near Taberna.  It is a fairly sparse and lonely place just right for the cowboy and Indian films that were the only thing on tv for a while when it first came to NZ (even before Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie).  We were the only ones in the car park at Texas Hollywood except for the 2 gate keepers that took our 32 euros.  We wandered the main street past the stables, vets, barbers, tavern before being waved to the cart for our 'free ride'.  "Spanish?" asked the driver and the "No" and nod of the head turned any future conversation into a shrug with a smile.  After the bumpy trip to view the few wigwams, fort and main street again we returned to the car for some lunch - in the baking conditions we ate our pot of noodles, felt a bit alone, and were inwardly heaved a sigh of relief when we saw another tourist car arrive, and then another, about 5 in the end.  It was truly a film setting with most buildings not having any sort of interior and some with out a back wall.  They were all beginning to look the worse for wear – perhaps a tourist attraction for another 20 years before decay sets in real bad.  The saloon had pictures of the films ‘Once upon a time in the West’ where just down the road ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ and ‘A Few Dollars More’ and ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ were made. Cheap Italian movies were also filmed here with plots mainly about the Mexican civil war.  It was in the Saloon that the ‘show’ was on. Two of the stars arrived on a scooter just before the show and the other was the cart driver.  Multi tasking!!  It wasn’t surprising that with the language skills of the cart driver (which were no better or worse than ours) that the show was in Spanish.  We understood zilch, but humour is an international language just like music and romance and it was pretty easy to get the theme (baddie, goodie, card game, cheating, baddie gets shot, goodie walks away with recovered money).  However, it did seem that we were the only ones to get the innuendos – the baddie wanted to take Harry out to shoot him – I said ‘si’; when the baddie was about to shoot the barmaid said ‘no video’ and they all went over to the crowd to make sure the argument hadn’t been recorded; when they saw Harry taking a photo the card players said ‘photo’ and all posed at the table; the dead talked; the children were consoled by the cast when they were startled by a gun shot; and there was lots of laughter from the cast sometimes to the detriment of their lines. It didn’t take long to walk around the village and see the herd of goats, the camels and the horses and so we began to look for ‘continuity’ features that the director of today would need to be concerned about – the icecream box, no smoking sign and computerised cash machine, the wrecked cars and scooters outside, the radar station and wind turbines on the hills, the car tracks along the main street, the tv aerial on one of the houses etc etc.

After saying ‘gracias’ to the cast we drove along to Tavernas (another Spanish town on a hill, overlooked by a Moorish Castle ruin and lots of cactuses – quite fitting for the desert like surroundings), through Sorbas (known for its hanging houses – perched on rock above a gorge) and to Mojacar  (a village in two parts, the beachy touristy bit, and the old town on the hill.  The Mayor a few years ago realised the old town was failing and so gave houses to artisans – now it is a flourishing boutique shop town – well it was meant to be – but not on a Monday at the end of siesta in winter time).  It did however look quaint, and we enjoyed some pizza bread and coffee at a cafe overlooking the countryside, and some great hanging plants which did look a picture with flowering geraniums, bougainvillea and pointsettas.  (The latter are everywhere in Spain, and do look a bit worse for wear with the dust and dryness).