Casa de Campo es la leche

I mean this in all seriousness. This afternoon I had the loveliest of walks with a friend who’s new to Madrid and, seeing that the western edge of Madrid was an enormous green blob on her map, decided she wanted to explore the Casa de Campo. I’m not going to lie—I was a bit wary of her proposal at first. My previous experiences in the park included a trip to the zoo with five- and six-year olds from my school by way of the prostitute-lined entrance road, as well as several tennis lessons on the courts near the lake in full [rather distracting] view of prostitutes plying their trade. I also remembered how pleased I was upon seeing “Volver” after living in Madrid for six months and getting the joke Raimunda’s prostitute friend Regina makes about working in Casa de Campo. But in considering the possible occurrences occasioned by a visit to the park, I also heard the voices of my adult English students telling me about their weekends spent riding bikes through it with their kids or running on the kilometers of trails to get away from those same kids.

I am happy to report, then, that we saw not a single prostitute on our two-hour jaunt through the park. Instead, we saw dozens of cyclists (of both the mountain and road species), runners, walkers, and others seeking a respite from Madrid’s crazy streets (to paraphrase the recording you hear in the teleférico on the way over). Speaking of which, after doing a little research we figured that said cable car was the best way to get there (you can also go by metro, but it leaves you closer to the zoo and the amusement park rather than the part less touched by man). So we joined the multitudes and boarded the cable car near the Rosaleda in the Parque del Oeste and in only 11 minutes were whisked away to Madrid’s lungs.

We struck out for what I think were the park’s northwestern reaches and were extremely pleasantly surprised. We strolled along the dirt paths under an intensely blue fall sky, accompanied by bird sounds and the occasional whizzz as a cyclist passed, and came upon a spectacular grove of pines with enormous umbrella-like tops and, shortly thereafter, a wall that we discovered had played a role in the Guerra de Independencia as well as the Spanish Civil War. There was a little stream and a dam, plenty of encinas, and in general enough people about to send you on your way if you were to get turned around, but few enough scattered across the 4,000-acre expanse that it was the complete antithesis of Calle Preciados during December or any Madrid supermarket on a Saturday evening at 8.

Revived and content from the afternoon’s paseo, we boarded the teleférico again and in the setting sun returned to the packed city streets.

Unfortunately I neglected to take photographs of the park today, and the above photo is the only one I have. It is taken on a much gloomier day and in late November. You get the idea, though.

Organic fruit and veg

After a month in the States this summer eating amazing pesticide-free local fruit and vegetables both in upstate New York and in the D.C. area, I decided I’d try to change the way I eat my greens in Madrid. Neither the CSA model, which has spread like wildfire across the United States and Canada, nor local farmers markets really exist in Spain (or Madrid, at least) to the extent that they do on the other side of the pond. Generally the produce you can get in Spain is quite good, and much of it is from somewhere in the country, but it’s not always easy to know where it’s coming from, or how many pesticides have been used to grow it. I do have a good natural foods store in my neighborhood, and there are a number of these throughout the city, but the produce has never looked particularly great.

So this month a friend and I have ventured into the world of weekly organic fruit and vegetable boxes. While these are not exactly CSA, they are an opportunity to buy boxes of seasonal, organic produce from farms. Both places we’ve ordered from have been just under 300 miles from Madrid, which is not incredibly local, but relatively speaking, it’s not bad. The first was Daiquí, a farm in Ourense, Galicia (northwest of Madrid), where we paid 25 euros (including delivery to my flat) for a 10 kilo box that included Swiss chard, apples, green beans, adorable little green peppers, potatoes, a huge zucchini, a beet, and lovely heirloom tomatoes. All of it was really delicious, and very fresh. I’ve just checked the Daiquí website, and it seems that you can no longer request the box, you have to order things by weight, like an online store. Though I’m guessing the seasonal box will make a comeback.

At any rate, we’ve now signed up for four boxes from a farm in Lleida, Cataluña (northeast of Madrid) that has a lot of promise. It’s called Recapte, and you can sign up for a minimum of four boxes and as much as a weekly box for a year. Each box is 30 euros, also including delivery to your house. What I like about Recapte is that every week they post the available fruit and vegetables on their website and you can choose the 10 things that you want in your box (you have a choice of more than double that number). You can also take a week off by notifying them that Monday.

We received the delivery from Recapte today. It was much greater in quantity than last week’s box from Daiquí and included—as requested—apples, peaches, pears, tomatoes, carrots, rainbow chard, cucumbers, lettuce, red peppers, and sweet potatoes. It all looks quite good and I can’t wait to start cooking and eating it.

Barrancos!

I had never even really heard of the sport Spaniards call barranquismo (canyoning or canyoneering in English) until I lived in Spain. But soon I found out enough about it to know that it was something I wanted to try.

Last weekend, four friends and I piled into a furgoneta with our guide and an experienced friend of his and headed to Huesca, the province of the Pyrenees in Aragón. In the next two days we journeyed through three different canyons near the southern part of Ordesa, one of the two Spanish national parks in the Pyrenees. Barranquismo consists of, essentially, the descent of a canyon with the natural obstacles this entails. It requires a fair amount of gear (see above photo): a full-body wetsuit with neoprene booties, a climbing helmet, a special harness with extra butt protection, boots or sneakers to wear over the booties, ropes, descenders, waterproof backpacks, lots of carabiners with webbing, etc etc. It’s the kind of activity that, unless you know someone with a lot of experience and/or equipment, you should do with a guide.

But don’t let this deter you! It is one of the coolest activities I’ve ever done. We rappelled tens of meters into pristine pools, slid down natural water slides, jumped off rocks into pools, swam under waterfalls, and waded through narrow canyons with moss-covered walls reaching high above us. My favorite was Garganta de las Gloces, and I found a video of some of the best parts of it. And this is another we did—Barranco del Furco—that shows some of the rappels.