Steps and Pasos: Lunch at the Monastery

We left an hour early. With a quarter tank of gas we started up the road to the monastery. One minute up the road and the views were already breathtaking. The monastery is located in the middle of a National Park covered in steep mountains that drop right into the Mediterranean Sea. We had no idea how steep, twisting and narrow the road would be and we certainly thought a quarter of a tank of gas would be more than sufficient. However, ten minutes in and the gas gauge had plummeted, the orange light dangerously blinking low. Do we continue the 7 miles through the National Park in the mountains to get to the monastery, or do we turn back and fill up the tank?

While Jota is trying to get a GPS signal on his telephone, I'm rationally using my third grade math word problem skills to figure it out: if 10 minutes took a 1/4 tank of gas, and we still have thirty minutes to go, how long will it really take us before the van runs out of gas and I either have a heart attack from trying to push the van while in neutral up a slope that seems Himalayan in quality or we all roll off the side of the road into the rocky crevasses below. And then I try to have an optimistic outlook and start equating how long it will take to hitchhike to the bottom, fill up one of our empty water jugs with diesel and then thumb a ride back. At any rate, it was clear we were going to be arrive with Spanish punctuality - atleast a half hour late.

It would be interesting to mention here the van's new nickname. We called her Jada maybe like the first week. But there is nothing Jada about her. Upon her first check-up with our good mechanic in Barcelona he craned his neck up from underneath the hood of the van and told us frankly that we, "had bought a potato." Or in Spanish - La Patata. A couple days later as we were driving on the highway, cars zooming past while we slowly (but steadily) puckered along, Jota and I at the same time blurted out - "she's totally a POTATO!" And the name has stuck ever since. We're thinking of plastering her name in paint on the side. In the meantime I've decorated her for Christmas...

Anyway, back to the side of the road in the mountains. We did the smart thing and turned around. Funny enough, Potato's gas guage registered as having a quarter of a tank again once we got all the way to the bottom. Jota did not find this amusing, at all. We filled her up anyway and started back. Amazingly enough we were only 20 minutes late and the director was another 20 minutes late more than us, so prefect.

The monastery is an old palace. Someone with a lot of money built it with the dream of making an agricultural park. I can barely imagine how they got all the supplies up there to even build. Now it's a Buddhist Monastery. There is a beautiful stuppa with prayer wheels encircling it and paths through the trees and fields. We ate in a big dining area, a large wooden Buddha sitting in the middle. It must be the only Buddhist Monastery that serves meat. Boy was I surprised. We met with the director and threw some ideas out there. He was very receptive. Looks like maybe we'll get a chance to help create a garden to feed the monastery.