December 2018
Our next housesit was our best ever, in Spain looking after two cats for an English couple, Maz and George. We landed in Alicante, where they kindly picked us up, dropped us off at a supermarket to do a large shop to cover the next few weeks, and then drove us back to their house. We had been worried it would be awkward, but they were the kindest house-sitters we had ever met. They fed us delicious home-made lasagna and beers, and gave us a tour of their amazing villa.
Out in the countryside, there was a village a half an hour walk away which had a tiny supermarket where we could pick up any extras we needed (a small range of fruit and veg, cheese and alcohol) and a bar. Aside from that, we were in the middle of no-where, and it was glorious. Although sadly too cold to use the pool, we did make good use of their bbq, and George showed us how to perfectly set the living room fire every time (where was that knowledge for our last housesit!)
The cats were friendly and chill, except that every morning when we opened our bedroom door, one of them would hiss at us from the dark (giving me a heart attack) aside from this, they were perfectly friendly!
They had an olive grove on their property, and had brined their own olives the year before, meaning they had numerous huge buckets of olives ready to be eaten - they said help yourself, and I must have eaten my weight in olives over the next few weeks! Luckily, they had two bikes they had offered us to use, so we cycled around the countryside in the mornings, exploring the arid landscape and working off the olives. It was glorious, aside from the often terrifying dogs.
The most memorable dog occasion was early one morning when we had decided to go out for a walk, we reached the corner around the house, only to see in the pre-dawn light a huge black dog loping towards us, collarless and ownerless, no one in sight.
It looked terrifying, and we bolted back to the house, where Ben, in true horror film fashion, couldn't get the key in the door to unlock it. Imagining the hound's teeth closing on my leg any second, I grabbed the key from him and opened the door, slamming it behind us in terror. It put a slight damper on our walks from then on, but happily we never saw the dog again.
And did I mention the hot tub? The stars were incredible out there without city light pollution, and it became our habit every night to have a drink in the hot tub admiring the stars and listening to relaxing ambient music, before fleeing from the icy winter night to warm up by the fire. Heaven.
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