The first day I arrived I went straight to Avila. Well, not straight to Avila, because I got lost, the first time of many. When I finally arrived, there was still plenty of daylight. It stayed light later in the evening than I expected and my first day in Spain, like all the subsequent ones, was light and long and lovely. The light! and the land... como mi querida tierra en California, Arizona y Nuevo Mexico. The dry land, el aire seco, los olores, and oak trees, encinas, so similar to the ones in southern and central California. They are an emblem of the province of Extremadura. The soldiers and colonists who came to Mexico and the Southwest must have felt utterly at home.

I came to Avila and circled its extraordinary, unbelievable, beautiful, eleventh century walls, La Muralla. I parked mi mula roja and walked through a portal which, I didn't know at the time, directly faced the Convento de Santa Teresa, built over her birthplace, the first building to meet my sight inside the walls. My hostal was further along the Muralla, inside the next portal, actually nestled up against the walls, so that my window opened onto the crenellations on top. An old gent from the Residencia de Ancianos nearby helped me find it, walking with me and pointing out el Hostal del Rastro. He asked where I was from. We talked about the weather.

During my journey I eventually made two large circles : one north, on my own (Avila, Salamanca, Valladolid, Burgos, Soria, Segovia, Avila), one south in the company of my friend Annette Simmons (Madrid, Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, Málaga, Granada, Cuenca, Madrid), and we made a side trip into magnificent mountains (but there are mountains everywhere in Spain) to Guadalupe for fiesta, where we saw hundreds of horsemen and women process through the town, and kissed a relic of the Black Virgin.

Chapter 3 - La Fiesta de Santa Teresa, List of Chapters, or Back Home