"The first condition of understanding a country is to smell it."---Rudyard Kipling
We're not sure if we agree with this statement, but it did get us thinking about what we smell in our little corner of Spain. After all, we have chronicled our travels with pictures of what we see. We have focused a lot on what we hear (Spanish conversation, children playing outside til midnight, roosters crowing). But what smells are quintessentially of this place? Smells, that if we ran across them five years from now, would immediately evoke the memory of our time here?
To answer this question, we've spent some time being "odiferously" aware. Here's our top six smelling experiences:
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1. Arriving home after a road trip in a closed car with stale, refrigerated AC air, we step out and immediately smell the ocean. We can't see it from our driveway, but we know it is just beyond. The air smells fresh and salty.
2. Honeysuckle. On our walk down the long flight of stairs to the beach, we sniff the sweet scent of honeysuckle that lines the path. Honeysuckle in America smells the same as it does in Spain.
3. Dama de Noche. In our little yard we have two dama de noche trees. Starting in June, they emit this incredibly strong perfume about 9:30 at night when the sun is going down. It's so strong that we smell it upstairs in the bedroom when we go to sleep. Traces of the fragrance linger into the morning when we come downstairs to the living room. (It keeps the mosquitoes away, too!)
4. Fish frying. Especially around 3:00 on Sunday afternoons. The Spanish love their Sunday family meals, and fried seafood is a staple at every restaurant. Bar la Palma is closeby on the beach, and by noon, as we sit on our patio, we get wafts of fish fry coming our way.
5. An occasional whiff of sewer. That may not sound very pleasant, but it really is, in its own way. We wouldn't want a steady diet of it, but the occasional waft reminds us that we are in Europe, not sanitized America. We noticed the same familiar scent in Athens, Istanbul, Germany, and Portugal, too.
6. The smell of goat hide. We bought a leather pouff in Morocco made of goat skin and it sits in our living room. For the first three months, every time Deb would come down in the early morning, she'd get these subtle wafts of "fresh" hide (this is a different odor than new leather). A lot of sheep, goat and camel skins are sold in Morocco and Spain and if you go into any of these shops, you can't help but notice the scent. The smell in our living room has thankfully faded over time, although every now and then you get a reminder.
So, there's our "aroma round-up" of Andalucia. By Rudyard Kipling's standards, we've gotten a better understanding of this little part of the world. These scents will be fond souvenirs of our life here! Hasta luego, Deb and Jim
