Jubilados Savouring the Journey
We (‘Spice’ and ‘Magellan’) are a newly retired couple with a passion for active independent travel. One of our first trips after turning 65 was to Spain, which explains its melodious word for retirees—jubilados—in our tagline.
What will you get by taking vicarious trips with us? Ideas, insight and inspiration.
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Home for the night
In his book NZ Frenzy, Scott Cook starts off his discussion of Paturau (Pah-too-rau) Beach with these words: “Oh my god, no way, oh wow, I’ll be damned.”
He says it took him seven summers of travelling to New Zealand’s South Island before he made it to Paturau. We’re almost as tardy—it’s taken us four years to showcase this “sweet as” beach, slang in New Zealand for “as good as it gets.”
As Sawjhar from across the wadi
We didn’t know we’d be going to the “Most Improbable Village in Oman.”
After camping for several nights in Hannibal, the name we gave to the rooftop tent on the Land Cruiser we’d rented, our plan was to drive up to the Sayq Plateau and luxuriate for two nights at the Sahab Hotel (A real bed! A hot shower!) and hike the “Rose Walk Between Four Villages.”
It was Fenny at the Sahab Hotel who told us about As Sawjhar, the Omani village where people still live in caves.
Ulama, ōllamaliztli, Pok-A-Tok (Photo: Globe And Mail)
Mixtecs, indigenous Mexicans, have been in the news lately. Half a millennium ago around February 18, 1519, Cortés and his crew landed at Cozumel. Mexico’s new president announced he’s going to improve relationship with the Mixtecs. Yalitza Aparicio, the lead actress in the movie Roma, is Mixtec. And a recent article in the Globe and Mail talked about the resurgence of ulama, an ancient Mayan ball game. All of which reminded Magellan and me of our trip to Cobá, one of the oldest indigenous settlements on the Yucatán Peninsula.
On Teshima Island
“You’ve got to come hear this,” I said, phoning Magellan and asking him to meet me at the Power Plant to hear Forty Part Motet as soon as his meeting was over. I was happy to spend an extra hour listening to the art (yes, listening) until he arrived.
It was in Toronto in 2004, the first time we experienced the work of Janet Cardiff and her partner in life and art, Georges Bures Miller—I’ll tell you more about our jubilado experience with their art in a minute.
Ginger’s “stuff” in Jasper—halfway home to Saskatoon
After too much wine at dinner last February just before Valentine’s Day, Magellan said to Ginger, “I’ll drive your stuff to Saskatoon.”
“Dad wasn’t serious was he?” Lynn asked on the walk home. “There’s no way,” I replied. “Driving a big rental truck through the mountains at this time of year would be ludicrous. Plus there are border issues. He’d have to drive down to Seattle first to pick up all Ginger’s stuff. I’ll talk him out of it.”
Eighteen days later Magellan was behind the wheels of a thirty-four-foot U-Haul truck attached to a sixteen-foot U-Haul trailer—a fifty-foot rig! And I was riding shotgun.
