I apreciate the work you put into your blogs,the video's are first rate ,Note to self learn more about editing video's ,yours are very professional ,will follow the rest of your travels with interest.Noel

Thanks heaps Noel!! really appreciate the feedback, it takes a while to do each blog, hence them coming out very slowly. So much is happened and I have so much great footage in the pipeline. When I get back to Australia in a month I will have much more time to edit. Plus I have a better pc back home to edit on, so I will be able to edit much faster. This little laptop that I am using at the moment, chokes every time I try and render footage, meaning each video blog is about 25-30 hours work.

I just got an email from Grant who has accepted my application to present at a HUBB meeting in Australia in 2013, where I am going to present what I have learnt from filming and editing and how I think that other riders can help push the format beyond just gopro footage and music as a backing track.

__________________
www.thegreatgallivant.com - video blog of my current year long trip around Europe on the F650GS Twin

I'd be interested in hearing you speak ,so where and when,i guess it's all on here some where.I'am fairly new to computers etc much to learn.would love to ride to the hubb meeting.Noel

Here is the latest video.



Noel, September next year in Dayboro.

__________________
www.thegreatgallivant.com - video blog of my current year long trip around Europe on the F650GS Twin

In the mean time i will continue to follow your travels,Noel

Volunteering at Can Jou - Part 2


Unfortunately all my cameras were broken except for the Gopro, so this is the only picture I have in this post unfortunately, lots more pictures coming on the next post, which I am already working on...

Can Jou is an interesting story, and something I will refer back to over the rest of this report. I learnt a lot about horses, Catalonian life, running a tourism business and the importance of succession planning.

When I arrived at Can Jou the twins, Julian and Marcus weren't there, Cammie told me that they were off at some music festival and would arrive later in the week. So it was myself, Cammie, the younger Liam, Adina and Juan. The earlier days were easy, we got stuck into the work in the mornings but were usually finished by 11 or so. It was still cold and so I would spend my afternoons editing, either in front of the fire on overcast days or out in the sun on better days.
Weather came in patterns, nights would get very cold and snow would fall on the Pyrennees. It was quite the view in the mornings, looking out to the Pyrennees covered in snow. I would be freezing while I worked in the stables until the day started to warm up.

Liam lived in Sant Jaume, the closest town to Can Jou, about 10 k's down the bottom of the mountain. After most of the work was done we would either go horse riding or he would head straight down to Sant Jaume to hang out with his mates.

Cammie also had friends down in Sant Jaume but she is horse obsessed and would spend all of her free time riding. Even on her days off she would be practicing show jumping. She had also made a group of close friends in Sant Jaume, care of her ability to speak Catalan, and so would spend most nights in the town only to return in the morning for work.

This meant that as the only volunteer at Can Jou I would normally be alone on the mountain on the dark nights. I don't have a thought for the supernatural but that doesn't mean that being alone in the darkness on the mountain was easy. At first the isolation was a novelty and I appreciated the time alone to work on writing and video blogs. After a few weeks though it started to wear on me.

Five or so days after I arrived Julian and Marcus turned up for lunch. Full of life and enthusiasm they went through what their expectations of me were. When they found out I had a trailer license they were stoked and organised for me to learn how to run the trail support. For me this meant that I was going to have more variations in work and I would get to know the local area very well. Both of them being around my age, I had thought at the time that they would be spending most of their time at Can Jou and I would have people to keep me company.

The twins explained to me about how they were trying to sell Can Jou. They went through the sad story of how their father had suddenly passed away in a tractor roll over about 18 months prior and they had to take the reins and keep the business going. Their father had remarried and had Liam, their younger brother in a second marriage. He had also adopted a girl and so there were various interests all vying for their piece of the estate. Unforunately this had all come to a head during these bad economic times and they were only looking at selling the business for a third of what it had been valued at 5 years earlier.

It was obvious that the boys had been accustomed to an easy life, travelling around the world and Europe, partying and only ever returning to Can Jou when they needed to work to pay down loans from their Father. This had changed very quickly after the accident and both the twins were dreaming of moving on to bigger things. They were entrepreneurial though and wanted to start their own tourism related business in Costa Rica, where they had made contacts through their travels. Their plan was to try and settle the estate, take their inheritance and head to Costa Rica to start the business. They were expecting to do this in the next 6 weeks or so, which kind of didn't fit in with my plans to stay in Can Jou until the end of July. However in the same breath they were telling me this they were also confirming that I was going to stay until August. I confirmed with others on the ranch that the twins were just being overly optimistic, as was their nature.

Over the next few weeks I didn't really see them that much. They would come and chat to me to make sure everything was okay and would talk up a big party they had planned for us for the weekend.

All the while nights were cold and tough. The thermometer in my room would get down to 6 degrees some mornings. I would be stuck under 4 layers of blankets but still cold. The flimsy walls might as well have not been there as the temperature was the same inside as out. There were no shortage on blankets at Can Jou though and I nailed blankets to every wall in the room which helped to hold in some heat.

About a week and a half in it was late at night and I was the only person at Can Jou. Anxiety started to creep in. Now I have had anxiety attacks in the past, they are not fun, generally I can control them fairly easily in most circumstances. Being alone however, away from anything and everything that could be used as a metaphorical anchor to reality, it got out of hand fairly fast.

Perhaps it was the situation I was in. I forgot to mention already, but I rode into Can Jou with only a couple of hundred miles of tread left on my tyres, with the bike needing a service. At the time I was also low on funds, awaiting money to come in a few months later from Australia, and couldn't afford to get new wheels put on the bike, as well as spend the 90 Euros for the return trip to see Nicole. I had let myself become stuck in the situation with what I saw at the time as no exit strategy. The thought of another 3 months like this weighed heavily on me. Up until this point the novelty of the natural beauty and new lifestyle at Can Jou had masked this.

An anxiety attack is somewhat just fight or flight. Rationality goes out the window as emotion takes over your every thought and holds you in an infinite loop that it seems there is no escape from. At home I would just call a friend, drive the fifteen minutes over to my parents or friends houses for a chat if I was feeling out of sorts. The very ability to do this usually means you avoid anxiety attacks all together. Anxiety doesn't even appear on the radar because you have a support network, a safety net that coccoons you from such things.

Now I was in the middle of nowhere, with few options. A positive side effect of an anxiety attack is that you quickly establish who the people you care about are in your life. They are the people you can talk to in a situation like this without reluctance. Unfortunately the time difference was not on my side and family and friends back home were still in bed. Nicole, the closest to me in France, was out for the night with friends. I sent them emails, asking to call me once recieved. Mostly though I knew that I would have to find a way to deal with this by myself.

Eventually the emotion would subside, a friend of mine who studies psychology told me these things usually only last about 15 minutes. The body has trouble sustaining your adrenalin levels at such a high level for long. So it's essentially like being strapped in a rollercoaster you didn't want to be on and having to wait it out until the end. These are rational statements though and are have very little positive effect during said rollercoaster ride. After an hour or so, I started to calm down, I stopped pacing and changing what I was trying to do every minute, I was able to focus on a single thing.
I was through it by the timeI got to speak to Nicole and family, who insisted that I call them in such a situation in future.

The next morning I was fragile. The worst thing about having an anxiety attack in a situation is that you start to relate the attack to that situation. This can then feed more attacks as starting to feel anxious feeds itself until it becomes a full blown attack. I didn't discuss it with anyone at Can Jou, it tends not to be something you tell people you don't know well. Instead I talked to Nicole and we started progressing our discussions on how we were going to see eachother and travel together.

Our plan became that Nicole would come to Can Jou at the end of April once her placement at the school in Avignon had finished. Her work Visa was due to expire a week after her placement finished. The laws relating to her staying longer in he Shengen zone after this though, were very vague. As an Australian she had 90 days free in every 180 in the Shengen zone without needing a visa. (Shengen is basically every European country, except Romania/Bulgaria/UK and the Balkans). What was very unclear was whether the time she had spent on her French work visa counted towards those 90 days, or if she could spend 90 days in Shengen after the expiry of her French work visa. The easier way seemed to be that she would go to Germany, where apparently German work visas are very easy for Australians to get, and get a work visa to cover her for 12 months. She could then come back to Can Jou and work on the ranch until we would leave together to travel the rest of Europe after August.

That meant that she wouldn't be in Can Jou for another 8 weeks or so. The thing was, if I rode to Avignon from Can Jou not using the toll roads it would take 6 hours and not the sort of thing I could just do in a weekend. Taking tolls meant it was a 3 hour drive, definitely doable for a weekend, but that cost about 30 euro in tolls. We decided to split the cost so I could head up to see her in 2 weeks time. I thought at the time that I had at least enough tread to get me there and back once.

Having a plan in place and something to look forward to eased my mind. All I had to do was occupy myself for the two weeks in the mean time.

I forgot to mention, but my mother had managed to get a new video camera for me on warranty back in London about a week prior to me leaving Avignon. She had also decided that she didn't like the camera I had swapped her for hers, so she was going to send me both my old camera and the new one on warranty. Thanks mum! She had mailed them to the address in Avignon though, before I could ask her to send them to Can Jou. Another good reason for me to head up to Avignon to visit Nicole. To pick up the cameras. What this means though, is that I don't have any photos from this time at
Can Jou. Hence the heavy wordedness of this report to try and convery the picture of what was happening.

The next week things started to change. I was still getting bouts of anxiety but managed to put them at bay. Avoiding strong coffee in the morning and ensuring I got a bit of cardio in the day really helped.

On a sunday night we went down to pick up clients who were coming to ride on the trail through the week. It was the first clients of the year and finally Can Jou was coming to life. The twins came down with me to pick them up in the fourbies in what would become a weekly routine. We would stop in Sant Jaume, the town at the bottom of the hill I was talking about before, and the clients for the week would all hop of the bus. We would greet them as they came off, smiles on our faces. What Julian and Marcus were really doing though, was sussing out to see if there was any talent for the week. Two german sisters had come by themselves along with a couple of other families and the twins eyes sparkled.
I was no longer a single man though, I'm just not that kind of guy and I was skyping with Nicole every night anyway. The twins however gave me the whole run down on how to court the ladies and I was quite amused in watching them at work. The clients were there from Sunday until the following Sunday. They told me that they wouldn't really talk to the girls until Thursday or Friday as they didn't want to peak too early. Then on Saturday night the Cava, that is the local champagne would start flowing and the twins would crack open as many bottles as necessary.

So that was how it was, later in the week Marcus and Julian spent a little time around the stables flashing a smile at the German girls. Then on the Saturday afternoon Julian and Marcus turned up and started burning wood for the BBQ. Three of their mates from Munich had been driving since the very early morning and turned up a little later. They brought cases of German and we started to get stuck into it. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

Late afternoon came and the Germans had put away more than their fair share of . I went looking for Marcus and Julian and only found the Germans by the pool, stark naked, drinking more . As was customary the clients came back from the final day of riding late in the afternoon. Cava was cracked to celebrate the end of the week and everyone would stand on the balcony watching me wash down the horses and send them out to the fields.

Later that night I was looking for Julian for some reason and knocked on the bathroom door. Now we had a huge bathroom in the house with a bath the size of a spa. The three German boys had decided to have a bubble bath together, again, stark naked, with glasses of champagne and strawberries. This was not the first time I had experienced this strange level of comfort that Germans have with being naked together. Earlier in my trip when I was in the Phillipines I met two German sisters who insisted on showering together. Personally champagne in the bath is something that I reserve for the special woman in my life and I would much rather sit around a camp fire with my mates after a hard day of riding... call me traditional.

Cava flowed into the night and I found myself at a table answering all the clients questions about my trip. They had heard through one of the twins what I was up to and they were curious. Fast forward a couple of hours and I was with the twins, Cammie, the German boys and the two German sisters in the staff kitchen drinking Estrella (the local ). It seemed that one of the German sisters had taken a liking to me. We had a good chat, but as I said before, I am a one woman guy. As is the way with these things though, if I was single I would have been sporting the eye of the tiger and she wouldn't have given me a second glance. About fifteen minutes after we had started drinking in the kitchen I turned to see that Marcus and the other German sister were missing. I bid everyone goodnight and went back to my room to sleep. Along the way I saw the tails of Marcus and the German girl sneaking off into a room.

The next day we dropped the clients back off at the bus. Dusted off our hangovers and got ready to welcome the next busload of clients that evening. I was happier in the thought that more people would be around to keep things interesting at Can Jou. Also happy though, because I was two days away from heading to Avignon to see Nicole.

__________________
www.thegreatgallivant.com - video blog of my current year long trip around Europe on the F650GS Twin

Volunteering at Can Jou - Part 3

It was Thursday afternoon or something when I finally left for Avignon to see Nicole. It had been raining earlier in the day and so I was kitted out in the banana suit. With an undesirable amount of tread left on the rear tyre I was riding carefully. Not like your grandmother, but certainly not pushing it around the corners. It was about 15 degrees, cold enough to make it uncomfortable in combination with the rain.


A storm rolls in over Can Jou.

Earlier that morning I had been washing horse blankets with detergent. I was going at them hell for leather with the scrubbing brush and it wasn't until I had washed about a dozen blankets when I looked down and my knuckles were bleeding. The skin on my hands had become very soft and when I started washing them in water it took forever to get the feel of detergent off my hands. I went back to look on the container only to see this symbol on the back.



Now I know that I should have looked at the container earlier, but this is dishwashing detergent, with a photo of dishes on the front of it. Why the hell is it corrosive!?

It turns out that it is actually detergent that you put in industrial dishwashers.

My skin had become so soft that it rubbed off the back of my knuckles on the rough fabric of the horse blankets. As my hands dried out they itched like crazy and became extremely dry and cracked. You can imagine this put me in the best mood for my ride to Avignon.

I rode past Figueres and reached the autoroute which would then take me about 3 hours at a constant 120kph to get up to Avignon. As I rode down the on ramp and started to turn onto the highway I lost traction. The rear end fish tailed and then stood up. I don't know if I did something right, or what I did, but the bike stood back up and all I could do was go straight ahead, like I was riding a giant ice skate. Luckily there was no traffic behind me and the direct line in front of me was the hard shoulder so I just kept sliding until the bike came to a stop on the shoulder. I looked back and saw the spot where I lost traction and it looked like diesel or something had spilled on the road. The lack of tread on my tyres though couldn't have helped and so I drove like a grandmother for the next fifty odd k's until I felt comfortable on the rougher tarmac and settled into the 120kph speed limit.

Until 100k's out the weather held good, wet roads but none of that rain that turns your visibility to shit. About that time though, it did, indeed, turn to shit, and I learnt that unless the valcro seam on the banana suit is kneaded shut it will let in enough water to ensure I got soaked through three layers. Water saps the heat out of everything it touches through conduction and convection. So as soon as it started lashing down the temperature dropped to below 8 degrees. I thought I would be able to hold it out another hour to reach Avignon.

It only took 20 minutes for the cold water against my skin, combined with the wind, and my hands itching again due to the earlier incident to become too much and I pulled over to a fuel stop. One great thing about most of the fuel stops in France on the autoroutes is that they have hot showers. It usually requires that you buy fuel or pay about a euro for it, but it is well worth it. I jumped in the shower, warmed right back up again. Put on some spare clothes and used the spare set of rain gear that I had kept for Nicole. It didn't take long for me to start to get soaked through again but I was able to hold it out until I made it into Avignon.

I was so glad to see Nicole again, I felt like a broken man, the anxiety attacks, the corrosive incident and the cold ride had me right down. She read my demeanour as soon as I arrived, I remember looking at her and tried to make a joke of my predicament,

"Fix me!?"

That she did, we ordered pizza and watched movies while my clothes tumbled in the dryer.

She had some bizarre, foul smelling, coconut lotion that she insisted on rubbing on my hands. It seemed to work and the next day my hands had stopped itching and cracking.

My new cameras had taken their time but both had arrived just a couple of days before I got in. All thanks to my mother in London I was able to shoot video and take photos again.

The next few days were spent in, while it rained outside constantly, at some point it cleared and we left the house to go on a hike to Sant Remy, near where Van Gogh cut his ear off, and a bunch of Roman ruins.


The reservoir we hiked around at Sant Remy.


Some strange old structure... I have no idea what it is, maybe someone can tell me?


On the top is says "King of kings" in French, I am told by Nicole.

It was finally time to leave Avignon and head back down to Can Jou. It would only be another month before I would see Nicole again.

Sun sets over the Pyrennees.

Things were busy at Can Jou. Julian had started hanging out at Can Jou a bit more, apparently sick of spending so much time with his brother. One of his mates turned up and told me plenty of stories from when the Twins used to go wild at Ibiza in the summers. I can't remember his name, but he had one hell of a beard.



I started trying to get away from the mountain more often to keep me sane. Cammie took me to one of her show jumping meets. It helped that I was the only person that had the license to drive the horses in the float to the meet.


Cammie gets prepared in the warm up paddock before her run.


Cammie on the jumps.

We arrived back from the show jumping and the twins were having another BBQ, everyone was Catalonian though and I couldn't speak with them very much. Food was good though, plentiful and there was more than I could have ever wanted. Things got rowdy and the Ferrier, whose name is Marius and Julian joined one of the local, and loco, Catalonian guys in a bit of a song and dance. Julian was telling me that this Catalonian guy had bought the keyboard convinced that all he needed to do what write one catchy tune, like the Macarena, and so long as it got picked up, it was going to be his ticket to fortune.


The boys dancing to a tune that had a chorus dedicated to the Barcelona star footballer, it went "Messi, messi, messi, messi" about a dozen times.

It was the next afternoon, with hangovers from the preceding days festivities, that we had to deal with a horse on colics. I had never heard of this before I came to Can Jou but they stressed a few things with me, one of these was how to identify the signs of when a horse is on colics. Things like the horse laying on its side and not wanting to get up, not eating food, scratching it's belly, sweating profusely and showing general signs of pain. Colics is usually when too much grass or hay becomes compacted together and clogs the intestines in the horse, basically put. If not treated quickly it can kill the horse and the twins had lost a horse the year prior to colic.

Pilgrim was showing signs of being on colics. Cammie, who has a sixth sense for these things, sensed something was not quite right.

The vet was called in and she quickly inserted what must have been a 3 metre long tube into the horses nose. I watched curiously as she pushed inch after inch into Pilgrims nostril. In my mind I was thinking, "Where the f-ck is all this tube going!?" that surely she would stop soon but she kept pushing until at least a couple of metres had gone in.

Cammie held the tube in place and comforted Pilgrim while the vet poured warm water down a funnel into the tube. She then held the end of the tube down to another bucket. I realised she was using a gravity pump to essentially pump the stomach contents out of the horse. Half digested green hay started to flow into the bucket.

I thought that was it but as soon as it stopped she poured more warm water through the tube into the horses stomach. She had to fill the stomach enough to create a flow for the gravity pump. This process went on and I was sent to get another warm bucket of water. An hour passed. It became more difficult for the vet to get the flow started each time and so she started sucking on the end of the pipe, just like syphoning fuel from a car, and as soon as the green hay would appear in the pipe she would thrust it down into the bucket.


The vet sucks on the pump to get it flowing.

I fetched more water, Cammie and I exchanged positions and I held the tube in place and comforted the horse, trying to stop it from moving about too much. Blood was running down my hand from where the tube was rubbing against the horses nostril. I was covered in horse sweat and the heat that was coming off the horse was incredible.

It was onlya matter of time until the vet sucked a bit too hard and the green hay came through the tube a bit faster than expected. She pulled the tube away too late and copped some in the mouth. Normally I have a pretty strong stomach, but I was nursing a hangover and this made my stomach turn. The vet however, spat it out, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, smiled, and kept going. I knew then why veterinarians get paid the big money. Someone once said to me that in life, in order to make good money, you have to either do the jobs that nobody else can do, or the jobs that nobody else wants to do. To me, this was certainly the latter, she earned every cent she billed that afternoon as she took stomach contents in the mouth at least half a dozen times.


Cammie works Pilgrim in the paddock after the 3 hour stomach pumping session.

It went on for 3 hours like this until eventually the liquid coming from the horses stomach was virtually clear. Cammie took Pilgrim to the paddock to trot circles. It was apparently important that the horse keep moving to try and break up any remaining clumps in the stomach. It was a busy afternoon, after which we had to go and pick up more clients and put on happy faces. We had saved a horse though, and it was a good feeling to be part of that. A few days later Pilgrim was back to normal.



Spring had sprung by this point, flowers were starting to emerge and the days were slowly getting warmer.


Eating lunch on the thinking rock, the twins father used to say that no matter how bad things got, if he came out, sat on the rock and looked out to the mountains any problem could be solved. Whenever we needed to chat about something, the boys would bring me to the rock.

Julian and Marcus would always turn up at Can Jou randomly. They were never really there to do work, just make decisions and try to work on the leads they had to sell the place. Most weeks it would seem like they had a keen buyer on the hook. Most of the time though it would go cold. At one point 30 people turned up and started looking around the place. It turned out they were a local hippie group that had somehow become very cashed up. They were looking for a place to turn into their commune. I mentioned to the boys they were unlikely to get the fast decision they wanted from a group with 30 decision makers. In the end, that one fizzled too.

The boys would commisserate with me, we headed to the beach one afternoon to get stuck into Clara and Paella. We met with a guy who was one of the first volunteersat Can Jou two decades prior. He was British like their father, and had helped build Can Jou, eventually moving to Catalonia and buying a house of his own. His discussion with the twins centred around their plans and how they were looking after their younger brother. He obviously felt protective over the twins and a sense of responsibility for them after their father had passed away.


Marcus and I drinking Claras, with lemon.


Mussels.


Marcus finishes off his Paella.


After lunch we left the restaurant to see this waiting on the Horizon, Can Jou is 30 k's behind those dark clouds. It went from 17 degrees to 6 degrees as I rode into the rain, again freezing my ass off and having to jump straight in for a hot shower when I finally made it back to Can Jou.

Miguel, the local guy who did the tour support at Can Jou was given the task of training me up to do his job so that when the summer got busier we could run 2 tours in the one week. Myself doing tour support on one and him on the other. He spoke no English other than, "Yes", "No" and "Hello Ladies!". This was good, I had to speak to him in Spanish and so my Spanish started to improve.


Miguel and I set up a picnic for the riders on the trail as he teaches me how to do the 'trail support'.


Bells clang as a herd of sheep scuttle past.


Adinas salsa reheating on the gas burner for the picnic.

It wasn't long until I could start to hold down a better conversation with Adina and Juan in the kitchen. Actually, in the end I found it much easier to speak with Adina and Juan, who also spoke broken Spanish, than I did with the others, who spoke it very fast.


Working the horses in the paddock.

My skills with the horses were improving as well. Julien taught me to work the horses in the paddock. Cammie taught me how to treat a lame horse. I was becoming a better rider, although only getting to ride a couple of times a week.


Watching over the horses in the paddocks from the staff dining room.

One day the twins came to me and told me a new volunteer was on his way and they were picking him up. I was stoked that I would have someone else around Can Jou in a similar position to myself. His name was Wokman, yeah, Wokman Benitez. He was Morroccan, which was quite common in Spain, given their proximity to the place. He had lived all over Europe, getting by in various places, more recently Barcelona, where he had trained to become a chef.

Wokman was laid back, intelligent and we had good discussions about all things travel and philosophy. He could cook, and taught me how to get the most out of the ingredients that we had in the larder. Dinner was normally made for us on days where clients would stay in the hotel at Can Jou, but some nights they would be in other hotels out on the trail and so we had to fend for ourselves.


Wokman cooks up a storm in the staff dining room.

Unfotunately Wokman only stayed a few days. He needed to make a little bit of money, and was going to stay at Can Jou to work in the Hotel and help Juan and Adina out with the cooking. The twins couldn't afford to pay him that much though and when one of Wokmans old employers called offering him a decent job in Barcelona he was on the next bus.

So some things changed, and some things didn't. Liam and Senda still used Can Jou as their own personal weed den. Causing trouble and always leaving the place in a mess.


Senda with the shaving cream playing a prank on his passed out mate. Liam in the background cooking pasta to stave off the 'munchies'.


Senda draws on the face of his mate who has passed out on the couch in front of the fire from smoking too much weed. Some things transcend all cultures.

Marcus and Julian kept promising to get the pool cleaned out, but it stayed green. It was symptomatic of their eternal optimistic personalities. They loved to think big and promise big things, but didn't always have the follow through to get things done. They were always talking up how each year they would have a huge pool party, full of scantily clad Spanish girls, a DJ and unlimited . I know the personality type because I have been prone to the overly optimistic view of the future in the past, and at least in my earlier twenties, not always having the follow through. The trip that I am on now though, is one thing that I had always said I was going to do, and now I am doing it. That, is something that I am proud of.


The pool, left green after being neglected over the winter.



Storms would dump snow on the Pyrennees and the twins noted how unusual it was to have snow up there this late into Spring.

Marcus came to me about a week before Nicole was due to arrive at Can Jou. He had been called by two Australian guys in Barcelona who had run out of money and had got the number for Can Jou through a friend. Marcus asked me to suss them out when they arrived and give him my opinion of them. I said "So long as they don't turn up in skinny jeans and come from Melbourne, they should be fine!". He laughed and I explained that this most likely meant they were hipsters and if so I doubt they would have much work ethic. They would be more concerned with how their iPod playlist represented their personality.


Aaron on the right.


Patrick on the left.

You can imagine then how much the twins and I laughed when Patrick and Aaron pictured above turned up wearing skinny jeans. To top it off, they are both from Melbourne. The twins however were about to hit peak season and we needed as many hands on deck as possible. Without more volunteers coming forward we had to take what we could get. What we could get would turn out to be a giant cluster**** almost a month later.

At first Patrick and Aaron were keen and they behaved themselves. Patrick was sent to work with Adina and Juan in the hotel, helping to clean and work in the kitchen. Aaron was put with me in the stables. Both of them were in their early 20's, both acted like teenagers. Just like teenagers they started pushing the boundaries to see what they could get away with.

The twins were quite liberal with food and wine. There was constantly a full 20 litre wine bag in the larder and a pallet of in the cellar. After all it is Spanish custom to drink a glass of wine with lunch. Patrick and Aaron didn't read the subtext when the twins said they could drink as much as they want. The twins didn't understand that young Australian boys from Melbourne will happily binge drink until you turn off the tap. After going through a 20 litre bag of wine in under 4 days it was becoming obvious that the boys had addictive personalities.

At first it didn't bother the twins too much, heavy partiers themselves, they were somewhat impressed in the new volunteers ability to put away the vino. I have heard alcohol called truth serum before and this was especially true with Patrick and Aaron. They started to tell their story. How they had travelled around Asia for 2 months before reaching Europe and spent about $15k each in the process. They had been arrested in Laos and had to convince the local police to give them their passports back so they could leave the country. How they got arrested was an even worse story, one they wouldn't tell me until a few weeks later. A story that is so messed up that not even 20 litres of wine was loosening their lips.

Arriving in Berlin in Europe they had spent most of their money partying, but also lost about 2 grand in an ATM card skimming scam, which they were trying to get back. Exhausted from the partying in Berlin they had made it to Barcelona with next to no money. They slept in a building site where they met a homeless guy from Transylvania who took them to a hostel where he occasionally took refuge from the streets. At that hostel they were able to work in exchange for a roof over their head for a week or so, which is where they met a person who gave them the phone number for Can Jou.

I wasn't particularly fond of them from the start. What irks me is that we have these Australians parading around Europe, causing nuisance, and acting like they are above the law in Asia. Their hipster bullshit also frustrated me. Acting like they were cultured, Aaron had studied literature at university for a semester before dropping out and thought he was next Hunter S Thompson. He would use long words incorrectly in order to condescend and belittle you. Patrick was just a space cadet, he was the more barable out of the two. They were okay at times though, when you have to work with people you can't hold the fists up at all times.

It all came to a head after about a week though. Just in time for Nicoles arrival.

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www.thegreatgallivant.com - video blog of my current year long trip around Europe on the F650GS Twin