Where in Spain can you play Settlers of Catan, watch some great 90s videos (yes, videos, not DVDs!) such as Cool Runnings and Home Alone, eat great food and share stories with fellow travellers? Well, for the last week or so, we’ve been at the final planned stop of our first European loop; Villa Isabel near Malaga. It would probably best be described as both a Christian community and a way-point for travellers, so it was a perfect place for us to stop off and see where we could help out.

Well, as soon as we mentioned that I know a little about computers and Kiri likes to do outdoor work, we were asked (with no expectations) to look at their computer network and garden (not at the same time!). Kiri set to work in the sunshine (incidentally, since mentioning the surprising levels of Spanish wind in a previous blog post, we’ve learned that the Costa del Sol (coast of the sun) used to be called Costa del Viento (coast of the wind), but the name was changed to make it more attractive to tourists! The wind is nothing compared to the extreme weather there has been back in the UK though… I should probably finish this brief aside and continue the sentence), tackling a huge rose bush, strimming knee-high weeds in places and saving a tree from being swallowed by brambles.

Now I haven’t really done much networking since my first job out of uni (telephone technical support for a bespoke business network gateway device… sounds grander than it is!), but I dusted off the relevant grey cells and got to work on the spaghetti junction of cables. The first job was to remove all of the wires that weren’t plugged into anything at all(!), then work out the topography (and document it), before neatening up the remaining cables to make future management easier. Oh, and I flashed a wireless access point that wasn’t working, bricked it (it wasn’t even responding to a ping), then shorted the electronics to bring it back to life. All in a day’s work!

Onto a different type of networking now; we’ve met some really great people whilst we’ve been here. Jacob + Bev are basically the Mum + Dad of the place and they’ve made us feel so at home, as have all of the other staff. Sharing food with new people is always a really special experience and it’s even better when you can share stories of adventure and travel. Some people we met were just at the start of their travels; others were near the end, but all had inspiring stories that encouraged us and that we can learn from. And as we’re quite close to Africa, some North African influences can be found in the food, so we’ve eaten some great stuff. I know several people have said in response to previous blog posts that we should take Bertha over to Morocco… having had a taste of their food we really wish we could!

But sadly our time on this loop is limited and it looks like the next food we’ll be tasting is British fish and chips. Here we come Gibraltar!