A bus ride back to the Sixties

or perhaps to a post-apocalypic world. In the early Seventies I backpacked the equivalent distance of twice around the equator, much of it along the fringes of hippydom. I was keen to find out the changes in forty years. A bus ride to the eco-village of Beneficio, near Orgiva in the far south delivered enlightenment of a kind. About two hundred live here in an assortment of yurts, tipis and homemade shelters. Visitors are welcome to stay at the communual tipi and join thirty or more for the evening meal of dahl and chappaties or rice and veggies. A five-foot wide fire dominated the tipi and there were magical moments when stars shown through the open top or the shadow of dreadlocks danced against the wall like an Indian´s feather headdress to the sound of violin, clarinet and a dozen drums. However, the music and free-wheeling conversations of the earlier days had been replaced by a woeful ignorance on how to live successfully and sustainably in a near-cashless society. Dialogue is challenging when you ask someone where they are from and the reply is as likely to be an unknown planet as it is a country. I pointed out easy ways to make life more pleasent - using car windshields to sprout beans, black plastic pipe for solar hot showers and intensive raised beds for gardening.
In the village I met English ex-pat builders living a similar hardscrabble existance. There dilemma was how to plough with a pair of mules and help refugees from the city who were weary of fighting police and just wanted to grow food to survive. One of the mule´s was too old the other too viscious. I gave them my business card informing them I was both an equestrian consultant and a compost expert.  Well-stewed tea gives life to the jaded and tranquilizers calms the crazy; as for ploughing, a better alternative are goats followed by pigs. Then, the cost of dead stock removal came up, I gave them the www.wormdigest.org website and told them that a composted mule will make a raised bed that will keep them in veggies all year. After five days I left, wondering why some people choose to live a post-apocalypic life when the buses run and markets flow with fresh fruit.