Simon Saves the Day (by Dave)

We haven’t posted much to the blog for a while because our access to the internet has been sporadic, at best. We’ve been going to an internet café in Gernika, but it’s a bit of a hassle. However, we’ve struck upon a new strategy that will hopefully bear fruit. We discovered, by driving around town with our laptop on, that there are some wireless networks around. So the plan now is drive into the industrial part of town just down the hill from where we’re staying, park the car, fire up the laptop, and do some high-tech poaching. We’ve been busy the last few days and I won’t try to provide a complete report. A highlight, though, was meeting with José Antonio, his wife Begoña, and son Iñaki on Wednesday night. My great-grandmother was José Antonio’s aunt. Although he’s about 85 now, his health is good and he has a lot of great stories to tell. When we met with him last year, he told us stories about the bombing of Gernika, which he witnessed as a 14-year old boy from a hill not far away and took us on a tour of the town, where he pointed out some fascinating things: where a bomb narrowly missed a bridge; where his brother Jesús took cover not far from the center of town. I know Alex is hoping he’ll tell us more about his experiences. Begoña and Eva hit it off right away and Iñaki and I spent some time talking about family genealogy and looking at family pictures. The next day we spent some more time with Iñaki, getting to know the area a little better. We stopped in at the museum in Mendata, where we caught up with our friend Idoia, who runs the place. Then we made our way up to Nabarniz, a beautiful little town high up in the hills that I had never been to before. Nabarniz was where the brother of my great-grandmother lived and we enjoyed seeing the place. We’re hoping we get a chance to go back soon.

We had planned to spend the evening visiting the Colegiata de Cenarrusa, one of the most important religious sites in the Basque Country. The Colegiata is located near Bolíbar (ancestral home of Simón Bolívar’s family) and after making our way there through some winding roads, we pulled into the monastery parking lot. We were piling out of the car when Simon said to me, “Dad, does that sound like air coming out of the tire?” Sure enough, we had a sufficiently bad leak that air was audibly streaming out. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of trying to change a tire in what would soon be dusk, in a light drizzle, up in the hills. So we hurried down to Markina (another of our ancestral towns) and found a garage. It was about ten minutes until they closed but they took care of the leak right away. If Simon hadn’t noticed the leak, we might well have come out of the monastery at dark with a totally flat tire and no help in sight. So, he get our MVP award for the day.