In-Oliva, Spain

Took a walk through the Museu Etnològic d'Oliva, Oliva's Ethnological Museum. Some beautiful objects there, and some wonderful light.

Took this about halfway up the hike to Castillo de Santa Ana.

I’d been walking down a dirt road towards the main town when I heard a rustle, and Miguel stepped out from behind a bush where he’d apparently been hiding. He tried to play it nonchalant, but he’d clearly been waiting for me.

In broken English, he asked me, “Am I wrong, or is she...” He pointed at his head and made the “crazy” gesture with his finger. Scrambled brains.

“Paranoid,” I said, and Miguel snapped his fingers. “That is the word!”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

“You are going into town?”

“Yes,” I said.

He offered me a ride in his BMW. While we drove, he explained that Ana Maria had found him on Airbnb and asked to rent the house for eight months. He agreed but insisted she pay up front. After three months there, she started behaving strangely. “She never leaves the house. Only to get groceries, that’s all. Before renting, she wanted only to be sure the house was next to the playa, but she never goes there.”

Miguel dropped me off at Aldi. As I walked past chocolate pizza (wtf?!) and other unfamiliar foods, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into and was very thankful Ana Maria would be leaving in the morning.

Lunch with Miguel was a hit. His English was better than my Spanish, but neither was great. We managed a decent conversation, with Ana Maria occasionally translating, as she speaks both languages fluently.

Ana Maria had to sign some waivers, and with that, Miguel was fine with me occupying his home for the next three months. Miguel, a retired police officer, though he looks to be in his thirties, gave me his number in case there were any issues and said he’d pop by every once in a while to make sure everything was okay.

He left, and I set myself to the next task: getting Ana Maria to buy her plane tickets so she could get out as soon as possible and I could sleep a lot easier. She asked if I’d mind buying the tickets for her and letting her reimburse me. I declined, and she asked if, at the very least, she could use my phone to buy them with her credit card. She didn’t have a data plan, she said.

I didn’t see a problem with this, and we proceeded to search the airlines for tickets. Get this: she wanted to fly from Spain to Abu Dhabi, where she would stay for a few days, before heading to the Seychelles. She didn’t care how many stops there were or how long she’d be travelling in total, but she didn’t want to be in the air for more than four hours at a time, and she preferred never to double back over an area she’d already covered. You read that right.

After what seemed like forever, we settled on Valencia to Rome to Amman to Abu Dhabi. There was no way to get from Abu Dhabi to the Seychelles in hops of under four hours without doubling back across Africa, so she agreed to a four-and-a-half-hour direct flight.

Money seemed to be no object to her, and any time I brought it up, she was quickly dismissive. She gave me her credit card, and I bought the tickets. She’d be leaving tomorrow morning.

Everything settled, she started to pack. I decided to take another beach walk and leave her to it.

When I returned an hour later, she was sitting on the couch, her bags next to her and Blanche in her lap. I asked if everything was all right, and she told me, “It will be tomorrow. I hope never to set foot in this horrible city again.” I was a bit baffled, as she was supposed to return in three months to collect her cat. “I wish I could see his face when he realizes I’m gone,” she added.

“Who?” I asked.

She nodded towards the kitchen window. I walked over and looked through it. The nearest house was about 200 feet away. An older man was outside, watering the garden with a hose.

“The neighbor?” I asked.

“He’s been watching me. Listening to me. But he has no idea I’m leaving.”

“He seems too far away to hear us,” I said.

“Not with his ears,” she said, looking at me like I was daft.

I blinked and asked if she needed anything from the grocery store. She shook her head. I was going to ask her where the grocery store was, but instead I stepped outside, pulled out my phone and googled “supermercado.”

I asked Ana Maria what time her flight was and if there was anything I could do to help her prepare. Turns out, the odd feeling I had yesterday was not unfounded. She's confessed that she doesn’t own the house she’s asked me to look after while she travels, and she isn’t even Spanish; she’s Maltese. She’s rented the house long term, paying a lump sum in advance, and then decided she doesn’t want to be here. Blanche, her cat, makes further travel difficult for her, so she wants me to look after the cat while she heads to Abu Dhabi and the Seychelles.

The problem? She didn’t clear this with Miguel, her landlord, before her trip, or before having me fly over. She’s invited him to lunch with us today so we can meet. I’m good at first impressions, so I’m not worried about the lunch, but the circumstances are bizarre. Further complicating matters, she hasn’t bought her plane ticket yet, presumably foreseeing there may be an issue. So she’s covered her own ass and left mine hanging in the wind.

Arrived at my final destination, the small Mediterranean town of Oliva.

So that I could avoid the language barrier, Ana Maria gave me the phone number of an expat UK taxi driver that could take me directly to her house, which has no official street address. Just waiting on his arrival.