I'm sleeping in a yurt by a small lake. It's located next to a scrap compound which is part of a small estate owned by an aging eccentric Buddhist hoarder called Buzzel.
Swiss in origin, Buzzel is bald, lean, chicken-necked and has a pair of glassy eyes which look right through you. He's also nearly deaf and speaks as if he has false teeth. His mess of a dog, who Mark has named "Fucker", is grey, shaggy and filthy. He has a small patch of fur trimmed above his hind leg - Buzzel hasn't got around to doing the rest. Fucker's eyes are also like frosted glass. Worryingly, so are those of the semi-feral cats roaming about (including "Lisa Left-eye" who sits there squinting at us all day). I fear for my health around these creatures, Buzzel included.
When we arrived at his finca, I thought perhaps we had stumbled upon the lair of a madman. I've never seen a scrapyard like it: oil drums, wooden sleepers, bits of metal, huge transport containers, all sorts of old tools, equipment and machinery. Even a speedboat, tractor, caravans and some massive unidentifiable industrial machines just lying dormant around the place. And it's nearly all in filthy disrepair. It's a breathtakingly ridiculous place.
Things made a little more sense after Buzzel showed us the guest house on the hill. As our end of the territory is dirty, disused and dangerous, the guest house is clean, stylish and beautiful in a rustic farmhouse way. It also has the best views over the coastal mountains, the Strait of Gibraltar and the silhouette of Africa in the distance.
Once presented with this bigger picture of Buzzel's world, his motives and ideas became evident. He wants willing and able handymen to manage and maintain the behind the scenes work on the estate, enabling him to loosely supervise and thus enjoy his semi-retired Buddhist mechanic pastimes. Even better for him if they come as volunteers and all the compensation he needs to provide are groceries.
It's dishonest of him to lure wwoofers into a place which is obviously not an organic farm and which does not provide the advertised opportunity to learn green-woodworking. This is another pitfall to look out for when wwoofing: some listings are out of date or unverified.
Nevertheless, we decided to stick around on Planet Buzzel for at least a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment