Travelling solo but never alone: A tale of wwoofing, acceptance , and far too many tomatoes

The Meeting:

“ Ey! You wanting to be picked up? ”

I hear the words as I’m standing alone on a corner, 9:30 at night, in the vacant, “drive right through” town of Budens, Portugal. Any girl standing alone on a corner has probably heard some form of this “cat-call” numerous times in her life. And looking up to see the two sizeable, blue-mohawked men covered in tattoos and face piercings; packed into the white, beat-up 1976 Honda Civic hatchback like two sardines, my guard instantly goes up. Heart racing and too tired from my travels to deal with their primal calls, I shoot them a warning look and walk towards a more populated section of the Intermarche parking lot.

It took these poor guys a good ten minutes to convince me that they were in fact the owners of the small organic farm I was about to wwoof on for the next month. Even as I loaded my backpack into the back of the car, I had a difficult time shaking the stereotype of flannel wearing, dreadlock bearing, barefoot living, wwoofers I was expecting to see. Am I actually in the right car?

20 minutes later, I am sitting in a small town bar, coughing down a shot of Ginjinha with two hard core-German punks and an overwhelming feeling that this wwoofing experience was just beginning.

The Farm:

Do not expect much and you will gain everything.

We pull up to the farm nestled nicely on top of a mountain in the middle of a Eucalyptus forest and stumble our way in the dark towards a cluster of broken-down caravans. My home for the next three weeks would be a rundown, flea infested, mouse inhabited van parked in the back of the property; I couldn’t have been happier.

The farm was run by a group of anarchist families who were tired of life in Germany and chose to live their days and raise their barefooted-smiling children in caravans and yurts hidden among the giant Eucalyptus trees. My daily company consisted of six dogs, five fellow wwoofers, and seven children - with new families popping out of the woods every day. In short: no privacy, no alone time, and hours of laughter.

The shower was solar-powered and, if you were lucky, you were able to take a relaxing warm shower after work. If you were me, you spent three weeks squirming under the freezing cold water while the farm’s chickens scuttled around your feet and attacked your ankles. And of course the toilet: a golden throne perched high on an adobe tower, complete with magazines for your entertainment and a footrest for your anatomical comfort. In other words, it was a hole at the top of a tower filled with hay and man-made compost.

At night, we sat around the fire pit. The air filling with the smell of smoke and the sound of laughter as we try to communicate through a mix of German, English, Spanish, and French, our stomachs filling with wine, rice, and stale bread. In the mornings, we nursed our hangovers with muesli and black coffee before getting herded into the bed of the truck and hauled to our daily tasks.

The Work:

Those with uneven tan-lines are often the ones who have truly lived.

The days often took place in three main areas on a daily rotation: the garden, the kitchen, and the woods. The garden workers spent the better seven hours of the day watering and harvesting 2, 000 tomato plants. The small but flourishing garden was located in a dry valley 2 km from Vila do Bispo and populated by four cats and a soft-spoken German man who over-looked the garden from his caravan on the hill. Days were long and the afternoon sun was more than cruel. If you were fortunate to have the company of another wwoofer in the garden, the time went by quickly with the help of good conversation. In the absence of conversation, at least you would suffer in solidarity. If you were unlucky enough to be alone in the garden, you frequently found yourself cursing the life decisions that lead you to wwoofing, while crawling into a tangle of over-grown tomato plants, hair filling with crushed, rotten tomatoes as you accidentally place your face smack dab in the middle of a spider web.

The kitchen was fast-paced and called for a large amount of creative cooking given both the limited ingredients available for our three meals a day, and the small wood-burning stove that filled your lungs with black smoke and left your skin scared and chard.

The wwoofer assigned to the kitchen worked alone; cleaning the main house and making an ungodly amount of tomato sauce, ketchup, and sun dried tomatoes that were to be sealed in jars for the winter. The ultimate challange for this wwoofer was to attempt to cook tomato based lunches and dinners for the other wwoofers who had been harvesting tomatoes for hours and frankly, at the end of the day, wanted nothing more than to never see another tomato.

While the previous jobs called for the strong willed, the woods attracted the physically strong. Those unafraid of heights and willing to chop wood for the oven would climb the branches of the towering Huckleberry trees, machete in hand. Having embraced their inner Tarzan, these wwoofers would come home with arms sore and dangling at their sides, bodies covered in the blood-red juice of the huckleberries and blackberry thorns, happily swinging their machetes and wood bundles at their sides, and looking slightly “American Psychoesk” as they sauntered into camp.

The Play:

I’ve become accustomed to the calluses on my feet; they cost less than shoes.

If I learned anything from this experience, it was how to walk. Walk to the garden, walk to the town, walk up the windy mountain road. Need to go to the store? Walk. Need to go to the beach? Walk. Need to go anywhere? You guessed it; walk. But that never stopped us.

At 4pm on the dot, surfboards in hand, we would make our way four kilometers uphill and out of Vilo do Bispo to the main road that lead either directly to Lagos on the left or Praia do Castelejo on the right. Thumbs out and "smiles on" - we waited here for some friendly face to pull to the side and allow us to clown pack our surfboards and dirt-covered selves into their small European car and drive the short 15km to the beach. Whether it was an old man who insisted on having a full conversation in Portuguese regardless of our inability to understood, or a red-eyed traveler driving his van through the night, the stories, small-talk, and random gesture of kindness instilled a sense of gratitude and community.

With nothing to entertain us but ourselves, our days were filled with exploration. On our day off, we hitchhiked to Praia da Dona Ana in Lagos, to bathe in the warm Mediterranean Sea and swim around the towering rock formations that shot up from the water. When our legs were too tired to make the trek to the beach, we would spent our last hours of light swimming in a hidden lake, squealing at the fish biting at our toes and laughing at failed attempts to make the muddy clearing between the rope swing and the water. The work was hard but life was easy. If you did it right, by the camp fire that night, you would be ready for more.

The Lesson:

Years down the road I may not remember your name or be able to picture your face with ease, but I thank you all the same.

Electronically disconnected from the world and nestled in the Portuguese mountains, I found a community with a vast amount of soul and passion for life. A community who are friends and companions for a season then move on in the blink of an eye, leaving behind nothing but the remnants of their positive energy and unique outlook on life.

I was a dress wearing - bright eyed - California girl in a sea of tattooed punks, dirt under my fingernails and more bug bites than I could count, and I couldn’t have felt more at home. I went into this experience free of expectations. I was simply an observer that did not idly let life happen around me, but instead allowed it to happen to me as I watched and absorbed as much as I could in the little time I had.

I’ve had a number of people reach out to me, eager to wwoof and asking for advice. And I hesitate to tell them too much in fear of polluting their future experiences with promises and expectations that will never, and should never be met. This experience was my own and while I can give advice and tell my stories, please take them with a grain of salt.

Each of us has our own path, our own lessons - what taken from the wwoofing experience will vary drastically from person to person. Whether I could have learned these lessons anywhere else, I’ll never know, but the South of Portugal will always hold a place in my heart.

So for those of you who are hearing the call of the wwoofers, don't shy away. Embrace the experience and learn to quietly watch the sunrise on Praia do Martinhal or dance with the locals at a town barbeque. Step out of your life and into the life of another, and without a doubt, the world will welcome you with arms wide open.