Dance connections
For context, there's quite a bit of history that led to our France/Spain trip, with Torremolinos as its peak destination.
Flamenco
Some 15 years ago, I took my first Flamenco steps in Cambridge. A kind soul guided me through my first Sevillanas, and this is how I met Samuel. His was a much needed (firm) hand since our teacher, Anastasia, was one of those naturals who liked to improvise and change steps at short notice, sometimes leaving our feet in a panic as to what to do next.
Home boogies
Soon afterwards, I moved to the centre of Cambridge and by total serendipity, Samuel and I lived just a 3 minutes walk away from each other! Our stressed out feet decided to take a break from Flamenco but the rest of us continued sharing pancake breakfasts, house parties and other outings, and became very good friends.
Samuel met Craig, they fell in love and became the Cramuels.
And two friends became three.
Belly-Breaking
Fast forward, I was dancing with a Bellydancing group. We performed at the Cambridge ADC theatre a few times. One year, my teacher Leyla and a BBoy teacher called Cuong decided to do a Bellydance/Breakdancing piece for the ADC which you can watch if you click here.
I joined Cuong's bboy group, and the following year, we breakdanced together on a Dr Seuss vs Shakespeare battle at the ADC. Not sure where the video is but here's the mad rap tune we danced to, the lyrics are epic!
Cuong and I fell in love.
And three friends became four.
Belly-Menco
The following year, Leyla, quite the creative lady, choreographed a Bellydance/Flamenco dance piece, still for the ADC, called the Myth of Changing Seasons which you can watch if you click here, following the Greek mythology plot. Hades (Samuel the bailaor) stole Persephone (me the bellydancer) from my mother (Leyla the bellydancer)'s protective arms to lure me to his burning kingdom (Spain?) !
Cuong and I also performed another breakdancing piece, and Craig supported all of us in the Audience. We all had a hell of a time bonding doing these reahearsals and performances!
Fla-Voguing
Fast forward a few years, Craig and Samuel (known as the Cramuels) organised their big wedding in Spain, renting a villa near Málaga to host a large number of family and friends. For the Cramuel's first dance, we choreographed a Flamenco/Voguing opening dance, which we practiced in Cambridge a few weeks before heading to Spain. Craig introduced us to Katy and Marios, two old friends of his, who were our loudest supporters in the audience (on the left). A small group of us was lucky to stay before and after and share two whole weeks of fun at the villa.
And here are the six of us in the Fla-voguing video!
We all share love of sun, travels and a good laugh. So we were not surprised when just before the confinement started, the Cramuels moved to Torremolinos. We consoled ourselves from their departure and Brexit by sharing lots of fun fondue and chocolate dinners with a fun French couple living in Cambridge that the Cramuels had introduced us to.
So we became friends with Simon and Maeva, the final members of our Torremolinos reunion this month!
Clubbing, Bollywood and Flamenco in gay Torremolinos
Samuel and Craig hopped back to Cambridge a few times and said hello last year. Of course, chatting with them made us want to visit them in Spain.
Instead of hopping on a plane for a few days, we somehow ended up deciding to take a sabbatical over a year and slowly drive... towards Torremolinos. This is the mid-point of our trip, the further South we decided to go, before slowly heading back North.
Torremolinos has been a very popular gay destination since the 50s. Not just tourists. There's a large community of permanent residents, foreigners and locals, which gives the city a lively vibe whether it's to do with restaurants, beach bars, night clubs, or street art. (left to right Ava Gardner, Brigitte Bardot and Frank Sinatra).
When Simon and Maeva jumped on a plane to visit for the weekend, we headed to a bar where we chose our Drag queen names. Thus Queen-Kong, Samuel-Lick-a-b*tch, Crack-Sniff, S*men, Mae-Vavoum, and Val-Cro headed to the club, where we were warmed up by a high heeled blond Queen to "I will survive" before more clubby tunes followed. We had a ball!
After that night, each gap of non working-time was a succession of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, walks, beach days, and meeting more friends of the Cramuels who are, as always, very popular, plus a beach volleyball for Craig's birthday. We saw two Flamenco shows and got seriously sweaty doing some group Bollywood dancing arms to face at the madly crowded international "Feria de los Pueblos" at the nearby town of Fuengirola.
Holy week with a hint of KKK vibe
In sharp contrast to the upbeat and colourfull gay vibe of the area, we landed in the ultra conservatives and deeply religious holy week celebrations, characterized by a large number of processions of hooded dark figures opening the way for stern men carrying twidly black and gold gory crucification displays on their shoulders, swaying slowly left to right, as they would giant coffins, to gloomy music. They literally sent goosebumps of discomfort to my arms.
I love Spanish fiestas, and respect people's beliefs, but on form erm... Give me an African evangelical happy clappy Hallelujah, Amen Church instead any day! These weird processions do NOT have a feel-good factor AT ALL. They are quite... creepy.
The Holy week processions coincided with Samuel's birthday for which he'd invited us in neighbouring Málaga for a Persian dinner, and every street we took was blocked by another procession, it felt like a non-ending labyrinth of horror that we could not escape from. The twilight zone vibe was quite funny to be fair so we had a great time.
It was an interesting experience as you can see from those cool shots of the processions, courtesy of our talented resident artist Craig as Official photographer (he is also tall enough to dominate the crowds for a good snap!). Spot the perfect young girl's face lighting up the dark theme on the last picture, the crucified Jesus against a fire light background on the first picture, the KKK dudes in red walking about next to Lingerie models or the one in white watching TikTok on his mobile...
And here are Craig and Samuel with their usual stylish gear walking with us in similar Holy week processions in Torremolinos (you can hear the gloomy music), taking the mix of vibes to a new level!
Cats & bitch, nudist & textile beaches
For May 1st, Samuel took me on a "Thelma and Louise" trip to hone his driving skills, having recently passed his driving test. We didn't end up driving off any of the numerous cliffs, but made it safely to a beautiful remote beach. Useful to know unwritten convention, there are two categories of beach goers, especially in this region: nudists and textiles. Textiles, who keep their clothes on, can ruin the nature experience for nudists as their presence may create some imbalance and discomfort. In small respectful numbers, they are tolerated on beaches marked as nudist on Google, just as heteros are tolerated in gay clubs, but if their number is in excess, well, it sort of ruins the intention, especially if they come to oggle instead of a goal of merging with Mother Nature. As a textile invited by a nudist, I was however considered acceptable on these beaches, which as this one tend to be beautiful!
Didi is not bothered by any of that on any beach, her fur making her some kind of dressed nudist. Instead, she was hyper-focused on the many wild cats lounging on rocks and fed by tourists and old local ladies. I cautiously let her stalk the cats and be stalked by them, ready to yank the lead, as I could feel from its tension that the peace was fragile! She also found an elephant to sniff.
So yeah that, the Kung Fu pose was to keep the strong wind from flattening our beach tent, it proved very efficient 😁!
Torremolinos
With all that, here are some pictures of Torremolinos buildings, the beautiful bay view from our balcony, and of the sleepy town of Motril nearby with Flamenco ladies. Weird factoid, there is a huge Dutch community in the Carihuela beach area of Torremolinos. We just happened to be there during their King's birthday celebrations. In tribute, the Dutch wore orange during the day (in reference to the House of Orange, the Dutch royal dynasty), we had a delicious Dutch mustard soup for breakfast, and we stopped at the Dutch supermarket to buy Frikandel sausages and other delicacies. Then Cuong and I went back out to the street, Spanish time, at 10:30pm for the main Dutch celebrations. We found the floor littered with cans and food, signs of a good party, but it turns out we missed it completely as we found out the Dutch like to go to bed early, unlike the locals!
It's a sunny day
It is with a somewhat heavy heart that we left Torremolinos and our friends on yet another sunny day, with a new batch of good memories, unsure of when exactly we will meet next, in which country, but certain that we will! Thank you Samuel and Craig for a funky and meaningful time.
Maeva, Simon, Katy and Marios, we'll see you in a few months in Cambridge!
Goodbye Becky, Noe, Gerda I and Gerda II, till another time.
We will miss our breakfast at sunrise and balcony sits at sunset to meditate on life and frienship. Here's the full view (and Didi begging for food).
Didi will miss our friends, the cats, and sneaking on our floor bed uninvited.
This It's a sunny day tune will stay my Torremolinos official tune forever!
On the road again, back to Dénia
Our little Polo is holding up, though our arrival in Torremolinos was slightly stressful when the clutch started failing an hour before. The kind of thing that doesn't matter too much on the motorway but we were not sure we would manage the last 10 minutes of traffic lights and pedestrian crossing stops through the hilly Torremolinos to get to our flat... In the end, we made it. We found a great Moroccan family owned garage who did a great job replacing the clutch and servicing the car. They advised us the brakes were ok for a little longer but we weren't ready to go through with a replacement just then. Fatal mistake, the brakes started making a weird noise about an hour from Dénia! So the Polo is back at the Garage, this time in Dénia...
We are now at the mid point of our trip, those 6 months have gone so fast... We will stay in Dénia for May and June given that we liked it so much. The plan after is to head towards Nice in July and August, visit our families (mine live there and Cuong's will visit from Vietnam and Luxembourg!) and stay in the region for September and October before heading back to Cambridge...
Talk soon!
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