Wanderings and Wonderings

“Are you lost?” - a voice asks me.
Is this that moment in the fairytale where a mystical creature appears out of thin air to guide the main character to safety? I notice an elderly man standing behind the fence.
“Anyone with a map is lost” - he says, as if letting me in on some ancient secret.
After relying on strangers to travel almost a thousand kilometres from Barcelona to Granada, I am now relying on a map to guide me the last ten steps. I must really be lost.

“Are you ready for an adventure?” challenges me my host, a thirty-year-old Italian lawyer, as I finish taking pictures at the mirador - viewpoint.
“Always,” I reply.
We leave the busy square behind, climbing the narrow cobbled streets towards a church on a hilltop. I take out my camera to capture the grass-covered hill and the path ahead of us.
“Wait ‘till we get to the top,” my guide laughs.
On the way up, we pass caves that have been turned into fully functioning homes, and their inhabitants, working or relaxing outside on the sofas. Instinct tells me to reach for the camera, but it feels wrong, almost inappropriate to encapsulate another person’s life in a single picture, to expose him like an animal in a zoo.
“A month ago, these caves were filled up with sand, the homes destroyed. Now they have rebuilt them.”
I look at my companion in disbelief. Two young men on a red sofa greet us cheerfully and ask us to join them, as if we were the guests they have been expecting the whole day.

Maps don’t tell stories. People do. And as I look down on the houses of Albaycin, I cannot help but wonder what stories are hidden behind those snow white walls, behind spotless windows and bright-coloured curtains.
I decide to ditch my map - after all, I know for a fact that I will not fall off the edge of the Earth, and that’s the only thing that matters. The rest is a story yet to be lived.