Most people from the UK still think we are all bonkers doing what we did, my mum has people ask her "so where does your son live" and of course the reply is "he lives in a cave in the south of Spain" My mum however was the hardest of people to bring around to the idea. Around five years ago my partner and I "got the bug" - we had to leave the UK and live abroad for good - we remortgaged, bought a new house to try and make things better in life but that bug would just not go away. Initialy we were open to all ideas - which is the best way, we researched France/Australia/New Zealand/Spain/Croatia/Spain/Ireland/Spain! so Spain it was but which part of Spain?
The cave concept hit me one day while surfing the internet, never before had I seen such liveable in accomodation and so unique into the bargain, however the main factor for us was the price - and low they were. Interest was starting to take over big time and various phonecalls to Spain were being made, which for us was a milestone at the time because at no point previous had investigations gone any further. So after some very hard thinking and one little boy later we decided to come to Andalucia to view some caves. I had never been to Spain before but immediatly fell in love with the area, its apparent culture, the climate - everything just seemed right it was a gut feeling. We viewed four caves in total over two days - not many you may be thinking and rightly so BUT our 20,000 euro budget did restrict us to "bottom of the list" the one we went back to see three times was in a "state" to be optomistic, it required major structural renovation and had been uninhabited for at least sixty years.
The cave though (later to be named Cueva Esperanza) did have a number of deciding factors for us which far out weighed the renovation prospect. It had the most spectacular views, it had one hundred square metres of living space, a huge fireplace and not every room was in a delapidated state. The local village was a ten minute drive away with every facility we could want including a school for our two year old son when the time came. I could not help thinking about the vandalised VW Golf just outside where we lived in England or the noise on a Saturday when the last bus from Newcastle came in. The cave, its location and the culture we were about to sink ourselves in was absolute bliss compared.
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