Reading in the mountains : Josep Pla, Del Golf Pèrsic a Xile.

Josep Pla (Palafrugell, 1897 -Llofriu, 1981) was a Catalan writer. He began his journalistic career in Las Noticias, and immeditely began writing in the newspaper La Publicitat  (a Catalan newspaper), for which he traveled around Europe. After the Spanish civil war he moved to his farmhouse from Llofriu.

When Josep Pla was a child,  his passion was reading (Montaigne, Pascal, Stendhal, Baroja, Azorin, Ruyra, Eugeni d'Ors...), he had a prodigious memory and a noncomformist character. 

His work has been the testimony of his receptive sensitivity and tireless curiosity.

We find among his books biographies of well known men from Catalunya, travel books, political chronicles, and remarks of daily life.

Del Golf Pèrsic a Xile, is a travel book, it was written in Catalan and it's one of the most beautiful travel books that I've read.

 It 's about a long journey that Josep Pla made in two oil tankers, the "Baltimore Tanker" and the "Vitoria". With the first, he traveled through the Persian Gulf  (Kuwait, Qatar, Oman...) making port calls at El Cairo and Ceuta until the oil tanker arrived to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

From there, he embarked on the "Vitoria" to Maracaibo. He also traveled by plane and by train through South America until reaching Santiago de Chile, he visited Cartagena de Indias, Balboa, Antofagasta, Valparaiso...

I specially like the highly accurate descriptions that Josep Pla makes of the different seas and oceans in which he sailed, the very detailed descriptions about the different cultures that he met, and the very different kinds of landscapes that he looked at, but I also find very interesting to know the daily life in an oil tanker and in the oil extraction areas. You get to have the feeling that you are living in the oil tanker.

Probably some of these cities and countries that he visited have changed over the years, but you can learn how they were some years ago, and how is yet the culture of these countries. Nowadays the oceans and the seas are the same as years ago, but unfotunately dirtiest and with more maritime traffic. 

I highly recommend this book if you are looking for the beauty in your reading, and if you want to  live for a while in the ocean, at the same time that you learn about other cultures and their history.