Another Day In Paradise

October 20, 2014

Playa Santa Maria, Cadiz just after sunset.

Cangrejo cooking dinner, hails from Alabama.

When are you leaving Sean? People here keep asking. Monday. Then Tuesday becomes the answer. On Monday morning, after an active weekend with little sleep I'm feeling tired and under-the-weather and so decide to put off leaving to Wednesday.

Once I've drank my quota of coffee, I go for a walk on the beach and finish off wandering the narrow street old town around lunchtime. I stop at a tapas place. On return to the hostel, I climb the stairs to the roof terrace for a lazy afternoon in a hammock reading. The cane shade up there does little to stop the sun scorching. The formerly white non-cycling tan skin is red and burns further and while the story is a good read, I'm distracted when Chloe, a petit French woman gets into the hammock alongside, facing me and playfully twitches her legs around. Unable to concentrate longer, I rest the book and we talk casually. At one point she catches me looking at her and we hold a long inquiring gaze. Big brown eyes draw me in. I down the book and slip from the hammock. Chloe climbs up on her side so I can sit in the opposite side of her hammock. She says Bordeaux when I ask and talks wine and aw, her charming French accent as I fix my eyes in hers. Then too soon, footfalls are heard in the stairs and unfortunately we are no longer alone.

The newcomers are Argentine and Russian and later Nessa, a girl from Offaly in the Irish Midlands makes the arduous trip upstairs on crutches. She sprained her ankle badly returning from a night out when the night-time street washers had just passed and she slipped on wet cobbles. That first day she needed to be pushed in a wheelchair to the hospital for x ray. Nothing was broken and now four days later is walking again on both legs with the help of crutches.

I return to the beach at dusk and watch the last of the surfers return. Families with small children play on the swings on a mirador platform where I take a seat to contemplate the weeks ahead and think about another tour next year. I only meant to stay in Cadiz a week-ten days, relaxing and updating the journal among other things; now I'm here twenty days, but I feel it is the right thing to do during this stage of the tour. Take a good long break away from cycling instead of rushing on home.

The ocean never appealed to me until seeing the waves, the surfers and swimmers. It looked fun, so I joined the daytrips to Bolonia beach a couple of hours drive east and Have really gotten into the fun on the beach with other people and the sensation of the water.

Its risky though to go into the tide on one's own unless extremely experience.

A few days ago when there were big waves I went out late afternoon on the local beach here in Cadiz. The waves swept me off the seabed each time they rolled in. I'm a crap swimmer and therefore may have gone in a little far. In to my neck. I went over onto my back in a backstroke, intending to reach the shore, but not seeing where I'm going, my swimming makes little headway against a curran, which takes me out. And just as I'm thinking I can stand up, I can't. I'm alarmed at the realisation I'm further out than where I started and try desperately to stop being pulled further, clawing my arms into the water surface in a breaststroke. The city beyond the beach rocking up and down as I gasps for buoyancy. That's what you get for daydreaming Sean. I wonder are there lifeguards on the beach. A swimmer with goggles breaststrokes past inshore. Should I call out help. Just as I begin thinking I may drown, a wave must have taken me in, because next I regain a foothold on the seabed. A weak hold as the curran tries pulling me back out, but I manager to dig my feet in and make it to shore.

Most nights there is dinner in the hostel. Cangrejo from Alabama is a great cook and when he does reception, plays his native Southern country music. His favourite seems to be "Copperhead Road". While listening, Jorge who speaks good English asks me, do I understand what they are singing as he doesn't. Anyway there isn't any dinner tonight, so on returning from the beach, I call into Mercado Regional Tapas bar. Spain is the one western European country where it is cheap to eat out regularly. I order a tortilla and pay and the teenage boy behind the bar gives me a receipt and tells me my number is sixty-five.

I order a cerveza, take a seat on a bar stool and sip. A few minutes pass, then "sesenta y cinco" is called out by a lady with a white cook's hat at the far end of the bar. Striding over I expect to see a potato omelette; instead, on the counter is a plate with a sandwich. This can't be mine, I complain, showing the receipt. "Si senor. Eso es tortilla"

When I return to my stool with the plate, I open the sandwich and find sliced potatoes with a liberal dressing of mayonnaise.

Street in old town: locals in long converse with much eye contact and arm language.

On Sunday morning on the way to Bolonia beach. The light was good. View out the window of moving vehicle.

Ivan, on the spur road from the highway to the beach.

Our group today include from L to R: a Kiwi, a Canadian and a Dane. Ivan with the board.

Crana, French speaking Swiss with Chance.

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