Caminando por la playa...

Me despierto con suenos raros pensando en otro idioma...back and forth. English and Spanish, dreaming in both...back and forth, past and present, living in both. Another day, another bocadillo de atun con tomate. I love the tuna here! La Charo tells me I should sleep in, so I try and Bea's bed is super comfortable, but I keep having all these dreams, vivid dreams of fighting and teaching and water skiing, but on carpet. I'm being dragged by two brown extension cords through a parade of friends and stranger forgotten and forgiven.

I need coffee...a manchado...yes in this country I am a coffee drinker. El perrito lindo follows me down to the kitchen. He likes to run around me in circles before deciding to look for ham somewhere else. I make myself some toast and eat a peach, stare out the window at another sunny day in Andalucia. The hibiscus is in bloom...orange flowers like silken star splayed open skyward towards a day so gorgeous it's like an answered prayer. Time to check Facebook. Time to write. Time to try to figure out what time it is, what day it is...I am so lost in my multiple worlds.



"Vamos a la playa," Elena suggests.
"Vale."
So I put on my granny bathing suit and we pack a basket with towels, plastic cups, a liter of water and drive through the fancy streets to la Calle Orilla where this is a doorless portal in a white wall that opens out onto the shortcut to Cangrejo Rojo. Sand, sky, water, wind...too much wind...better to walk than lay down. So we walk, run, splash through the waves, pick up rocks, look at the seashells, and talk about Marimotos (my new favorite word...tsunami)and if those fabulous new fangled square houses on the cliffs have Marimoto insurance. We walk the length of 3 beaches, Elena telling me about work with the Juvenile Delinquents at el centro de menores, me trying to explain this trip...which doesn't translate well.

Elena: Que estas haciendo aqui? De visita?
Me: Hmmm is it a vacation? Can you take a vacation from your life? Is it a spiritual journey still? Am I just wandering around the world as an excuse not to have to go to work?

Elena takes my philosophical ramblings cheerfully. She helps me find pretty rocks, then we go back home because she has to get ready for work.Bea arrives around la hora de comer so we eat and she naps while I write. Then we go back to the beach and walk another 3 beaches before Sergio calls from the bus stop at la Plaza de Toros. More pictures, more memories, more hanging out...a couple mojitos at a beach side pub watching the sun go down and listening to merengue. Then Sergio has to catch the bus back to Cadiz. We have dinner with la Charo and Angel on the terrace. It couldn't be more lovely, then out for drinks in Puerto de Santa Maria with Bea's boyfriend Raul. At first I feel a little 3rd wheely, then more like a tricycle.

Bea and Raul tell me the story of how they met in that very bar. I was looking at you. No I was looking at you. I wanted to talk to you, but you were surrounded by all your friends. When you got up to go to the bathroom, I thought...damn it, is she leaving? I sip my cuba libre and people watch. There are chandeliers shaped like giant bunches of purple grapes that I find tacky yet fascinating. We move on and try to find the bar that plays salsa, but it's closed so we go to the rock bar and listen to old Rolling Stones. I tell Bea not to eat the bar nuts...it's unsanitary...dump them all into an ashtray and make them give us fresh nuts. Raul confesses his love of Creedence Clearwater Revival and we must all be drunk because there is singing involved. Is there a bar where we can sing karaoke? Yes. Let's go. But it's closed and that's a sign. Time to go home. But tomorrow...I'll show you the turtles Raul promises....