A quickie (Baiona, Spain)

I am paying for internet (what?!), and my time is running out, so I´m going to give as brief an update as possible. I am alive and well! Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! Kicking! Good morning sunshine! Everything in Baiona has gone better than well. Here is a short list of what has happened:

- I arrived yesterday and walked around the exterior of what used to be a fort and is now a hotel (but still surrounded by ancient and imposing walls!). Then I walked around the interior. There is a miniature forest inside! Most impressive!

- Yesterday evening I walked up a mountain to reach the old mills, which looked infinitely closer on the map. They were not most impressive. A few rocks, suggestive of old mills. Maybe I didn´t see them at all. Maybe the signs lied to me. Well, I´ll have to go again! I did, however, keep going up the mountain (it´s so hard to turn around once I´m going up -- there´s always another corner to turn, where I might discover something wonderful), and eventually reached a closed off field. I noticed a gap in the fence that seemed well-traveled and went through -- I discovered something wonderful! A dam and a great pool of crystal-clear and deep blue water, the source for the entire town. I walked along the path that hung over it, and then into a forest, where I wandered along dirt roads for a while. I´m not doing it justice at all, but the clock is ticking so I can´t try.

- This morning I went to a market in a neighboring town and spent a whole hour there. It was enormous and had everything anyone could possibly want, including furniture and stolen watches. I bought supplies for the week (with my appetite, they will last two days) -- bananas and empanadillas with bacalao and tuna inside. Later I bought chocolate, chocolate milk, and fresh orange juice, which is my latest inexplicable and insatiable craving. I´m going to have ulcers by the end of my stay here. But not scurvy.

- Later in the morning I went to the docks, where, putting into action my plan of being fearlessly outgoing, I immediately approached a man who was cleaning his hook line. Juan Jose talked to me a lot! I took many pages of notes (I´ve decided that I have to learn shorthand) (in fact, it is my goal to learn this year, yes yes yes).

- Still later in the morning I met a suave gentleman named Lito, who took me on a one-hour tour around the castle. He told me about everything -- fishing, the history of the region, the history of buildings, politics, his values. He offered to take me up to see the petroglyphs on the mountain in the evening, to which I replied, ´Madsfjasdff´, unsure of whether I should trust him. I spent all day thinking about it and playing out escape scenarios in my head (in case he turned out to be a rapist and murderer). I am great at kung fu and running down mountains in my head.

- In the afternoon I took a nap at Spanish break time. Then I went to the lonja to see the fish auction, at which there were about nine boxes of fish. Nothing at all! I met wonderful people, though, most of whose names I´ve forgotten but who told me that I was oh-so-welcome and that they would help me in anything they could. Guillermo, the seller of the fish, was particularly kind, and went around introducing me to people.

- I decided that I would go with Lito up the mountain (Mami, you can lecture at me if you want), and I didn´t have to use kung fu at all! We saw the petroglyphs, which are 4000 years old, and talked about what things of our civilization would last 4000 years (the road systems -- I´m so excited for archaeologists to discover those). Then he took me up another mountain to the Alto de la Groba, from where we saw everything! I am a sucker for views. We looked at the Vigo ria, where I will be on Friday. Then he took me to the Virgen de la Roca, an enormous Virgin Mary made of rock and sculpted in 1910. She holds a ship in her right hand, and we went up a narrow winding staircase and stood in the ship! Her marble face is beautiful.

- On my way to this internet cafe I passed a small soccer field where a little boy was practicing shots against his goalie father. The mother was standing nearby and holding a little drum, and every time he made a goal, she drumrolled and cheered. When he missed, she just cheered. I beamed.

Here is what will (I hope) happen soon:

- Tonight I will go to a Civil Guard band concert in a public square in town.

- Tomorrow I will go back to the docks and speak with Juan Jose. By Wednesday we´ll be so chummy-chum-chum that he will invite me onto his boat (or: I will ask him).

- In two or so weeks I will camp at the Islas Cies, which I can see from here and which call to me. Nature!

This ended up being a long quickie. Thank you, Mario Teaches Typing -- I have six minutes left.