A boat ride! (Baiona, Spain)

Yesterday I met the kindest, most generous person in the history of kind and generous people (this seems to be happening to me every two or three days -- in addition to learning gallons and buckets about fishing, I´m renewing my faith in my species). After talking a bit with a more-reticent-than-the-day-before Juan Jose, I wandered to another boat, where one man gave monosyllabic replies to my questions (they may have been grunts). Shucks. A bad luck day. But no! False! It was a great luck day! Roberto, who was standing next to the grunter, noticed my difficulty and started talking to me while he sorted nets -- octopus season starts on Monday and most net fishermen are putting away their nets and preparing the octopus cages. Roberto told me all sorts of things: how climate changes were affecting fishing (e.g. the winds are blowing from the south instead of the north, as they should, so nutrients from northern waters aren´t reaching the southern oceans and fishing is bad), how marine life can tell you when a storm is coming (octopi sit atop the cages instead of going inside them and cover themselves with rocks, dolphins leap a lot when the wind blows from the north, moon fish come to the surface), when certain fish were more valuable and why (faneca, e.g., tastes better in January and winter months, because they are carrying their eggs), what kinds of fishing I´d find where and places I should not miss, and when. ´Todo tiene su epoca,´ he said -- everything has its season.

Then! Then he took me on his boat! He had said, ´Oh, but you must go on a boat at some point!´ and I must have salivated or something, wagged my tail, because a few minutes later, after letting me help him clean out his boat (we carried sodden ropes and buoys and crates and rocks up to his storage room in the second story of the lonja), he said, ´Hop on.´ Aaaagagshaklfjadsf. We rode around for an hour, and he let me steer, and told me about navigating in the golden olden days (by land shapes -- ´Aah, yes, when that mountain has this profile and that other hill looks like that, I am here!´) and navigating now (´What does my GPS tell me?´). He told me where there were rocks and what was hidden by the tide. We went close to the rafts where clams -- clams? oysters? -- are raised and watched men shoveling them into boxes. This was a calm day, he reminded me over and over again when I lost my balance or got sprayed by a wave. It was wonderful! I am infinitely grateful to Roberto for that boat ride!

Today I tried hanging around the docks again, but there´s so little action! Most boats are being repaired in preparation for octopus season, and even the old men who lean against the railing and stare out at sea were absent. I wanted to ask Juan Jose if I could go out with him one morning or afternoon, but he was nowhere to be found. Alas! I´ll go back in a few hours for the fish auction, but there will be few people at that.

I have places to stay for my first four days in Vigo (thanks, CouchSurfing! more kind strangers!), and I plan to go camping in the Islas Cies not this weekend, but the weekend after that. I hope that they don´t require me to have a tent. I like to sleep under the stars -- and I don´t have a tent. We´ll see.

I´m reading a book about oceanography. Very interesting!

And I´m out of time!