A lot of sharks, a sail boat ride, and Eden (Vigo and the Islas Cies, Spain)

(I actually wrote this yesterday. Tonight is my last night in Vigo, and tomorrow I'll go to Muros!)

I am writing this in a tent! Since yesterday morning I’ve been on the larger of the two Islas Cies, a natural reserve with, according to a British journalist, the world’s most beautiful beach (I share this only because it’s what everyone – EVERYONE – tells me when I mention the Islas Cies; that British journalist has made many a Galician proud), and other Eden-like qualities. Unfortunately, the Islas Cies, and the world’s most beautiful beach, are crawling with tourists (Eden only had two), and my tent is surrounded by about fifty others, so I can only pretend that I am alone in an isolated forest when the flap is shut, and then it gets too hot. LIFE IS HARD. But it’s not, because I have been hiking along the forest paths in the early morning and evening, when they are deserted, and today I even quasi-meditated on a hill! I have found a hidden sea cave, been dive-bombed by seagulls who thought that I was too close to their offspring (flashback to my younger days, when I was traumatized by a five-minute clip of the movie “The Birds” – I’m still sure that these seagulls were going for the jugular) (and I have to admit that I did not react in a dignified manner at all: I ducked and ran, saying “Chill out! I’m not going to eat your babies! Leave me alone! Geez!” out loud), and watched the sun burn mist off the sea. I feel calmer than I have in weeks.

I have also finally caught up on sleep – my last few days in Vigo were hectic! Thursday especially. Let me tell you. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning (ungh) after a three-hour nap, and took a taxi to the lonja, which, like the lonja in La Corunha at 6:00 in the morning, was bustling. I first went to the smaller of the two buildings, the one for local catch, where fishermen along the dock were unloading dozens and dozens of sharks. Nothing else – just sharks. They were pulled up from the hold by their tails and flopped onto big carts, which were rolled into the building, leaving behind rivers of blood. I went inside and saw, alongside the sharks, swordfish and a few other biggies, including tuna (they are so pretty). The other half of the building was filled with more familiar fish – congrio, rape, lenguado – and it was already being sold. The bigger building, the Gran Lonja, was impressive in scale, but almost exactly the same as the La Corunha lonja in products (although octopus is in season now, and this was the first time I had seen it being sold) and proceedings (although screens on the walls posting rates at other international fish markets reminded me that this was world-scale commerce).

The few fishermen I managed to engage in conversation told me the same thing regarding their schedules: they leave at around the same time every day, but only come back after having made a sizeable catch. This means that they can be out for six hours or ten; it depends entirely on their luck (and skill). In the smaller ports, and even in La Corunha, the people with whom I spoke seemed readier to come back without a catch. If they returned late to the port, it was because of weather or problems with their equipment, not because they had been chasing an invisible school of fish. They shrugged off no-catch days -- “the fishing is bad now” – and hoped for more the next day. The important thing, they told me, was constancy, a dedication to routine. Interesting: Before coming I had thought that the larger ports would run like machines, that their connectedness to international commerce would force fishermen to live by clocks and rigid plans, while the smaller cities and villages would have more leeway in terms of schedule. I see now that I was right in assuming that there would be a difference in practice due to the difference in demand, but I was totally wrong in my conclusions! The fishermen in smaller villages can afford to have set routines precisely because they don’t feel the pressure that the fishermen in larger ports do; it’s the latter group whose schedule is most determined by the sea.

After taking a one-hour nap back at Zoulaikha and Juan’s apartment, I went back to the city center to see an exhibit called “Erase una vez . . . !la vida!”, where a preachy man told me all about the human body through earphones while I looked at plasticized corpses (preachy because he went on at length about the dangers of tobacco and not eating enough fruits and vegetables). Did you know that we exhale half of the water we drink? And that our all of our blood vessels, put end-to-end, could circle the Earth twice? I learned more than factoids, don’t worry, and I might start eating more fruits and vegetables (ha!).

I went to the San Gregorio docks at 4:30, where I met with Amable and several others who build and sail traditional Galician vessels! The others were named: Luisa, Sito, Suso, Javi, ____, and ____. They spent a good while preparing the square sail for our trip – they had to weave rope through holes at the bottom, attach a wooden beam to the top, adjust the angle of the main beam, roll up the sail because it was a windy day, etc. The “etc.” is maybe five more things that I have forgotten. Luisa explained that every single rope (and there are many) in the boat has a specific name, even the ties to hold up the rolls of the shortened sail. This vocabulary, this nautical language, is being lost, since nobody uses traditional sailboats anymore. BUT THEY SHOULD. It was a wild ride. When we got out to the Ria, we made for open sea, and the wind was strong! There were eight of us in the boat, and we were almost always all perched on one side of the boat, trying to keep it from filling with water on the other side. The waves soaked us in minutes, especially Luisa, who was lying down at the bow and stood up dripping. She combated hypothermia with the contents of a leather wine flask, which was passed around; the men talked about other people’s boats; there was laughter and contemplative silence (ooh, here is something pretty to think about in contemplative silence at sea: my friend Mary at the AIP in Germany thinks of humans, and anything else physical, as “ripples in matter” -- !!!). Four hours later, after having navigated through the bateas (rafts where clams are raised on big hanging ropes) and won a race back to the dock against a modern sailboat, we stepped on dry land. Terrible. I was ready to move in. I am so grateful to this group of total strangers who let me ride with them in the boat that they built. I raved about them to Monika, at whose apartment I stayed that night, and felt like a gas-guzzling cheater the next morning on the ferry to the Islas Cies. But now I’m here in Juan’s tent, relaxed and watching the sky darken, and – a vampire insect is trying to suck my blood aiiiie. Life is good.

After much hand-wringing (making decisions is not one of my strong suits), I’ve decided that my next stop will be Muros, which is farther north than I expected to go so soon. But time is flying (ha . . . ha). I’m meeting my German friend Asmus in Santiago on the 23rd, and after the big festival on the 25th, we’ll go to the city of Villagarcia, two rias up from Vigo. I figure that I can finish up my time in the Rias Bajas then and move on to the Costa de Muerte – Muros is my middle-point between the two.