I must go down to the sea again
The coffee that I didn't drink left a nasty taste in my mouth. The Albergue de Meruelo was comfortable enough, and the evening meal was good, but not superb. The breakfast, however, was appalling. Chunks of bread. That was all. And when I asked for a second cup of coffee I was told, the first is free, you have to give a donation for the second. Now this was a private alberge; "donation" was a euphemism for payment. This was a little business, but what kind of business sense is it to save ten cents but lose eight clients, or eight times eight? We were all appalled and will doubtless pass this along. I will.
I was very anxious to have a real breakfast and a second cup of coffee, so I strolled briskly into Guemes. As I walked by a field, a huge machine was harvesting the corn, chewing it up and spewing it out into a truck alongside. It seems I was wrong about the opportunistic beans being intended for the cattle. Christian le Bordelais, with whom I was walking, told me that these beans, in his region anyway, were a specialty, and the corn simply served the practical purpose of a pole.
I had my second breakfast, it was really my first, at Galizano, and then I had the option of a short cut along the road to Somo and the ferry to Santander, or a longer walk around the coast. The weather was fine, so I headed for the sea.
As you may have noticed, I am rather partial to dogs, and I enjoy reading stories about, or seeing videos of, singing dogs, dancing dogs, talking dogs, etc. Well, today I was fortunate enough to witness a surfing dog. This portion of the coast is very much a surfer's paradise, and this afternoon I passed several surfing schools and surfing camps. And I have noticed more and more surfers in wet suits out in the bays as I walk by. As I rounded a point towards the end of the coastal detour I came down onto a car park packed with cars and surfing gear. Out in the bay where some large waves were rolling in were several surfers, perhaps three or four hundred yards out. Along some rocks which jutted out into the bay ran a black dog. The waves were washing over the rocks and I thought he was merely trying to get as close as possible to his master while remaining landbound. But he lept in and started swimming out to sea. He didn't seem desperate to join any of the surfers so he may not have belonged to them, but he kept going, breaking through the surf until he was about two hundred yards from the beach. Someone whistled from the cliff top and he started swimming in, catching waves as he came, and then disappearing under dumpers, and resurfacing in a mass of white foam. I watched fascinated, but concerned as well, because he was being carried towards some rocks where he might have been badly hurt. Seeing his predicament, one of the surfers paddled in, jumped off his board, and scooped him away from the rocks. The dog landed on the beach, shook himself, and instead of collapsing with exhaustion, raced up the steps to join his folk in the car park. He bounded from car to car, obviously exhilarated after his day's surfing. Relieved, I continued walking to Lomo, where I caught a ferry across to Santander.
Tonight I am staying at an alberge in the centre of town. Bedbugs are about. Apparently, the hostel at the next step is closed for that reason. Here, we have to leave our backpacks outside the dorm, and the hospitalero has made the hippy Kiwi leave his pack at the entrance because she thinks he is carrying the bugs. He showed me the alleged bites which she saw on his arm. He thinks they are pimples, and he's probably right, but there is no arguing with her. She's a bit of a martinet.
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