Our cankles are gone! We can actually see our ankle bones again. We slept late today to make up for our bad night's sleep on the train. We then got ready and "taxied" via moped to the beach (Playa de Tesorillo) and sunbathed for a couple of hours. When the sun started to go down in the sky and it got breezier, we went climbing on the rocks at the beach. It is a very rocky coast with lots of jagged rocks, cliffs, and rocky hills. From the rocks we could see some beaches with black sand. We have never been to beaches with black sand, so we got taxied over to one called Parque Mediterraneo. From there we climbed over a rocky hill/cliff to another black sand beach with finer sand. This may sound easy but we did this in our sandals (Kim only brought a $2.50 pair of Old Navy flip flops), so we think we will do fine hiking in the fjords of Norway.
It was a day for some minor injuries. When Erick sat down to change his shoes, he sat on a thistle bush. While climbing, Christine pricked her thumb with a cactus thorn, and
Erick's back and Christine's tummy got sunburned. We all survived the day though.
At around 7pm, we went back, showered, Christine made grilled cheese, and then we walked down along the coast to get to the pavilion where Erick and his roommates practice basketball. We watched his team's practice that went from 9-11pm. It was pretty intense. The team is a minor league feeder team (i.e. equivalent to Rochester Red Wings Baseball). Erick and his two roommates were recruited by the coach and the rest of the team is made up of local Spaniards. Afterwards, Erick's coach drove us to and dropped us of at a place where some of the players go to to eat after practice. It was a middle eastern restaurant called Shwarmas. Erick wasn't there yet, but the coach said, "Antonio can speak a little English. Erick already gave him the order for all of you, so go ahead and sit with him." Awkward!! crickets chirping.....so we stood in the doorway and waited for Erick, conversing in English debating what to do. Fortunately Erick showed up about 2 minutes later along with some other teammates. We ate fries with ketchup and mayonnaise (typical way to
Christine and ErickWe just climbed to the top of the hill before going down the other side to get to the black sand beach.
eat fries here). Then our main course came. It was huge. It was called a Shwarma Completa. Imagine a thick soft shelled taco (almost like a calazone) with chicken, tomato, lettuce, corn, carrot, onion, diced red pepper, and sour cream. The chicken was cooking in the most unusual way. Again, IMAGINE, a bunch of chicken compressed into the shape of a side note: this is taking forever to figure out how to explain.....ok, so the chicken was compressed together into a shape that was like a diamond with the ends rounded off which was about 1 and 1/2 feet tall and about 9 inches in diameter at its widest point. It spun around like it was on a pottery wheel. It was heated on one side by something that reminded us of a heat lamp. The chicken used for our Shwarma was shaved off of it with a knife as it was cooking because only the outermost layer could cook at a time. We liked it. It tasted yummy.
We got home around 1am, threw a load of laundry in, and set our alarms for 5:30 am.
Christine likes to Climb!On the way back, Christine scaled the rocks. It was fun until she pricked her thumb on a cactus. She was glad to not see any creepy snakes or spiders.
Spain's Flag
Map of Spain