March 21st Back on the beach, we haggled hard with the most enterprising of the hawking locals. This man had purchased a large (and extremely varied) assortment of body-boards, and was renting them out by the hour. The waves were relentless. Our book informs us that despite the recent introduction of blue-shirted lifeguards, a couple of tourists still drown every year. The lifeguards lead a harried existence, blowing their whistles every time they think someone doesn’t see the next massive wave that’s about to crash on their head, or swims too close to the rocks. The undertow is so powerful you can barely walk against it, let alone swim, so those poor lifeguards spend their days sweating buckets in their collared shirts and fretting about body-boarding morons who swim too far out. After about twenty minutes,
... read more
