I woke up at 0530 and wrote until 0700. It rained a bit during the night, and is almost solid cloudy this morning. Ana, Angel, and David moved into the buildings when it began to rain. I pulled the tarp over me for a while, but that was too hot, so I took a chance with the rain. My bed was dryer when I got up than it was when I went to bed. It is a beautiful morning, warm, humid, cloudy, light, cooling breeze, few to no mosquitoes. Surrounded by tide pools as much as 5 meters above sea level, but exposed to the occasional power of the surf which I have yet to experience here. I am enjoying the comfort of my new sandals. I christened them several times last night by accidentally stepping in tide pools.
My lower legs are quite stiff this morning, probably from using my feet and legs paddling, but my abdominals are no longer sore, although I am still using them a lot.I set 3 fishing lines as I untangled them. Nothing even ate the bait off the hooks. Everyone else got up about 0830m and the sun started to come out about 0900. We drank café con leche, and ate cookies, and leftovers. Boris found some white zygomorphic flowers growing out of stone walls. After returning home I identified them as the caper, Capparis spinosa. Caryn found a Greek tortoise.
We began packing at 1000 and we were on the water by 1100. We soon crossed to the north side of the harbor and visited a former British military hospital on Illa del Rei. The hospital is being restored and will be an office building. We paddled by the apparently abandoned naval station, crossed the channel, and ate lunch at about 1400 in a restaurant near Akelarre, the dance club where we saw Dr. Feelgood a week ago. David ordered a selection of tapas: anchovies, squid, potato salad. Caryn and Ana went shopping after lunch. Boris, Angel and I bought ice cream. We resumed paddling about 1600. Boris and Caryn
took a short cut and beat us to es Grau by half an hour or more. They had a bottle of Champaign on ice when we arrived at 2000. Angel opened it and sprayed it all over all of us before pouring each of us a glass. We hugged and high fived to congratulate ourselves and celebrate the completion of our circumnavigation of Menorca. Angel and Ana made some pone calls, we unloaded the kayaks, put our gear in Ana and David’s car, and returned our kayaks to Menorca en Kayak.Marco greeted us on the beach and took Angel and I to the bus station for the ride to Ciutadella for the fiesta tonight. We arrived at the Mao bus station at 2100, and were in Ciutadella at 2300. Ana, David, Boris, and Caryn met us at the bus station. They had all taken a shower before picking us up. David offered to take Angel and I to the house where we will stay while in Ciutadella to shower and change into some clean clothes. We enthusiastically accepted his offer. After the shower, change of clothes, and an attempt to shave that was less than 100% successful, we visited for a while with our hostess, Laura, a young lady with a great interest in veterinary medicine and wildlife rehabilitation. She is currently treating a tortoise that was run over by a car, and a falcon chick.
David drove Angel and I back to central Ciutadella at midnight where we rejoined Ana, Boris, and Caryn. Older people were sitting in chairs watching the party while the younger folks danced, jumped, drank and sang. The noise is very loud making it hard to hear what people are saying. We found a table and drank ginet con lemonada, people in Ciutadella don’t call it Pomada as they do in Maó. Friends stopped by to visit, and one left us a 2 liter bottle of ginet con lemonada. I dozed off in my chair. Caryn poured ginet con lemonade over my hand, and I woke with a start. Everyone laughed. Ana graciously offered to take me home to sleep, but I said I wanted to stay with everyone else. We then wandered the streets accumulating a group of friends as we went, including Rosa, Carmen, and Luisa. There were lots of vendors, carnival rides, and interesting people in the streets. I bought a scarf; we watched a percussion band march through the streets with a crowd following. One vendor was quite good with the whistles on puts in the mouth. He entertained us for a long time.
4 comments:
WOW !! Better and better every time I visit. Have you noticed how blogging the trip report keeps the trip vivid in your mind? When will the other trip participants start adding their comments?
BRT Insights - Whitewater Kayaking
Bruce, I have received extensive comments by email from a professional writer who I met through Elaine, my daughter. He and I have corresponded off and on for many years. I am hopeful that he may help me get some of this published in a magazine.
Will the magazine want it if the info is already published on the Internet?
This is all new to me, but they often publish articles by authors that have written books about the same event, sometimes even excerpts. In my case, I would have to write it very differently and use different photos. Anyway I hope to find out.
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