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Sunday 27 September 2009

Fancy footwork







I suppose it was only a matter a time but it still took us by surprise.
Our lovely neighbours informed us last week that we were required to help 'pisar.' It's a word I haven't come across so far.
Pisar? I queried. She motioned a stepping movement with her feet and said 'las uvas' - the grapes. Ah yes ... now I understood ... pisar means to tread, like don't tread on the grass. But this was treading the grapes.

'Surely they don't really do it with feet,' I thought with a certain degree of horror.

Oh yes, they do.

Thursday 17 September 2009

La Fajana


This is our local beach of La Fajana de Garafia. Generally, it is not a sandy beach (although sometimes there are patches of sand) but rather a rocky beach. To me, it is a wonderful place for a whole number of reasons.
When it is rough, I am amazed at the way the Atlantic rushes in to our shores with such enthusiasm and then breaks its neck on the rocks. Only to rush off and do it all again.
I am amazed at the way anybody every made a road down there. In the degree of difficulty it ranks as about 49.75 billion trillion.
I take my hat off to the eleven people that live down there, working in the banana plantation.
I pay tribuite to the people of El Tablado who would carry great stems of bananas down to the old port in days gone by (several times a day) and to the people who practically risked their lives getting provisions on and off the ships in the old days.
Oh, I could go on. The place is an amazing example of the determination of man in the face of apparent impossibility and of nature at its dramatic best.