Fiesta!

The We are becoming creatures of habit again, we are lucky to have a beach immediately adjacent to the marina and we have become " regulars" along with the other habituees, of a certain age who all have their own spot.

We can see Dark Tarn when we are sunbathing as well as the other visitors to the harbour, twice a week this usually includes cruise liners. This well saw an exceptionally large one.

So large that the normal cruise liner is dwarfed by it! I was fascinated by the fact it had an observation bubble that raised up about 100 ft on s crane arm, a little like one of the gondolas on the London Eye.

However we don't spend all our time on the beach.

We also habitually frequent this cafe, the Arkupe. It's right by the transporter bridge.

Not only does it do great coffee but it has great wi-fi. Something which is becoming fairly essential to us. This cafe also has a wild bird that the customers feed, so it has now, it would appear, permission to enter the premises and I'd guess is almost , but not quite, tame.

This weekend we had considered a trip up the coast to Casto Urdialles.

We had an unofficial invite to join the race organised by our hosts the Club Maritimo

De Real. However come the weekend the light winds were very light indeed. The pontoons were full of discarded anchors chain spare sails etc. The 20 or so boats racing to Castro were obviously trying to lose weight!

We decided to leave them to it especially having recent experience off large swells in combination with light winds. A rolling struggle even though it was only for ten miles or so didn't appeal, also there was the question of squeezing into a notoriously crowded harbour with another 20 boats. There was a Fiesta being held in Getxo, the Fiesta Mercedes. It seemed to be a combination of music, food and heavy drinking.........perfect!

On Friday evening we came across these strange characters who it would appear have carté Blanche to go around hitting people with the pink balls they all carried, children were a particular target.

This could be the basis for everyone's clown nightmares!

Bon Jovi were playing on the town square. We enjoyed watching them, of course they weren't  the real Bom Jovi but no one seemed to mind.

The following day was a celebration of sardines, fresh and cooked up on the barby and served with a glass of wine and some bread for the princely price of 1€.

That night the music and revelry went on into the wee small hours, we didn't mind because I had finally figured out how the ice machine in the marina worked and we were enjoying Mohitos on the cockpit.

After the celebration of the sardine it was the turn of the Caracoles or snails.

Early the next morning, well morning anywa,y we wandered into the part of Getxo hosting the snail celebrations and realised we had turned up a little early, everyone was busy cooking up large pans of snails and chorizo. 

These were then to be entered into a competition. The degustation wasn't until the afternoon. We managed to persuade one of the competitors to sell us a container of snails which we thought would do very nicely for breakfast back at the boat.

They are not the easiest things to eat, luckily and completely inexplicably Dark Tarn was equipped with a snail eating implement, a small needle like wiggler-outer.

I have to admit that while they are quite tasty they are not the most appetising to look at. Lynne thinks they look a bit like slugs once wiggled out of their shells.

The weather was lovely and as an added bonus the tides were huge as it was the Equinox, as well as night and day being the same length an extraordinary event was due to take place on Sunday night the moon was at its closest point to earth and from Britain it was very low so seeming ( it's an illusion. ) to be very large. The press had christened it a " super moon" however it was also due to be a total lunar eclipse and I duly set the alarm to get up in the early hours to see it, there was a fair amount of cloud but I did see the ' blood moon' in a spooky red light bathing the harbour.

 Apologies for the poor photo, iPhones don't do tricky photography, later the shadow of the earth passed across the face of the moon which I felt was truly wonderful and my phone failed to capture at all! Only another 33 years before it happens again, must get my proper camera ready then..........

( apologies! 2033, or 18 years)

 

This is the light show we can see every night, the marina is at the far end and this is the Abra ( bay ) wall lit up, it cycles through different colours and is really rather pretty however you can only see it from seaward, I took this at low tide on the beach, no one walking along the front can see it.

We are settling in quite nicely.....