Life has settled into a quiet domestic routine punctuated by wild moments of flamenco - which seem to occur in the strangest places. The other night, we were barbecuing some pinchitos de pollo when we heard palmas (handclapping) coming from a power boat two docks over. But these were not ordinary palmas - they were GOOD palmas (which we don't often hear, even in places where there is flamenco). We turned off dinner and rushed over to the other boat, guitar in hard. Now that was what was called "presumido" - overly bold, presumptuous - but we didn't care. When the people saw the guitar they asked if I knew how to play it and I assured them that I did. They invited us aboard and we soon had drinks in hand. In short order the guitar was out and we began to rock. They were mostly younger folk, in their mid to late 20s, but they had uncle Juan with them. He liked to sing the older stuff, but the kids could sing Jerez buleria like crazy... they were all from Jerez, but rich enough to have a fancy powerboat. It was a fun night and we'd put pictures and videos up but for some reason the internet at the library balks at uploads, so nothing for the moment.
Happy domestic life revolves a lot around good food. It is so amazing to open the refrig to find that our cheese is Manchego (a kind that we bought on rare and special occasions in the US - when it could be found); our olives are hand-cured and bought at the open air market from the olive-lady who is always there; lots of great seafood and sausages.
We just love our little town. Clean, no crime, everything close at hand. This weekend, Rota is celebrating a fiesta that is going on for 5 days. It will have a little flamenco in it, but of the pop variety that can be consumed by the average Spaniard - flamenco is a cult artform and not well understood, even here. Most don't care for it all that much, although like Americans with Blues, they all pretend to be experts.
It turns out that we got to be famous without even expecting it. When we were anchored off Sanlucar last month, the Guardia Civil came by our boat to check our papers. We showed the papers and the man left after about 5 minutes, a pleasant enough visit. The next morning, at sun-up, two Guardia Civil boats appeared and the smaller began banging on our hull. We were asleep, but I threw on some pants. By that time, one of the officers was already in our cockpit. Now that is the first time that anyone has ever come on board without permission. Normally they request to board (and everyone knows that the answer must be "yes"), but it is a formality and a courtesy to request permission. I opened the hatch and the officer began by complaining that we were not showing our flag as is required. True, I took it down the previous evening because the wind was so strong that it was tearing the flag. I quickly put the flag up and produced our papers again wondering why these guys don't share information from one shift to another. He gave a cursory look at the papers and then said he wanted to inspect the boat. THAT hadn't happened since Mexico, but sure, go ahead and look. He took a quick walk through the cabin to see if we had any bales of marijuana, I guess. In less than two minutes he was back on deck. The people on the larger boat then called him to leave and he prepared to get back into his boat. At that point, I noticed a girl running a small video camera on the deck or the larger boat. I waved and asked the officer, "What is that about?". He didn't answer - just left. Just the other day, we heard from our family that Channel 3 had done a report on drug busts and had a video of our boat and the boarding. Now I don't know if they were trying to claim that it was a bust or whether they just said it was a search for drugs. But whatever they said, our Spanish family was bothered by it and are investigating further. I would certainly be upset if we were on national TV and our boat name was associated with running drugs. But it was probably just a training exercise and hopefully said so plainly. We shall see. If they neglected that last, there will be consequences.
Just because we don't blog as often doesn't mean that we don't like to get emails - use Sailmail!
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