When I finally emerged from my cave, I walked out onto the beach and finally took in my surroundings. Even after the recent storm, which lasted way into the night, and the cloudy sky that persisted through the day, this was truly a stunning spot. I believe it is one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been to.
Above: If you look closely, you can see the castle up on the hill :)As I was walking around, I was stopped by more than one group of Germans who, upon seeing my height and blonde hair assumed I was German and started asking me something or other in their language. What followed was a rather awkward tri-lingual conversation away from which we all walked away feeling unsatisfied
I decided I was going to get to know Chiclana. After very little research (asking one dude at a bar) I decided I needed to heard back to the center of Chiclana. Being very proud of the strong legs I had developed walking around Munich and Barcelona, I decided I would walk. Maybe now I should show you a map of Chiclana, so you don't make that same mistake.
Zoom out once
I saw a map similar to this before I set out, but I neglected to look at the scale of the map. The line I put here is 5 miles long, but it is straight. And when you think five miles, you won't imagine that the street is nowhere near as straight as it looks here. Also when you think five miles, you probably don't think you'll be walking mostly in the moto/moped lane on a provincial highway. Since you are walking on this highway, which is on 3 bus lines, you'd think that if you got tired you could just stop at a bus stop, wait for a bus, and one would eventually show up. You'd also think that in a region that sees about 3,000 hours of sun a year it wouldn't rain all day after a morning that only saw a light cloud cover. Ill cut this short and just say you'd be wrong on all counts, and also that there is even less between Chiclana Central and La Barrosa than it looks like.
As soon as I made it into Chiclana Central, the weather of course cleared up. It was siesta time, so everything was closed, but I was able to grab a badly needed coffee at a small place. After that, I had a great few hours getting myself completely lost and not minding at all. I knew I needed to find a place to live but I wasn't worried about it that day. i was caught up in the fact that I was here in Spain. For the first time, as I wandered around, the enormity of what I had done and what I was doing hit me. My excitement gave me the energy to wander on what felt like every street in Chiclana. I saw some really beautiful things but of course did not have my camera with me. I may try to hunt these places down again in the next few months.
I took the bus back to my hostel, wandered out to the beach to watch the sunset (I'm going to make an album of more pictures, these included, and link to it somewhere here), and had a great meal down by the beach before finally turning in after a few beers at the hostel bar.
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