Friday 14^th March – Ayamonte

37:12.692N 7:24.433W

Last night I woke up at 4am having been bitten by a mosquito, which was taunting me with its whine.  So, the first bite of the season, bringing the making of mosquito nets to the top of my to-do list.

Tonight, the second bite occurred as I was making dinner; the blighter flew right in front of me just afterwards – I now have a bite on my leg.  Richard doesn’t understand what the fuss is about as he never gets bitten when I’m around – I seem to be his protection!

Anyway, whinging over…

Good news: today Richard and Peter fixed the pipework in the stern heads – it was quite a problem but they managed it – my contribution was to hand round the beers when they had finished – they had definitely earned it.

Later, to celebrate and chill out after the exertions of the day, Peter took all of us for a spin in his new rib boat and engine; what a thrill it was zipping down the river at probably around 20 knots.

We had a very late lunch and then Richard managed to fit in a visit to the chandlers before joining me for yet another supermarket trip – we are now restocked. 

I then prepared dinner but as we wanted to see the town at night we decided to go for a walk into town and then eat when we got back.  It was around 9.30pm as we set off and fairly quiet as we find the Spanish don’t really start their evening until about 10pm. 

However, we found the central church with a crowd outside and wandered in to see what was going on.  We discovered it was their preparations for Semana Santa (or Holy Week) which starts tomorrow and involves various processions throughout the week.  There were a number of floats ranged around the aisle representing the various events leading up to Easter; the floats were very well done and there were a lot of people taking a look around.

When we left the church, it was after 10pm and, as we had expected, there were more people around, sitting eating outside the restaurants.  This reminded us that we hadn’t eaten and so we took a slow walk back to Pyxis for a late supper.