More squid
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Thu 7 Oct 2010 20:23
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Sitting in the third tapas bar of the evening in
Santiago, we got to thinking about our cephalopoda consumption. We worked out
that in the past ten days, only two had gone by without eating either squid or
octopus. At the pace we were getting through the stuff, we reckoned that Europe
alone would need to catch several hundred million tonnes each year. Sitting
there chewing on a fried octopus tentacle, dusted with paprika, this was
food for thought indeed.
We're still weatherbound in Viveiro, although the
last depression comes marching through tonight, so we should be able to push on
to Cedeira on Friday and on to Finisterre on Sunday. Our enforced shore leave
has encouraged us to do all manner of small jobs onboard that we would quite
happily have ignored for the next 12 months. It also gave us the chance to hire
a car and explore Santiago de Compostella. Our guide book gushes that it is the
third most popular destination for pilgrims after Rome and Jerusalem. Christian
pilgrims, that is.
We found the city oddly bereft of spiritual
overtones. The cathedral, allegedly housing the tomb of St James, was being
repainted and was rammed with scaffolding. Just a small corner remained
unsullied and that was filled with elderly priests holding some sort of mass.
Otherwise, the town itself seemed to rotate around beer and tapas. One street in
particular begins with a hostelry called 'Paris' and ends with another called
'Dakar', giving boisterous students the opportunity to relive the Paris-Dakar
race in terms of a pub crawl. Alex and I duly partied like pilgrims by visiting
several different establishments before retiring around midnight.
The next day we drove to Lugo along the camino de
Santiago. We passed a nonstop straggle of damp looking pilgrims struggling along
the muddy verge of the main road wearing everything from North Face gear to bin
bags. I hoped they were looking forward to beer and tapas and wouldn't find
Santiago too spiritually disappointing.
Our circle of friends and acquaintances here
continues to expand with the addition of an English chap who has moved to
Viveiro to build a home and a number of French boats that struggled in from the
east with stern advice not to attempt to round the nearby point. Almost everyone
who isn;t stopping here for the winter seems to be heading to the Caribbean. The
admiral and his friend - our first French acquaintances here - are planning to
sail direct from here to Madeira (a good week's sail), thence on to the Canaries
and then the Antilles, with the aim of being propped up behind some rickety
Guadaloupian bar by December. We're still waiting for our
invitation...
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