Ezaro, Spain

1) These little houses lie along the road between Ezaro and O Pindo, the next town over. Don’t the mountains look magical?!
2) Site of a water trickle – but it becomes the site of a waterfall when the dam is opened.
3) The “off-limits” machinery room in the electrical building at the base of the river. Some of the equipment is over a hundred years old. I was leaving the museum when the man who had first showed me how to get to it said, “Pssst. Come here. I’ll show you something cool.” (It didn’t sound nearly as sketchy then as it does now in writing.) And he gave me a tour of this room! (And it was not sketchy, because clearly he meant “cool” in the geeky sense of the word.)
4) This is Ezaro on a blue-sky day.
5) If I were a beach, my sand would always have neato-looking patterns like these.
6) And a section of large pebbles. This makes me think of Giant Land in Mario Brothers 3, which I played far too much when I was a little kiddie (as evidenced by the fact that these rocks make me think of it).
7) The waterfall!
8) This is the beginning of the path up to the top of Monte Pindo, A Moa. You begin to understand why one of my flip flops broke on the way down.
9) See the fog?! Magical.
10) Dead trees.
11) Ah, tres belle, tres belle.
12) The view from the top of the mountain! Do you see the very little hill at the end of the coastline? I was there! That’s Monte Louro. Also – FACTOID – this beach, Praia da Carnota, is the longest in Galicia.
13) Wind turbines! And Ezaro from high above.
14) The river just below the dam.
15) My hiking companions, post-hike and pre-swim. From left to right, they are: Manel, ____, Zoraya, Pilar, and Dogs Behind The Tree (they have names, but I have forgotten them).
16) This is a port near the town of Quilmas, which is south of O Pindo (which, in turn, is south of Ezaro). The buildings, which I originally thought were houses, are used to store fishing equipment, like nets and cages.
17) The walk along the equipment storage buildings.
18) A boat! A building! A blue-sky! A beauty-place!
19) Ruins. This was supposed to be an artsy-fartsy picture, but it just turned out a bit confusing (maybe fartsy, but not so artsy).
20) Again. Don’t judge me too harshly, fine photographers. I do appreciate the aesthetic appeal of the scene, even if I can’t capture it.
21) A walk to the coast through these bushes is a cure for the common bad mood (also makes you look tough – scratches all over your legs. Now when people look at me the first thing they think is: “TOUGH”).
22) Here you can see part of the structure of the dam – water flows through those pipes. The blue water is river water, not ocean, and you can see some of the boats that rest in this little harbor.

Muros, Spain

1) The docks at Muros.
2) Santiago shows me seed mussels – the thin netting disintegrates in a week, by which time the mussels have stuck onto the rope.
3) These are teenaged mussels, held by Felipe. Raising mussels is a full-time job – the mussels have to be transferred to new ropes as they grow (or there are so many of them that they just fall off), so there is a rotation. I wrote in my notebook that there are 500 ropes per batea – now that seems to me an implausibly high number – but even if I’m off by a factor of 10, and there are 50 ropes per batea, and you consider that Felipe, Santiago, Carlos, and Nando maintain 14 bateas – it is a big rotation!
4) This is a batea. I hopped along those wooden beams! I did not fall into the water! Yeeeaaah!!
5) This is the crane used to lift ropes with full-grown mussels.
6) Many mature mussels make marvelous meals.
7) Carlos, Felipe, Nando, and Santiago – my first (wonderful) impression of the Muros fishing community.
8) Manolo, the net-mender, shows me what a trawling (not trolling!) net looks like in miniature. The real ones are enormous, but I don’t have a number to offer you and I won’t guess because I’d embarrass myself.
9) These are marisqueras, women who dig for clams in the sand. You might be able to make out some specks in the water towards the right edge of the photo – those are also marisqueras! They go waist-deep or more in search of almejas finas, babosas, and japonesas. Only women dig for clams on land, and only men dig for them at sea (going by boat to remoter sandy areas). Very gendered work.
10) Here are some almejas japonesas (I think).
11) Look at the reflection of the clouds in the watery sand!
12) Here you can see how big an area the marisqueras have in which to dig.
13) Part of the road to Louro, the next town over (two different people told me that it was two or three kilometers away – it was six). It is a pretty pretty road.
14) I am headed towards that mountain! That is the Monte Louro.
15) Looking down on the town of Louro from Monte Louro.
16) Fiesta night #1 – this man is singing to ME. My apartment (!) was in the building next to the one right behind him. Music all night long.
17) Look how flashy this is! When people told me that there would be “orquestas”, I expected small acoustic bands playing on wooden stages. NO. This stage came out of a truck – like a Transformer – and the special effects were wild.
18) The procession of the Virgen del Carmen starts out at the church . . .
19) . . . continues through town . . .
20) . . . on to the port . . .
21) . . . and now she is on that red boat! All of the littler boats accompanied the Virgen del Carmen a ways out to sea and then back.
22) I just liked this photo. I took it at the chapel where the Virgen del Carmen was finally set down – but have no picture of the chapel itself. Instead, I made a video while the whole town sang a hymn about fishermen! But I’ll have to upload it later.
23) This is fiesta night #3. More costumes and impressive technological feats of entertainment.
24) One of my adoptive grandmothers! This is Candida, who finally smiled (yeeeaaah!!!) on my last afternoon in Muros. I had accidentally come across Pepita’s house while walking through the upper part of town, and they both, of course, pushed me into their kitchens and fed me cookies and cake and hot chocolate. Candida’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter was with us, and, as we were walking into town, Candida told her, “Go, walk a little faster! I’m going to explain something to Irene.” Then she said, “Irene – do you know what the polvorete is really about?” The polvorete is a song that we had danced to the two previous nights – the shockingly sexual one that pretends to be about a rooster instead of a penis. She started explaining and I said, “Yep, got it, got it” and she cackled and cackled. Amusing loss of innocence (I’d figured it out on my own, though! I was proud of that).
25) Another adoptive grandmother, Pepita, Candida’s sister. She sang along to every song the bands played and never let go of my hand. I will miss these two women!

A few more from Vigo!

Here are a few pictures of the outing on the traditional Galician sailboat with the group Remadoira (e-mailed to me by somebody with a neato waterproof digital camera)! Amable is the big man in the tan t-shirt who hangs off the ropes. Luisa is the only other woman. And Sito, Suso, Javi, ____ and ____ are the other men. My favorite picture is the third one – Luisa and I have just been splashed. Cooold water.