Baiona, Spain

1) The port of Baiona – most boats are for sport. The green-roofed building at one o’clock is the lonja, where the fish are sold. There were so few fish (and so few buyers) that the auction was more of a conversation, and oftentimes a box or two of fish wouldn’t find a buyer.
2) This is the view from the water reserve on the mountain above Baiona – another day, I walked along Playa America, which is to the right of the green archipelago in the distance.
3) On the other side of this walkway is a steep dam! And the water in this tank is so beautiful. Look, you can see the bottom in this picture.
4) The mercado in Sabaris, on Monday morning. It was enormous!
5) Here is Juan Jose #1 (Galo) cleaning and sorting his hooks. He has four or five of these containers for his hooks, and every day he and his friends (look in the background!) spend hours preparing the hooks for the next day. The building behind them is the lonja.
6) These are octopus traps. You put a tasty morsel inside and the octopus enters through the hole at the top and forgets to come out. Octopus season starts this week, and many fishermen were putting away their nets for a few months to fish octopus exclusively. A single ship carries out over 500 of these traps, and each of the traps is checked and refilled with bait every day! I was told that there are about 20 ships that fish octopus – I don’t understand how any octopi are left alive.
7) These petroglyphs, at Outeiro dos Lameiros, are 4000 years old! Can you find the six-pointed spiral? It is the only such spiral in Galicia. A serious point of pride.
8) The Alto de O Grobe! Very high up! And there I am doing something like the YMCA.
9) The Virgen de la Roca. She was made in 1910 and is quite large. For scale: the ship that she holds in her right hand holds six people.
10) Roberto took me on his boat! I am standing where the fish are usually dying. Behind me, in the distance, are the Islas Cies.
11) Roberto! He is steering the boat. The metal cylinder that looks like it’s coming out of his chest is a winch, used to pull in the nets.
12) Clam floats! These rafts hold long underwater ropes where baby clams are put to mature. A book on Galicia informs me that the Rias, bays where freshwater from rivers and saltwater from the ocean meet, have such rich waters that clams grow at thrice the rate that they do in other places. (Sure! I believe it.) There were men on the ship to the right shoveling clams into boxes.
13) The wind and my wacky curly hair conspired to give me a 70’s look while I (yours truly, yes, Irene!) steered the boat back to the dock. If only I looked like this every day (and owned a boat).
14) I like the look of this long dock. (So close to alliteration. Shucks.)
15) UFO clouds over the fort that presides over the town. This fort (the people in it) fought against Sir Francis Drake! Also, Baiona was the first place to hear about the New World. Pinzon arrived here on the Pinta three days before Columbus arrived to Lisbon.
16) Guillermo, the seller of fish (among many other duties), holds a big (big) lobster.
17) The clams that Juan Jose #2 (Ge-ge) and I collected, and the instrument of their demise. We gathered two such buckets of them. My toes are there for scale.
18) The clams after Pura and I steamed them and picked them out of their shells! In this picture they look like diseased ears, but they were delicious.