Fiesta time!

Yesterday is backblipped, in case you missed it. Worth a look if you like pink. After backblipping for days, I'm trying to get back on track by posting this at a few minutes after midnight.

Today S convinced me to leave the car at Cantarrijan and walk up the hill and over the headland to the next beach over. He tested this walk yesterday and it took him half an hour. "There are two chiringuitos on the other beach," he coaxed. At my pace, it took us an hour. There was a "technical" bit where I had to do a detour because the crumbling cliff-edge path made my knees wobbly, and the descent to the beach was so steep and slithery that I did part of it on my bum (but so did S so I didn't feel so bad about it).

Lunch at the nearest chiringuito was well-earned. Every time we have lunch in one of these we order fewer dishes, and it''s still too much. This time we had one of our new favourites, crisp deep-fried slices of aubergine drizzled with raw cane syrup -- a big pile, but we happily finished it. Then we had a reasonable quantity of clams steamed with loads of garlic, parsley and olive oil. Plus a mountain of puntillitas -- tiny fried squid. They would have easily fed four very greedy people -- we ate about half of them, so I hope the restaurant has a cat. Then we had a lounge on the beach and I had a little swim in slightly chilly but beautifully calm water. The walk back was a little easier, and we rewarded ourselves with ice cream. Result, we needed no food this evening.

We did go out for the last night of the fiesta though. It was rather quiet and subdued, but we promptly bumped into guiri and F -- they'll be thinking we are following them around! We were speculating on the best place to see the fireworks from, and their friend D kindly invited us to join them on her terrace -- which is right opposite the castle and has fabulous almost 360 degree views over Almuñecar. So we had a ringside seat for the very loud fireworks being let off literally 20 metres or so away, across the street. I'm quite surprised at how well this photo turned out because I was hand-holding the camera while leaning on the parapet ... don't look too closely.

Meanwhile in Catalonia, dreadful scenes of armed police beating up peaceful protestors who just want to vote. Nobody is winning here, and especially not the Spanish government -- the Guardian sums it up well.