The Seas of Santander

I hesitate to admit this:  I have been a little under the weather.  It’s nothing serious but it is concerning and a huge bother.  I am experiencing a recurrence of an issue with my right eye that I first experienced in Santiago, Chile over two years ago.  It is painful; it affects my vision but is completely treatable.  It may be one of those conditions that takes root in the body and raises its ugly head now and then just to remind me that it’s there and I am not in complete control. 

I received excellent medical care here.  The hospital Marques de Valdecilla University Hospital is huge, new-looking, and its urgent care facility has the latest in medical technology and well-trained doctors.  After my initial visit, I‘ve had a follow-up visit and will have yet another scheduled for Wednesday.  While I’m on the mend, I still have a way to go to be 100% again.  As a note, we did not pay big dollars for emergency medical help here.  Prescriptions here are inexpensive too.  And we didn’t have to wait a day or even an hour to get my prescriptions filled.  Most medicines are prepackaged in boxes of standard prescription sizes and doses.  While the customer waits, the pharmacist simply reads the prescription and pulls the box or boxes needed to fill the script.  I’m amazed. It is simple and it just works.

This eye condition has not kept us indoors; I simply dose my eye up with meds and away we go to beaches, markets, and more.

The rain we’ve had for the last two days, however, has kept us inside a bit.  After long periods of drought, when it decides to rain here, it rains!  The rain came down all day and all night Saturday bringing down a total of over four inches.  We didn’t care.  We worked on the plan for our next destination and in the evening we watched Lou on Netflix and then Dahlmer story also on Netflix.  Gaaaaa!  I thought I might not sleep last night.  Both of these stories are scary, violent, gory, and yet very intriguing. 

Rain was still coming down Sunday morning.  In sharp contrast to the prior evening’s TV shows, we watched the Sunday service from our church, LCR-Marietta on YouTube.  It reminded us that church is so very important.  Being inside, and participating in a Sunday service sets the mind straight, and reminds us to love, to forgive, and to tolerate.  Watching the service on TV felt so familiar; we were happy to see dear faces and to hear Pastor Dave’s voice.

Around noon the rain stopped; blue skies peeked through the clouds.  We needed to get out of the apartment for a while.  Stan mapped a 55-minute walk to another Santander beach, Playa de La Maruca.  We did not know what to expect.  We just walked.  We walked through neighborhoods, past late-season vegetable gardens with ripe red peppers, drying tomatoes, and bright orange pumpkins.  We passed fields of fuzzy-eared cows and sheds where sheep, cows, and ponies rested after their feeding with the farm cat and farm dog nearby.

In this part of Santander, a walk to the northern coast is necessarily uphill.  We simply kept waking.  Then, at last, there it was — the beautiful Playa de la Maruca.  We were shocked.  We could not have imagined the difference.  This coast was not like the Playa de la Vergen del Mar where we walked on hills standing high above the sea below.  It was unlike the beach where we lounged just two days ago at Playa de la Sardinero, and was a vastly different seascape from the surf we saw below the Palacio de Magdalena.  It truly was unlike any we have seen before.   

Standing on the point, with the wind blowing in cold from the water, I began to think of Ireland or the cliffs where Heathcliff once walked.  There was no sandy beach at Playa de la Maruca.  But the stone coast was astounding.  Not a grain of sand was in sight, only gray flat rocks as big as a house met the roaring sea.  Above us, the sky was a glorious robin’s egg blue curtained with gray, silver and black clouds in the distance threatening more rain.

We headed home.  As we walked the black clouds followed us to our neighborhood.  Not a drop had fallen yet.  The time of day was about 3 pm.  We craved a snack.  Santander restaurants do not serve food until 2 pm every day and on Sundays, most do not serve food at all – just coffee, tea, beer, and wine.  We remembered a little place serving kabobs.  Kabobs are not shish-ka-bobs as we know them.  Turkish kabobs refer to the ground meat, packed tight, and roasted vertically on a skewer near a flame.  The meat is sliced thin and is usually served on a soft pita or a plato with salad greens, a bit of onion, and wonderful taziki sauce plus a side of papas fritas.

Stan and I shared just one of those Kabobs on a light and fluffy pita.  Like a delicious gyro, our huge sandwich was scrumptious and big enough for two.

And then the rain came . . . again.