Sunny Saturday in Santander

It´s good to know that when you arrive in most Spanish cities, large or small, there are tourist information offices that are great resources to inquire about what there is to do, where to sleep, etc.  Having never really been a tourist in Boston, I don´t know if the same is true there, but I hope that is the case.  I arrived in Santander after a very long day in the saddle.  It could have been shorter, but I wanted to take a rest day completely off the bike, and Santander seemed like a good location to spend a day resting the legs.

 

Santander is a popular summer beach town made popular in the 19th century when European royalty began vacationing here.  It has lavishly beautiful architecture that seems to belong in a bigger city, but it retains much of its small city charm, peace, and relaxed atmosphere.  None of that was on my mind when I arrived, asking at the tourist info booth for a campsite.  It was uphill, near the lighthouse.

 

All these tourist offices, I assume for their records, as you where you are from.  The question in Spanish is "de donde vienes?", which is complicated for me to answer.  Do I come from Colombia?  The US?  Burgos?  Fisterra?  I usually go with Colombia, as that´s what my passport says.  This time, the girl´s eyes lit up when I said so.  Though she wasn´t Colombian, she was happy to share that Santander was hosting the second annual Feria Intercultural, a fair highlighting the many cultures of immigrants in the area.  Tonight´s country spolight was, you guessed it, Colombia.

 

After setting up the tent and showering, I took the half hour walk (I was not about to get on the bike for the life of me), to the fairgrounds.  Little booths representative of every country lines the perimeter.  Peruvian food?  You got it.  German beer?  That too.  Moroccan bracelets?  Swedish pastries?  All there.  For whatever reasons, I gravitated towards the Colombian booth, and payed premium for some good grub.  Something like the equivalent of 26,000 Colombian pesos for a half decent tamal, reheated in a microwave.  But when there´s good hunger, everything tastes good.  So much for experiencing a foreign culture!  The rest of the night I walked around, listening and danced to some good live salsa, but by midnight I was spent, so I headed back to the campsite.

 

On the way, a car stopped me.  Sometimes early this trip, I realized that a big part of the adventure would be in deciding who to trust.  The motherly adage of "never trust strangers" seemed a bit to close-minded for world travel, but really it´s only idiots who trust anyone.  All that in my mind, the driver of the car that stopped me asked me for directions to a restaurant near the campsite, and I happened to remember seeing it on my way, so I gave him the directions.  He offered a lift.  I decided to trust that he would not take me somewhere else.  The person he was meeting at the restaurant door was, gasp, not there.  By the time we had gotten there, I had shared enough of my story for this guy to offer taking me on a quick night-time drive through the city.  At this, I hesitated.  A total stranger picks me up, and is suddenly now free to take me on a drive.  Parked in front of the campsite, as I was about to say thanks and get out of the car, I decided to be a bit adventuresome.  What´s the worse that could happen? I actually did think of the absolute worse that could happen, but decided that somewhere down that terrible path I could take some action to defend myself and prevent that from happening.  So I said yes.

 

The guy turned out, or at least claimed to be, an Spanish lit professor in Madrid who was in Santander doing some lectures.  They had put him up in a really beautiful 19th century palace that belongs to the University, and he wanted to show me the palace grounds, which are lit up at night.  Sure enough, the palace was beautiful.  He claimed this was one of the most beautiful places in Santander.  However, I was getting too tired and ready to sleep to enjoy the whole thing, and I told him so.  He drove me back to the campgroudns, and gave me his number in case I was in Madrid.  End of story.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the couple in the tent next to me going at it.  They were noticeably holding in the full volume of gasps and moans, but tent walls are made of nylon and sound goes right through.  My tent was slowly building up condensation inside, and I decided to just take some deep breaths and try to get some more sleep.  When the couple was finally done, I heard the flicker of a lighter and the usual haplessness of post-coital conversation.  Silent at last, I could sleep.

 

I have spent the day walking at a very leisurely pace, trying to find as many good spots to sit, read, and rest the legs.  It´s a beautiful city, once the sun came out.  Before then, it felt a little pointless to be in a beach town in ugly, cloudy, morning weather.  But the sun broke through, and every has smiles on their faces and nice tans.  My tan, though, when I take the shirt off, gets noticeable ogles.  It´s a mark of pride.