Day 14-I am having a nightmare. I knew I shouldn’t have drank so much. It wasn’t my fault. People just kept putting drinks in my hand. And now I am paying.

There is pounding. Godawful pounding, like people are banging hammers against sheet metal in my head. Someone is using a chainsaw. The noise cuts through my brain. It is the worst hangover in the world.

I open my eyes and look at the clock. It’s 8:42am. I’ve been asleep for barely an hour. And I realize that the hammers are not in my head. They are outside. Right outside the window of our hotel room, a building is being remodeled. There really are people banging hammers on sheet metal. That wasn’t in my head. This can’t really be happening. There is no way I am going to be able to sleep anymore. I get up and go to take a shower.

Away from the racket, my head is not really so bad. My stomach on the other hand, is in bad shape. Daniel is up as well. Today we will just go for a drive, he says, we can take our time getting ready. I wanted to go to Balboa, to she the Gugenheim Museum there, but Balboa has been deemed to far a drive.

Again, we are not told where we are going, Daniel is giving directions. We stop in a town where we walk along the streets and look in shop windows. I use the bathroom and my stomach feels a little better. The weather is actually pleasant today and we sit in a sidewalk café and enjoy cold beverages. We drive some more to Llanes, along the seashore. We get some ice cream and walk along the break water and then along the beach. The water is rough and cold and definitely not for swimming. It is windy and my ice cream blows off the cone into the sand. I take the cone and chuck it into the surf, and gulls dive bomb after it. I watch the surf wash some refuse up on the beach, and take some other junk away.

We go to the town square and have a seat on some planters. Daniel goes into a bar and comes back out with two green bottles. Just want I was looking for, more alcohol. My pouring has improved greatly. Perhaps I have found my calling. We discuss where to go next. Farther along the coast, Daniel says, is a place where you can see dinosaur footprints fossilized in the rocks at the base of some cliffs by the sea. That sounds like a good idea.

We find the place at the end of a narrow road. There is a cidreria at the head of the path. There is a sign explaining the footprints and directing us down the path to the sea. All around us are empty green fields and aways off a quiet village and the base of some mountains. The air is still but for the sound of the sea somewhere beyond the cliffs.

The way is not far, leading to a steps hacked into the side of the bluff, and a rickety staircase down to the rocks. There is no one else there. We hop along the jumbled rocks looking for the footprints. The rocks are big fat slabs, some laying flat, and others piled by the waves like sculptures. We can’t find the footprints, so I see how far I can hop out on the rocks. The ones that are under water at high tide are very slippery, and I almost fall in several times. Small crabs scitter out of my way. The coast here resembles Big Sur, California. What I had first took to be land turned out after much staring to be clouds sitting low on the water, another illusion. Hugo and I , in the destructive fashion of young men,.throw rocks against other rocks, trying to break them. Hugo finds one rock wedged and suspended between to much larger rocks and is trying to kick it loose. I tell him to stand aside while I throw a rock against it. He doesn’t think my method will work. I hold the rock above my head and heave it down with all my might, and it strikes the trapped rock and splits it in two, and it falls away back into the waves. In seconds I have undone Lord knows how many years of work by the sea. I had just wanted to see if I could do it, break the rock free, but now I feel a little guilty.

We decide to have some more cidra. There are tables outside, and we take one a little way’s back from the cliff. My hungover brain is refusing to process Spanish, so I sit back and look around. In the oreground of the landscape which I have now turned to face, hedges bisecte the countryside, parcelling out land for various livestock. The town sits there in a pocket between the foothills of the coastal mountains. The sun is by now low in the sky, and the whitewashed houses with their orange tile roofs reflect the fading light in such a way that they seem luminous. The sky behind the mountains is pink, and the sun goes behind a bank of clouds for a moment, turning them several shades of orange, before reappearing below them like a starburst.

It is my turn to pour again, and I make the rounds of everyone’s glasses. I am less successful this time, and against their catcalls, I blame the unpredictable wind off the sea. I sit back down. The old adage of drinking yourself sober has apparently worked for me, and I sink into a warm, solipsistic reverie.

The sun is almost gone now. I no longer hear the voices of my friends. Perhaps they have stopped talking. The only noise I hear in the crash of the invisible sea far below, and, somewhere far off, a dog barking.

The sun slips silently behind the mountains, and the sky explodes in a riot of color. The dying rays radiate out from behind the mountain like the plumes of a peacock, turning the sky purple and red. Some bounce off the clouds and down into the quiet village, making it look as if some giant unseen bonfire burned in the town square. I wonder if anyone else is seeing this. Is this a private performance just for me?

In seconds, it is over, and the sky returns to drab gray. The last bottle is empty, night is falling and it is time to go home. Me encanta Asturias.

Day 15- Page 8