Sound Waves

View from apartment balcony

    I promise this will be the last post about my recent vacation. The thing is, my mind is overflowing with many wonderful memories of the long weekend I had in La Gomera and I want to share them with you.

    I told you about the inhabitants who tend their flocks and till their land, but there are another group I omitted to tell you about and they are the fishermen and women who cast their fishing lines on a daily basis.

 

    Sitting on the sunny balcony of my holiday apartment, sipping my morning coffee I was mesmerised by a dedicated group of people, who made fishing into something that resembled a ritual.

Lone fisherman

    I focused my attention on one man who had been perched on some rocks for an hour, or so and was successfully hooking fish after fish. My attention was then drawn to a woman who arrived on a bicycle. She propped her transport against the sea wall and climbed down onto the rocky beach below. Removing her rucksack from her back, she placed it on a small rock and she began to change her clothing. She neatly folded her trousers and shirt, placing them safely inside one of the compartments of her bag.

    She changed into sensible footwear, clipped her fishing rod together and then she took out a large cloth bag and hat which was hidden away in her rucksack. Having adjusted the long strap of the bag across her body, she finally covered her head with the straw hat of which would not look out of place in a Huckleberry Finn movie. She secured the rucksack and placed it on higher ground and she started to paddle through the huge pools of sea water that had been left behind from the outgoing tide.

The woman joins the man

    She joined the man standing on the rocks and she kissed him on the cheek. He sidled along the slippy rocks, making room for the woman to stand beside him. They chatted and laughed as they cast their long fishing lines into the Atlantic. Both plopped their slippery catch into what seemed to be matching bags, his he had tied around his waist.

The fishing couple

 

    Within another hour the speed of the returning tide hastened and the couple were being lapped by the shallow water that surrounded them. As the sea started to swallow up the rocky outcrop the couple were standing on, they decided it was time to leave and they jumped down into the water. They  lifted their rods and bags up to chest level and the pair waded ashore.

    As they examined their catch out of reach of the incoming tide, I noticed that the spot they were fishing from only minutes earlier could no longer be seen and all there was for me to do now was to be soothed by the sound of the waves as they rolled over the pebbly remains of the beach.

The waves rolling over the pebbly beach