Hossegor and Biarritz

Biarritz

Hossegor

14 March 2008: Today, we woke up to the smell of ocean air….ahhhh! After trekking back into downtown Biarritz, we had another grand lunch (but not as good as St. Emilion) and then dessert from a Patisserie. We didn’t spend as much time there as we wanted to. Instead, we headed to Hossegor for some shopping. The weather’s getting warmer and warm-weather clothes would be nice. I can only convince Sean to do any shopping if there are two motives: it’s shopping at a surf shop and if he needs something too. Luckily, he wanted to see if he could find better walking shoes.

Kai was napping when we arrived, so we detoured to the beach while she napped. Guys were suiting up and taking their boards out into the water, Sean found a rental board and the rest is history! When he came out of the water, he was pretty worked. The waves were closing out pretty fast. All I could see were guys going over the falls right and left. So, as much as I would have loved to just jump into the salt water, I passed.

We headed back to the town and shops of Hossegor. We had little luck on the shopping, but it was fun just to look. After getting WAY lost trying to find a bio market, we took the wrong exit, we gave up and parked back at our free spot in Biarritz for the night. We were going to go back to the other campground, but it was late and they close the gates after a certain time of the night. Although you can still get in, it’s a pain to page someone to let you in. I figured it wouldn’t be worth the cost of the campground. Since it was so late, we wouldn’t be able to really use their facilities anyway. But, after 2-3 days of no showering, we’re soooo ready to head down to San Sebastian, Spain (a 20-30 minute drive) and get cleaned up again!

Originally after San Sebastian, we’d go to Madrid, South to the Mediterranean coast and along to Barcelona. But, we decided to take things slower, since that’s how it’s going anyway. So now, we’ll spend a couple days in San Sebastian and head over The Pyrenees mountains right to Barcelona to pick up Caitlin for 9 days. (Sean says that The Pyrenees is where the Tour de France starts.) After picking up Caitlin and seeing Barcelona, we can decide what other parts of Spain we can conquer.

The past few nights I’ve had a couple of dreams of being back home. But in the dreams, we are just there for the time being and going back to our trip. So, I guess I’m a bit homesick, but still want to be here. Neither of us have had the “oh sh** moment” that our friend Bart, who went on a 2 year trek like this one, said we’d have. I think I had quite a few minor moments as we left, but we shall see! There are a couple things that I haven’t been able to find here. Last night in my dream, I was chugging down mass amounts of kombucha, that we used to brew and drink at home. We did “smuggle” a kombucha scoby in our cooler when we flew here. But, I don’t know if it died when accidentally frozen in the fridge in NYC, we haven’t found a jar to brew it in, and don’t know how it would work being in a moving car when you’re supposed to leave the top open. Besides that, I’m been contemplating asking someone to go to Whole Foods for a couple of supplements and send to Cait to bring to me. But, am still trying to hang tough and live without.

I’m really starting to enjoy writing my daily blog entries. It seems that we are seeing so much and doing so many different things that it’s a good way for me and my swiss-cheese memory to remember what we did and how I felt. Sean originally was going to contribute to the blog too, but he’s busy keeping up with his journal. He’s been pasting ticket stubs and postcards into it, drawing sketches and writing about what we’ve seen. It’s looking pretty good and I can’t wait until it’s finished. But, too bad it can’t be shared online.