April 24 - 25, 2010 -- Belly Dancers, Nude Bathers & Internet Daters

Saturday was a relaxing day, spent mostly on the lovely terrace of our apartment. Carol was not feeling 100% and Duane felt a repeated need to visit the neighbourhood store, coming back empty-handed the first four times. We find it amusing trying to figure out the retail hours of opening here.

In the evening we took our evening stroll to the village and then attended a belly dance performance (which began at 9:30 p.m.) in the local school gym. It was a good show, featuring many different styles of belly dancing -- Oriental and Egyptian, but most based on turn of the twentieth century Parisian fashion. One of the surprising features was a male belly dancer who was quite a dandy and showman. He obviously had a large following because people applauded, stood, and cheered loudly.

Some of the dancers were in amazing physical shape -- the body one gets from pumping iron. Others were the more voluptuous type, and still others were out of shape and overweight. At the end of the program (it was already past midnight) the dancers came into the audience to get people up to dance -- we left before they got to us. Duane loved the entire show; for Carol there was a bit too much vibrating flesh! If you'd like to see some of these jiggling bodies check out http://www.bellydanceshirin.com . The video of the dance Percusion will give you an idea of what Duane dreamt about last night.

Today we drove into Nerja and followed a tour book's directions to Burriana Beach. It was a tough 20 minute hike along the beach as the path was blocked off in many areas where one had to crawl through holes, climb over walls and inch around gates. As well we went through a nude beach area which was a novel experience.

When we got to Burriana Beach we headed to Ayo's, a famous "all you can eat" paella beachside restaurant. The Spanish often go out for their Sunday midday meal as an extended family so it was nice to watch the family dynamics with four generations at the table.

After leaving the restaurant Carol started up a conversation with a British couple and we joined them for a glass of Sangria at a bar down the beach. Turns out that they just had met on the Internet and this was their first day together. She is an expat who lives on the Costa del Sol and he is a carpenter from Anglia in the UK. James is quite a wag. Carol was asking how long Gilli had been Internet dating and asked if she had to endure many toads before she met James. James immediately replied: "Ribbit." We got along famously and they are coming to our apartment for drinks on Wednesday and then we will go out for dinner with them in Frigiliana.

Follow- ing our visit with the Brits we toured the Nerja Caves, a fairly large cave system with pre-historic cave paintings (the paintings were closed to the public of course). The community uses one cavernous room for dance and music concerts. Lots of archaeology potential but no significant interpretation of the findings.