My energy is getter today but at least until mid-day I still have my diarrhea. I spend much of the morning reading “My Traitor’s Heart”, a story of a son of a Boer’s struggle against South African apartheid. It is a more pleasant distraction than my present predicament.
By noon the house begins to hop. Mike and Nick are in the kitchen fixing themselves sandwiches, real Dagwood specials. Andrew leaves for Lagoa to catch a train and continue on with his Euro-rail adventure. Silke, seeing that the boys aren’t doing much to help me, brings me more yogurt and a banana. The she too leaves for other pastures. I get up, get dressed and shave to celebrate my return to life, although I cannot stray far from the toilet.
My intestines seem to have settled down so I take a stroll out to the cape to get some exercise. Mike and Nick pass me on bicycles – Nick is riding mine. I find a small beach a third of the way to the cape, but the tide is too high to access it. I walk the edge of the precipitous cliffs watching the fishermen with their lines dropping 100m to the sea. I return to the main beach near town to read.
When I return to the flat, Ule and Heike, two German girls, have replaced Silke, and Nick come back with Bodo, a young, blond, weak-chinned German biology student who reminds me so much of some of the guys I used to go to school with. Bodo boils some potatoes for dinner while Mike makes an elaborate pasta, which I help make and eat. It is my first meal in two days and it goes down well.
PHOTO 1: cliff fisherman
PHOTO 2: more cliffs near Sagres
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