Net Menders, Castros and Bagpipes

 I think of this day as the official start of our tour. Maybe it was because right after breakfast, they loaded us up on a bus to start the day's adventures. Buses sort of make it official. It is interesting how on the first bus ride, everybody finds a seat and for the rest of the tour, that is pretty much your seat. I tried to change it up a bit, but found that the first seat I selected was actually the most perfect one. 

Note: Everyday there was no much food, going forward I am only going to show a few of the courses. 

Our first event of the day was an hour long ride to the coastal village of La Guardia or A Guard. 

 We wandered around the port and watched some men down on the rocks. They were harvesting baby mussels to bring to the mussel hatchery later. This involved scraping the mussels off of the rocks at low tide, but they still had to watch and run from the waves as the tide was coming in. There was some controversy about the way they harvested the mussels. Scraping the mussels, also dislodged the barnacles on the rocks which was not a proper thing to do.

Photo by Austin Bush

Photo by Cressida McKean
Barnacles - my new love.  You would put one hand on the claw and the other hand on that rubbery looking part and twist.  What was revealed was a tiny little piece of meat which people said tasted like a cross between crab and lobster.  These are goose neck barnacles and attach themselves to rocks, not the bottom of boats.  

We visited a net-menders women's cooperative.  Net mending is not an automated process, it is all hand work.  There are very few net-menders anymore as the fisherfolk have started using cheaper nets and when there is a hole, they just throw the net away.

Lunch was, again, a lunch of many courses. I think it was after this meal that I learned to ask at each meal how many courses there were going to be. It was all so good, but you really had to pace yourself. Lunches seemed to last no less than 2 hours, I think our longest lunch was about five hours. At each meal, the wine was free pouring.

After lunch, our bus took us up the mountain behind the village to an ancient Castro housing development. A Castro is a fortified settlement, usually pre-Roman and associated with Celtic culture.

Each one of these circles were a house or that house's granary.

Photo by Ed Kim
View of La Guardia from the Castro

Speaking of Celtic culture, we visited the workshop of Anton Carlos, a master bagpipe maker. Senor Carlos single handedly brought forward into today's culture, ancient Galician instruments. He showed us how to make the bagpipe pipes and then his grandson played for us. We were told that while Scottish bagpipes were made for war, Galician bagpipes were made for dancing and celebrations.

Photo by Austin Bush
Anton Carlos playing the Hurdy Gurdy