The walk up there takes us under the motorway that connects us very conveniently to Santander to the west and Bilbao to the east. I liked how the arrow was pointing right at the Laredo skyline.

Springtime has brought us some adorable little calves. These calves seemed happier than mine after walking up the hill to get there.

The lush green mountainside.

Each of the thirty or so times I’ve walked up to Colindres de Arriba, I have been unable to avoid taking this photograph of the medieval church with the Pico Candiano behind it.

The coats of arms on the houses are those of the families that have owned the land for centuries.

We finally made it up to the church. Nora walked the whole way, but requested the stroller on the way back.

Just then, we heard some bells and saw a shepherd walking up the cobblestone path with about fifty sheep behind him.

Can you count them without dozing off?

The sheep were headed down to a relatively new park to graze. We went down after them and were impressed by the seemingly effortless control the shepherd, with his dog, had over controlling where their captives went.

I took advantage of this foreground subject to capture the view of this old haunted-looking mansion we can see from our house.

Sheeple and steeple.

The visibility was great, and we could clearly make out the hermitage on the Pico de las Nieves.

My walking companions.

A maternal kiss.

On the way home, we stopped at a park to see and saw for a bit. Then we went home and fried up some fresh anchovies for dinner.

We had a lovely day, and I hope you enjoyed these photos.

It took us a while to find the church because Google tried to send us down several pedestrian cobblestone streets that were either too narrow to drive down or had stairs. The church was lovely, and the mass was a standard hour-long Spanish wedding. They had brought the priest with them from where they live in Murcia.

I could’ve taken a hundred photos of the church’s facade if I’d had my DSLR and it weren’t raining. It was gorgeous.

The best part of the wedding was getting to chat and drink with some of the friends I made in my four years in England. No one seems to have aged much in the six or seven years since I’ve seen them, which is good.

And then there’s this guy, Carlos, who looked very vaguely familiar, who we eventually figured out that we knew from one night out with friends back in August 2001, which happens to be the only such night I’ve blogged photos of.

Here we are with the bride and groom. I wish them all the best.

The practice putting green. The course was near the seaside tourist town of San Vicente la Barquera.

With my new handicap of 12, I was in the 13th of 22 threesomes on Saturday, so my tee time was 10:40. Even though the temperature was only about 15° C (59° F), the course was just so hilly that I was down to short sleeves after the first hole. All the golf I had played this year in the States was the lazy American kind where you sit on a cushioned seat and zoom right up to your ball, but this was Man vs. Wilderness Cantabrian golf, and I had to catch my breath before each shot.

The first hole was a steep climb.

Very soon into the round the rain began. This meant donning an impermeable outer layer. I had specifically made a trip into Santander earlier in the week to buy some rain pants for this exact occurrence. It never really poured, but a mild drizzle was maintained for the rest of the round. My woolen felt golfing cap absorbed several pounds of water and had to be rung out several times. I had four spare gloves in a ziplock bag in my golf bag (I learned in Ireland that my golf bag is not water proof when my HD video camera stopped working and needed a $300 repair). It wasn’t until the eighteenth hole that I had any problems with grip slippage. The only casualty of the rain was my scorecard. It was a disintegrating lump of pulp when we finished the round, but the scores of the guy I was keeping score for were barely legible, so we transferred them to dry card and turned it in.

Since there were eight local golf clubs competing against each other, it was possible to form the threesomes such that no one was playing with a member of their own team. My two playing partners on Saturday were an amicable pair. One guy thought he was a lot funnier than he really was. He’s the kind of guy who, when we finished the round and the secretary took our scores, told us that they would send everyone an SMS to tell us our tee time the following day, and said, “Okay, give me your mobile,” obviously asking for his phone number, he said, “But if I give you my mobile [phone] how can you send me a message?” She had to ask three more times to nail the syntax of “Please tell me the number assigned to your mobile phone,” such that he couldn’t escape into jokester-land. Exhausting.

He did, however, tell me a lovely story about how he was invited to the inaugural day of the course we were playing, which was designed by none other than Cantabria’s golfing son, Severiano Ballesteros. During his round, he saw Seve playing another hole and went up to talk to him. He said that Seve was kind enough to stop and chat for a few minutes and have his picture taken. He was a great man. May 7, a week from the date of this post, will be the first anniversary of his death.

We were playing at Santa Marina Golf Club, which was built near this 19th century chapel, which curiously has a tree growing from its bell tower. You can’t build anything in Spain without it being near some stone relic from another time.

I was very happy with my play on Saturday, especially my back nine that started with a string of eight bogeys. The eighteenth hole might be the hardest hole of golf I’ve ever played. It’s a par 5, but I never managed less than 8 strokes.

The rules of the tournament were that only the six best rounds (gross, no handicaps) from each team would be counted. The team from Laredo had a final score on Saturday of 519, an average of 86.5, which included my 93. The next closest team on the leader board had 520, but that was with only five players (an average of 104), so it didn’t count. The actual second place team was 36 strokes behind us with a 555.

Sunday was gorgeous and sunny…but very, very muddy. There was what the golf rulebook calls “standing water” on every square centimeter of the course. I made a slop-slop-slop sound as I walked up and down the steep inclines. If you didn’t visually identify the square meter where your ball landed in the fairway, it was a lost ball, because they plugged down into the mud such that just a tiny square centimeter of the ball was visible. Every single player on our team scored worse the second sunny day than on the first rainy day. That should give an indication of just how difficult an already nearly-impossible course was playing. One guy playing in a pair of wellies looked ridiculous on the first tee, but like a genius on the eighteenth green.

On Sunday I witnessed an event that would definitely win the storytelling competition my golfing group has every year in February. My threesome had finished a hole and was walking to the next tee when we saw a heavy set gentleman from the group in front of us returning to the tee with his driver. His ball had missed the fairway by a couple meters and had plugged into the ground and been declared lost. He teed up his ball and sent it slicing off into the woods. He shouted some Spanish curses about defecating on the mother of the ball he just hit and flung his driver with all his might. His intent was probably to fling it straight down the hole towards the fairway, but he held on to it a split second too long and it went careening over our heads and up to the very tip top of a tree, where it lodged itself securely. We tried shaking the tree vigorously, but the driver wasn’t going anywhere. This was a pretty serious situation, since a driver costs easily $300, which is probably 300€ (400 USD), if golf clubs are priced like other consumer goods. One guy from our group had the idea to use his golf ball retriever, a telescoping tube used to pull golf balls out of water hazards. He extended it out about 6 meters (20 feet), but it was still way too short. I suggested we could throw some rocks, but really I was imagining it either staying there forever or having to hire a cherry picker to fetch it. Just then, the other guy from my group, who was in his late forties or early fifties, jumped up into the tree, which didn’t look at all conducive to climbing, and promptly climbed about 25 feet into the air with the agility of a chimpanzee and grabbed the club. And somehow he made it back down without breaking his neck. Just then it made sense how he could only take the club back until it was perpendicular to the ground and whip it through the ball and hit it further than I can with a full swing. Amazing.

Every time I golf in Spain, I am amused by the fact that there is some law that requires them to put life preservers near the big water hazards. It’s a practice that strattles the line between reasonableness and silliness. I wonder how many golfers drown every year in water hazards in the US. If it’s more than 0.3, I’d be surprised.

The starter (the guy who stands on the first tee and controls who begins when) told us a story of one member of the club that plays golf in shorts, even in the near-freezing winter temperatures. When asked why, he replies, “When I wear pants, my wife gets so mad at me for how dirty I’ve gotten them, that I’d rather play in shorts.”

When I showed my wife this photo, she reenacted the shorts-wearer’s story, telling me that I had ruined those trousers. Surprisingly, however, they came out of the washing machine looking like new.

I shot a 93 the first day and a 95 the second. The tournament officials didn’t bother to properly add up the scores before declaring Laredo the winner. It wasn’t even close.

The best part of the course was the clubhouse, an old wooden structure that, as is common for golf courses everywhere, used to be the house that the owners of the land lived in. The greens were in a pretty bad state of disrepair. Apparently the club is running out of money because there’s a lack of members. And I can understand why. Who would want to pay money to be abused like that every time you play? The course is just too hard. They’ve tried to make it easier by getting rid of all out-of-bounds and replacing the white stakes with red stakes, marking forests as “lateral water hazards”, but it’s not good enough. Santa Marina Golf Club seems to be in a downward spiral where the course is so hard that they are running out of members and money, which in turn makes the course even harder as it falls into disrepair. It’s a shame, because the location is visually spectacular, with views from the sea to the snowy Picos de Europa with rolling hills and luxury chalets in between.

Laredo Club de Golf, the best golfers in Cantabria who don’t have a home course. That’s a bronze Ballesteros behind us.

One thing I love about going plastic-only in the US is that it gets around that horrible sales tax that causes purchases to be higher than the price listed on the items in the store. I hate that! In Spain, the VAT (or IVA, in Spanish) is included on all the prices, so if you’ve got one item that’s 0.95€ and another that’s 2.25€, you can go ahead and count out your 3.20€ while you’re waiting in the checkout line and hand over the exact amount to the cashier. That sort of calculation is all but impossible in the States.

The second thing I love about using only a debit or credit card in the US is that it allows for more accurate tipping. Several times I’ve noticed items priced on bar and restaurant menus such that, if you don’t want to deal with coins (who does?), you’ve got to give a 30% tip. For instance, say your bar bill comes to $3.05. If you drop four $1 bills on the bar and walk out, you’ve left a 31% tip. But when you are given the blank space to write in any value you choose, and you won’t have to deal with change in return, exact percentages are more accessible.

The third thing I love about using plastic rather than cash is that you automatically get a record of your purchases. Sometimes, in Spain, I’ll take a couple hundred euros out of the ATM and then, after what seems like a few short days, I’m out of cash again and I have to rack my brains to remember where it all went. Sure, it’s possible to keep a diary of each transaction, but it’s such a bother that I would never do it. Knowing where you’ve done business before can help the next time you have to search for car hire USA or other repeating transactions.

I’ve lived so long abroad now that when I go back to the States, the green money looks funny and fake to me, not like the colorful Euro notes and coins that are valuable enough to take the time to bend over and pick up off the ground. The US coins are so worthless I’d rather just not have a quarter than lug one around in my pocket all day.

I dare say that one could live quite comfortably in the US with a wallet only big enough to hold a drivers license and a single credit card. That’s something I miss in Spain.

Bowling is hard. Perhaps the rules should be revisited?

Her first innovation to the game of bowling was realizing that a straight perpendicular line is much easier to hit than a triangle of pins.

Her second innovation was to drastically reduce the length of the bowling lane.

Dresses! That thing that says “RANO” is a set of individual chocolate bars with the letters of her name.

Her birthday cake. Zorionak is “congratulations” in Basque.

I love cake photography. Even more than cake.

I had been coaching her all morning about how she’s going to have to blow out candles. The moment has arrived!

Huff and puff and…

Blow!

Yay!

A doll and crib.

Feasting with family.

Here’s your piece, dear blog reader! Enjoy!

Happy birthday, Nora! I love you more than I can put into words. It’s kind of hard to believe that you didn’t even exist just a few years ago. This last year has been my favorite year so far, and I feel as if I’m really getting to know you. I’m very much looking forward to continuing our lives together. Happy birthday, my love!

Contrary to life in the US, life in Spain consists of personally knowing your own butcher (mine is my neighbor, Bruno), seeing – and often choosing – the cut of meat that is fed into the meat grinder to produce the exact quantity of ground meat that you desire, or asking your butcher to slice the chicken breast actually off the chicken and then into fillets for you.

Today, my butcher and his family were proud to be planning to feast on some piglets this weekend. With no provocation whatsoever, he brought the little piggies out of the walk-in fridge to show my daughter and me how adorable they were, even in death.

Morally, my view is that I would rather exist than not, which opens me up to eating a wide variety of animals, as long as they are killed humanely. If you wish to not see dead animals, look away now.

Oink! They look a bit like a barbershop quartet.

Little piggy bottoms.

Five snouts.

They looked awfully cute draped over the counter like this, as if they were awaiting drinks at a bar.

Nora liked them.

This is only the second time she has allowed herself to be picked up by Bruno, our neighbor and butcher.

Cute little oinkers.

While familiar with the phrase “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”, I never knew that piglets actually have little whiskers on their chins!

If Nora hadn’t demanded my phone to snap pictures, I would never have noticed how interesting they look from her angle down at the ground.

I wish my supermarket friends a marvelous spit-roasted porcine feast this weekend. ¡Que aprovechen!

On a toasted sesame seed bun!

Homemade french fries!

And some faux-german beer from Barcelona to round out a healthy American meal.

Because of Saint Joseph’s status as surrogate father, today is also when Spaniards celebrate Father’s Day. At daycare, my daughter made me a little paper necktie that says, “¡Te quiero, Papá!” and a card that reads, “De tu mano voy a aprender lo que mañana voy a ser.” (From your hand, I will learn what tomorrow I will be). Both are scribbled on in a variety of crayon colors. Silly, but doggone it if a tear didn’t well up.

A proud father.

Two of the least unflattering candid photos Nora took.

Bloggers united! Don’t be a stranger, Tortuga!

The first exhibit we came to was the tiger exhibit. They were about as exciting as most cats during the day.

Next to the tigers were the gorillas. We were there right at noon, and there was a zookeeper tossing heads of lettuce into their enclosure. If it hadn’t been for that, we might not have seen them at all. We only saw two of the ten (or so) they have.

Next up were the bears. There must have been at least fifty of them in a wide open area surrounded by cliffs. The young ones were quite playful and put on a good show.

As you can see, they were the exact same color as the surrounding rock face, which made them very hard to spot.

Can you see the bear? Hard, isn’t it?

We initially thought there were only about ten bears, but then everywhere we looked in the landscape we saw more. My wife, who had visited Cabárceno Zoo over a decade ago, had distinctly remembered the bear enclosure as being very well done. There was a fence up at the top of the ridge, but it definitely felt like the bears had a wide mountainous space to roam.

Bears are siesta experts.

Nora enjoyed the bears.

Next up, the long-necked enclosure containing giraffes and ostriches.

Nora kept saying, “The duck is coming!”

We saw a pair of giraffes engage in this intimate kama-sutra-esque you-scratch-my-neck-and-I’ll-scratch-yours routine. It was as sensual as it was awkward-looking.

Next, we came to the wolf enclosure. I thought that Nora would enjoy this one more than others, since she’s very aware of The Big Bad Wolf in all his fairy tale roles, but she didn’t seem to care much. It took a while to spot them, but there were two wolves sleeping in a patch of dirt.

Before the wolves, we had been to the hyena enclosure and not seen a single beast. Yes, they’re nocturnal, but it was a little disappointing, and the other visitors also seemed disappointed and confused. So when we had finally found the wolves, I made a casual remark to a guy walking near the enclosure that, “If you’re looking for them, they’re over there sleeping.” He responded that, thanks, but he knew where they were because he visits at least once a week. Not only did he know where several more wolves were hiding in the enclosure, he knew their names and how old they were. We continued to converse, and he told us the names of all the gorillas, guessing which two young ones we probably saw that ventured out for the noon feeding, and lots, lots, lots more information about the animals at the zoo. They just got a new hyena in from Prague last week, don’t you know!

Our new friends don’t work at the zoo, but visit often and avidly, enjoying the sport of finding all the beasts in their enclosures with binoculars, a hobby which must stimulate ancient hunting neurons. The man and his wife live locally and have many animals of their own; in fact, they run a petting zoo of sorts called Armonía Animal that specializes in miniature ponies and how they can be used for therapy for autistic children. They are the only Spanish branch of the American organization Personal Ponies. After asking Nora her name (she was busy moving small pebbles from the gravel walkway inside the wolf enclosure fence), they told us that, of all their many, many animals that they have, the one that everyone loves the most is their parrot named Nora. They gave us a business card and ensured us that they know how to show non-autistic kids a good time, too. We might have to check them out sometime.

I’m pretty sure we were the first people ever to think of howling at the napping wolves.

Then we saw some bison and other African ungulates.

When we drove up to the zebra enclosure, I suggested we might even skip it, since they were just in their stables eating hay. My estimate of enjoyment was way off the mark. It was nice to actually pet them. I had never touched a zebra before. As with most animals, their fur was slightly more bristly than their domesticated counterpart.

Nora had a good time reaching in to touch them.

The dromedary exhibit included this cool church ruin. This bactrian had a droopy hump.

I thought Nora would love the elephants, who were also the same color as the bears and wolves and rocks, but she was pretty indifferent.

Nora and the elephants. They were bigger than she remembers.

Then it was picnic time! Nora has figured out that sandwiches are for suckers, and that a clever food hacker can just eat the meat from inside and avoid the boring bread.

Feeding time at the primate exhibit.

Then we saw some wallabies, which are pretty much enormous Australian rats, not as cuddly as I thought they would be.

Then we saw the lions, which were very far away and being lazy felines.

Lionesses.

Baboons!

I didn’t like the baboon exhibit too much because I got annoyed at the primates on my side of the fence who couldn’t overcome their own egos and think about just how bad their crackers and cookies might be for their captive cousins.

Here you can see, zoomed out, the size of the lion enclosure and the general landscape that we enjoyed during our entire visit.

After visiting the baboons, we continued on our way. When we came up over a hill, my wife and I both gasped in surprise at the magnificence of the view that greeted us. Behold:

The city of Santander. We had no idea we were this close or that we would have a view like this.

The lynxes were also being very feline.

Finally we parked at the main restaurant and farm facility. There was a bird of prey exhibition going on with a trainer sending owls and hawks flying over a crowd of people, but we were tired and headed instead to the small animal enclosures.

The prairie dogs were hard to spot.

The meerkats were easier to see.

There were about a billion turtles.

And the award for Least Cuddly Creature goes to…the porcupine!

And finally, on to Nora’s favorite animal of them all: the goat.

She had an absolute ball reaching her hand through the fence and letting the goat lick her fingers. She would squeal with delight and announce to everyone within earshot that the goat had licked her hand before placing it through the fence again. We literally had to drag her kicking and screaming away from the goat exhibit.

After a visit to the bathroom, we were ready to head home. Except there was one little animal we had yet to see and didn’t want to miss…

The propane tank pygmy hippopotamus!

The hippos must have been quite bored, because they were yawning a lot. Great for photos!

It was contagious!

Overall we left the park with mixed feelings. My wife and I enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, but we were disappointed by how disinterested Nora was about the whole thing. She had a fun day out, but really wasn’t all that bothered about the wild animals. Although she said “I don’t want to get in the car!” each of the twenty times we had to get into the car, the car rides weren’t the obstacle to enjoyment that we had feared. She most enjoyed the zebras and goats that she could touch and interact with. The visual stimulus of a faraway lion or tiger or gorilla meant little to her. I think we will wait a year or two and see if she develops more of an interest in animals before we consider going back.

I got berated for taking a shot of the messy kitchen mid-cook, but I liked it. You can see the already-made, but not yet fried spring rolls.

Frying the vegetables and almonds. Spaniards fry their onions and peppers until they are very soft, yet Chinese cuisine calls for a bit of crunchiness to be left.

The rice had carrots, onions, ham, peas, and egg. I’m not sure which of these are considered the “three delights”.

Nora loved the rice.

Spanish culture has almost no racism filters, so making “Chinese eyes” to celebrate the occasion was acceptable.

Spring rolls!

Almond chicken!

Yummy spring roll!

Almond chicken on a bed of rice.

The meal was a big success. I suspect we will be making these recipes again sometime soon. The food was delicious!