View from above

The night before last, I made the annoying discovery that the BT internet dongle brought with me from work now refuses to give me access, claiming that I have exceeded a monthly data cap I didn't know was operative. So this is being posted from Sta Pola's public library. One expects roaming charges, of a more or less extortionate nature, but complete lockout having served only 28mb of data in less than an hour's access time spread over two days in total is a situation that one might have expected four or five years ago. Use of this dongle costs CBS £20 a month. It's hardly value for money when it works, and the help desk is far less than helpful about getting the data cap raised. "Why don't you use wi-fi?" is not an intelligent response to a client who needs to access data on the move in a foreign environment where wi-fi provision is an unknown element to the help desk let alone the client.

There were light showers before breakfast this morning, and much of the day was overcast, as promised, but we had none of the torrential rain experienced in the north and west of the country. We walked as far a Varadero beach and then climbed the 140 metres from sea level up to the remains of an 18th century round tower atop the highest local 'sierra'. The first half of the ascent was up a wide flight of steps in between empty holiday apartment blocks. The second half was up a steep path of more recent origin, created to make visitor access a little safer. There were signs that in recent times this path had been inundated by heavy rain, as it was strewn with stones and vegetation.

There was an unobstructed panoramic view of the bay and the island of Tabarca from on high. To the west was a plateau covered with bushes, cacti and small trees stetching into the distance, like something out of a cowboy movie. The tower had once been the base of a windmill, with the driving mechanism housed on a wooden platform constructed on top  of it. What a romantic project it would be to re-build a traditional type housing for an energy generating wind turbine up there! A great tourist feature, but it qouls probably take far too long to recover the costs of  investment.

We returned home for lunch, and after a siesta we wealk back into town to the nearest newsagents to buy some postcards, and a school exercise book, which I'll use for jotting down notes of meetings attended, and ideas for development on computer later on. I have a collection of these notebooks going back decades. Several are travel journals, one has my many user name and login password details, a few have poetry and prayers. The posher hard back ones are what I used to keep a journal in the decades before blogging.