Val left me at an early hour to go off weaving. She’d managed to make contact with a Swiss girl last night, who knew a woman who taught it, so she decided very sensibly to start straight away. I lay in bed for a while longer, then got up + walked about, but I was still feeling sorry for myself, the more so since my stomach was rumbling furiously. Only a couple of hours were required to convince myself that my self-inflicted martyrdom was really pretty stupid, at which point I went into one of the comedors + overdid things. Egg + chips, bread + butter, a huge bowl of yogurt, pancake + fruit, + coffee. Needless to say, after that little lot, I felt considerably more at peace with the world.
For the rest of the day, I was able to occupy myself with various little activities – I walked a little, + took a couple of pictures; I read some(I’ve finished “Julian” by Gore Vidal, which was only so-so, + have started “Don Quixote.” I wrote a long letter to Bruce; I sat in the square + drank some Coke. All in all, entirely satisfactory, tho’ I think quite such a leisured life will begin to pall before very long.
Val returned at about 4, full of enthusiasm for her new activity. So much so, that she set up her gear in a corner of our room+ carried on for another hour or so. The village seems to be entirely post-card-less, so I wrote down a few lines to Mum on the back of a picture of me – now there’s vanity for you – until it was time to go out and eat. Our room is large + very bare. It contains a bed, a table, + 2 chairs. We’ve hung one of our hammocks down the middle of the room, + Val’s weaving, when it’s there, also helps to add a splash of colour to what otherwise would be a very grey room. There is a shuttered window, which gives out onto the street, + this is both a boon, as a source of light + life; + a pain, when inquisitive kids sit on our windowsill + peer in at us. In the evening, we visited a local café, where the food was indifferent but the company good. We chatted with various gringos about travel, violence, clothes.
The key phrase here is “feeling sorry for myself” – my lassitude comes across all too clearly. Still, did manage to rouse myself, and seem to be convincing myself that I ought to take advantage of being there, and not just waiting for it to pass.
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