Paella Day dawned bright and sunny and I was up around 7 AM for the morning ablutions. As I made my way out to the car and down to Good Morning to pick up the morning offering for The Goddess, I told my fellow guests to be sure to send out a search party if I wasn't back within half an hour.

35 minutes after leaving, I was still sitting down there, drinking espresso and chatting with Thierry and two friends, a couple that had just returned from Paris and were explaining the new tax situation in France. Luckily for me, I made it back in time for the morning coffee ritual and I wasn't reduced to a pile of ashes for failing to show up with our morning comestibles.

So... Paella Day. This is a tradition that we inaugurated last year by cooking a monstrous paella for ourselves and the other guests and it has carried forward into this year and looks set to become a feature of all trips here from henceforward.

After breakfast, Thierry and I bundled into his SUV and hit the grocery stores in search of all the necessary ingredients. That done, it was necessary to stop off at Le String in the way back for a Dutch coffee. There are many brands of Dutch coffee, such as Doeuve Egberts but our favourite is called Heineken. Fortunately, even though it is on the French side, Le String still had some in stock. We met up with Eric, le Gendarme, who had just come off a 24 hour shift, and some of the other regulars.

Once all the provisions were secured away, The Goddess allowed me to accompany her down to the beach. Chairs and umbrellas were secured, clothing was shed and the sun was sincerely worshipped. It was much warmer and more humid than previous days and we alternated between snoozing and bobbing in the waves. I managed two swims from Papagayo to The Perch, either side of lunch. Lunch itself was back at Le String. The bars between there and Pedro's are in bad shape at the moment, at least as far as beachfront is concerned. There is only room for one row of loungers and those are right up against the bar entrance. It's better from Aloha on down because those bars are set further back and so have more space out front. The others look pretty uncomfortable at the front.

Our evening was spent cooking and then chewing the fat with our friends here. Amongst the topics of discussion tonight were
* the comic works of Billy Connolly
* the Vietnam experience and Apocalypse Now
* the genius of Eric Clapton, with particular reference to his playing on While My Guitar Gently Weeps during both The Concert for Bangladesh and The Concert for George.

Our newest best friends M&D leave tomorrow and their absence will be felt. One thing I notice is that when you spend your time around other naked people you quickly establish an empathy, regardless of what differences might exist between you culturally or philosophically. It must be something to do with that old cliché of having nothing to hide. What I do know is that we will miss them when they go. ( I have to say that because they've said that they'll keep reading these reports after they leave.)

And now, I'm finish this journal entry, listening to the party music wafting up from the beach and thinking about one final swim before bed. Tomorrow is another day, as they say, but somehow I doubt if it's going to differ too much from today. My challenge is likely to be in finding some way to make it seem interesting. In other news, of course, the world is turning to [censored], which makes this bagatelle pretty irrelevant.