Three Delicious (standard:travel stories, 1449 words)
Author: E J Woodall	Added: Jan 16 2003	Views/Reads: 3794/2312	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A little story about three friends who go to Spain and ride bikes.

I had known Bamboo for quite a long time by now, we both studied at the
same college, back in some quaint little art school, right near the 
beach. Bamboo made sculptures, long, eloquent ceramic constructions 
that reminded me of tall trees that we used to sit under in the park. 
It was around this time that I first met Marinda, a Mediterranean girl, 
half Italian. She had the desire to travel round the world, always in 
search of the sun; you could see it clearly in her eyes. She was pretty 
cultured, Marinda, having been brought up in Italy and having the 
determination to visit so many diverse places. She had been to Cuba. 
That county fascinated me and Marinda would tell me everything about 
it. My idea was that it was filled with old beautiful cars and people 
smoked fat cigars, of course her tales simply reinforced my simple 
picture of the place. Marinda smoked real cigarettes. Bamboo and I 
would smoke rollies under the trees, and when we ran out we'd go and 
pester Marinda for a real one, with which she happily handed out like 
sweets. We would sit in the sun, all three of us and dream of sunnier 
climes. We decided that we should take a trip to Spain and hang out in 
Bamboo's uncle's apartment. All we needed was about a hundred pounds, 
we were going to go on the plane, and it was only fifty pounds for a 
return flight. So we ran over to the college library and instantly 
booked our tickets on the Internet. And that was it; we were due to fly 
next Sunday. 

It came round quickly, I couldn't wait to go with those two, as they
were crazy and we would do crazy things. They always made me go a bit 
loopy and lose all my inhibitions. We hitched up to Bristol the 
following Saturday. In my tiny backpack, I had squeezed in a few books, 
some clothes and a pair of red flip-flops. Marinda had decided to 
document our trip, so she brought along her video camera. We were lucky 
to find these two guys on the motorway, who were more pleased to offer 
us a lift to Bristol. They were businessmen who were on their way to a 
corporate meeting or something, they were telling us all about it on 
the way, and god, did it bore me or what. We passed the smoky hills of 
the moor and clambered into civilisation as we reached the dusty city, 
we heard the motorbikes speeding past, overtaking us in our blue ford 
mondeo. The two suits dropped us at a service station, and we made our 
short journey to the airport. Marinda gave them her phone number, but 
we laughed it off as we walked through customs, we were drunk on 
happiness and excitement. Marinda grabbed the window seat and promptly 
fell asleep, she could sleep anywhere that girl, but Bamboo and I had a 
chat. We bought little bottles of Jack Daniels and sipped at them as we 
flew over the Channel Islands and caught the sun rising over the 
mountains of Andorra, we weren't sure where we were exactly, we kept 
drifting off. Our destination no longer seemed paramount; as long as we 
arrived somewhere then we would have been content. 

I began to dream of palm trees and olives and gringos and old men on
street benches. I saw Spanish locals playing dominoes in bars, swearing 
at the tops of their voices, in a language I hadn't yet grasped. Cigar 
smoke was billowing around my head, stinging my eyes as I watched them 
smoke their lives away, each man suddenly jumping up with glee, 
ignoring the wandering tourists sipping at our coca colas, smoking our 
cheap cigarettes, flip flops on our dusty feet. 

We arrived a little before siesta time, and decided to have a nap
ourselves, we were tucked up in our sleeping bags in no time. We drank 
bottled water and ate ready salted crisps. At three I suddenly woke, 
and sleepily wandered up the stairs to the roof terrace, where I met 
our German neighbour. ‘Deutsche?' He had asked me. I shook my head and 
smiled. He continued to attack his satellite dish with a broom, 
muttering under his breath and shooing away the cat that pestered him, 
rubbing against his hairy leg, browned by the glorious sunshine that 
had begun to warm up my tired face. I immediately felt revived; I had 
missed the sun dreadfully. I began to daydream and searched for a 
cigarette. Realising I had none, I went and woke up Marinda. She was 
snoring heavily, but I woke her up anyway. ‘What a lovely sleep, this 
bed is incredible. I could have slept for days, what time is it?' Well, 
it had gone three in the afternoon, so I told her that she should be up 
by now. After claiming a cigarette I offered to make some coffee. 
Bamboo had woken up and came out wearing her stripy pyjama bottoms, I 
hadn't though of putting my pyjamas on because it was daytime. Bamboo 
doesn't drink tea or coffee. ‘I just don't like it Lou,' she'd tell me 
every time I offered her a steaming mug of tea, and I thought it odd, 
because I thought everyone liked tea. That's what I liked about Bamboo; 
she was honest about things and would tell me what was going on in that 


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