Travel
Burn time
by Mary Thornton
On the Costa Blanca, they haven’t heard of skin cancer.
Out on the headland an old man stands on a flat rock and slowly disrobes down to his Speedo togs. He lays out his towel, carefully folds his clothes into the middle and wraps them into a pillow. Then he lies down spread-eagled on his altar to the sun and doesn’t move again for over an hour.
Observing this ritual dims the memory of the stark desert landscape and the mountains of the salt works seen on the 50 kilometre drive from Alicante airport to Torrevieja on Spain’s Costa Blanca. From where the old man is lying, the long bay curves around to another headland. It’s typical of the endless beaches along the coastline of southern Spain. On the hillsides, architecturally designed apartments leave you in no doubt that you are on the shores of the Mediterranean. Torre vieja (which means “old tower”) was named after the maritime watch towers that used to line the coast. Fame came in 1802 when the salt works was established.
Along the shore, a row of yellow buoys marks the no-go zone for boats. The space between them and the sand is crammed with hundreds of swimmers. Well, you might call them swimmers.
On New Zealand beaches, people jump waves, swim out beyond the breakers or body surf towards the shore. These swimmers, by contrast, are bathing. Swimmers in New Zealand typically stand knee-deep and inch themselves into the cool water. Sometimes there’s the imitation of a fledgling turtle running helter-skelter into the sea, followed by a dramatic dive under.
At Torrevieja, swimmers enter the water with no fear of the cold and ease back to lie in the warm azure sea. Every so often a fitness freak will splash along for five metres or so, but mostly they just loll.
On the shore, the energy expenditure is much the same. A sea of umbrellas, a mass of colours, takes up most of the available space on the beach. At spaces of about 200 metres, dozens of permanent, thatched umbrellas, drab by comparison, stand in front of the wooden café bars that beckon the hot and thirsty.
Beneath the coloured canopies, bags of refreshments, clothes and towels wait patiently for the sun worshippers who rotisserie themselves in patches of sunshine below. On their deckchairs they lie face up, they lie face down, they lie sloping down the beach, and they lie sloping up the beach in a predetermined order to ensure that no part of their body misses the tanning process.
“Have you ever seen so many umbrellas?” I ask my husband.
“I hadn’t noticed the umbrellas,” he replies.
It’s not just the young women who choose to be topless. Firm young breasts tanned golden brown, pendulous mature bosoms and shrunken dugs are all displayed as the body beautiful in Torrevieja. Bronzed gods and goddesses in their twenties and thirties, topless or otherwise, look magnificent, their skin aglow with health and beauty.
Not to be outdone, señoras who have worshipped the sun for five decades or more wear psychedelic colours. These are not the costumes you would expect a woman of advancing years to wear in New Zealand. Oh no. These grandes dames wear bikinis. Their skin, and there’s plenty of it, is baked and hardened until it looks like elephant hide. Their brown bellies hang down over their skimpy bikini bottoms and their voluptuous breasts fight the containment of their struggling bra tops.
There’s no such thing as baggy shorts for men in Torrevieja. As the man on the rock, shows, it’s Speedos all the way. Their love handles and paunches burnished to dark brown and thick with decades of sun exposure, they resemble nothing so much as large brown toads.
As the sun goes down, people head home laden with deckchairs, umbrellas and bags. After feasting on grilled sardines and Torrevieja’s favourite dish, caldero (fish stew), we stroll back to our apartment along the now-deserted beach. The soft lap of the water is drowned out by the giggles of skinny dippers in the moonlight.
