Google maps can be wrong, as wrong as the many hand-drawn maps of the West Indies and the traced edges of two continents. We follow our map and walk a mile and another half before turning around to backtrack, to head in the right direction from the train station.
At last, we recognize where we are, a seaside town, seagulls overhead, masts with their halyards clanging in the distance, and the faint odor of a port, seasoned with sailors, salt, tobacco, and here, sherry. Our hotel sits next to the quay where boats tied up to take on water, cargos, crew. Down the street, water, no longer potable, still pours from spigots where ships, including those of the Colón family filled their casks for trans-Atlantic voyages.
Smaller than Sevilla, Puerto de Santa María sits across the Bahía de Cadíz from Cadíz proper. It looks out to the Atlantic, still west of Gilbraltar, of the Pillars of Hercules guarding the Mediterranean. There are the expected sidewalk cafés, narrow cobbled streets, confetti and rosemary remains of Corpus Christi processions, and a small, brown beach.
There is a community cultural center displaying the work of a local artist, paintings of the waterfront and of his apartment. In the foyer, a model of La Niña draws us to its case and to the map of the new world, made shortly after the turn of the 14th century. It is flowered with compass roses that orient the many lines radiating from their centers, headings that led mariners across the Atlantic and beyond.
Drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500, pilot for the Colón voyages and owner of the Santa María, it is the first map to show the coastline of the Americas. We find his memorial, tucked away behind the Castillo de San Marcos, built by Alfonso X as a church castle. A Cristina Carreño bust of de la Cosa shouts defiance and arrogance. What can be said about a man who redrew history!
There is a central meat and fish market, new, clean, filled with meat, meat and more seafood than we can begin to identify. I ask to photograph a case brimming with fish, shellfish and crustaceans of every imaginable and unimaginable shape and size. The fishmonger holds up a giant lobster, its eyes visibly twirling as it tries to make sense of where it is.
There are also sherry bodegas, strategically built close to the wharves to disburse this liquid gold around the world. Sherry is a fortified wine, produced only in the triangle of soil, sea air and sun of southern Andalucía and capable of withstanding long ocean voyages. We sign up for a tour and tasting.
A few steps beyond our hotel, we enter the dark cloistered world of the sherry bodega, literally. Sherry bodegas are built like churches with steeply pitched roofs to siphon off hot summer temperatures. Natural climate control. Inside, American oak barrels, stacked in an offset pattern three high, exude the sweetish, vinegary smell of yeast at work and form the basis of the solera system used to maintain consistency. Fino, manzanilla, amantillado, olorosa, each variety is a far cry from the familiar cream sherry so popular in Great Britain.
On our way to the tasting room, we pass barrels signed in white chalk by chefs, a marketing strategy to encourage the current resurgence of interest in sherry. Signatured blends by signature chefs. ¨Josep Roca" is florished across a barrel, beneath his handwritten sentiment,"¡Botas llenan de lagrimas!"
Fortified by four varieties of sherry, we board the ferry for Cádiz. Hopes run high for sailboat sightings. At last, a triangle of white appears. This trip we are green with envy, only, not seasickness. One of us is haunted by ferries, of a Great Lakes trip that ends in an unplanned shore run back to the parked car, avoiding a repeat of the outward ferry ride. The bay is calm today. The sea air cools us in the heat but generates its on heat of longing to be under sail.
Cádiz is hot, and we zigzag along shaded sides of the streets to the beach. We have not come with swimsuits, only sandals, so we plunge only our toes in the Atlantic surf. Our return trip tickets send us back to the ferry terminal, and we are rewarded with the sight of 50-foot yacht motorsailing in the bay.
Sunday morning, we breakfast and check our bags before one last Puerta de Santa María excursion. We board a bus, hoping that it takes us within walking distance of a marina across the bay. To change buses, we step off and are told that the bus we want leaves from the bus stop on the opposite side of the traffic circle. We thank the gentleman who has advised us.
It is Sunday. The bus schedule is abbreviated. We sit at the stop, heat building up under its plastic canopy. We are objects of curiosity in this area less frequented by tourists. And yet, we are greeted. One such greeting comes from a twinkley-eyed gentleman, who escorts an older woman. Our return greeting immediately stamps us immediately as tourists. He smiles, and exchanges a few pleasantries with us before indicating that he must continue, for the sake of his companion.
Still no bus. We give up. As we walk toward the hotel, we encounter again, the courtly gentleman and his companion. He delightedly engages us in conversation and introduces us to his companion, his mother-in-law, su suegra. Proudly, he states his good fortune in having such a handsome, young-looking mother-in-law. Because of her, he knows that his wife will be as young and handsome as she grows older. She blushes.
We collect our bags and head to the train station, sitting outside on the platform. We catch the hot afternoon wind and wonder about maps--those generated from billions of bits of electronic data and those generated from sightings, landfalls and legends, from the decks of small wooden ships.
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