While meandering through busy streets in the centre of Coimbra, full of visitors and ever present students, it’s not easy to find the right bus stop from where the day after I am going to take a bus to see the remains of Roman site that dates back to the 2nd century of our era. Confused and tired by the end of the day, I end up outside the Hotel Ibis Coimbra Centro. I am still very close to the railway station of Coimbra-A where I see a row of other bus stops aligning the side street nearby a busy Avenida Emidio Navarro. Come up to a randomly selected bus stop and start studying its schedule. Destination from here: Praia de Mira and one of the item lines tells me that I can start my trip at 10 AM and get there in 1.5 hr later.
From the backside of my memory I remember I heard something about oxen working with people on the beach, hauling the fishermen boats with catch of fish out of the Atlantic Ocean. With no hesitation, I decide to check it out myself on the next day. The old Roman excavations will not be my experience this time.
The day after, my chosen bus leaves the bus stop with no delay and exactly at 11:30 AM I am at the Atlantic coast of Portugal. From the last bus stop of this trip, I am walking towards the oceanfront with a local man whom I just met on the bus. Asking him about these oxen working with people when pulling out the fresh catch of the day. “No, that’s not the case anymore”, he says. “But you will see now tractors supporting people in their work and this is equally impressive look”, he adds something like this to keep me still interested.
After a short walk towards the ocean, far away on the horizon I can see a boat just coming back from the high seas. Only a question remains how early all those fishermen started their working day, probably at full darkness of the night. As the boat approaches the shore, all of the sudden a few tractors show up right on the sand. Along with the supporting technology, a substantial amount of seagulls follow. After not an easy assessment it’s easy to say if the birds came in hundreds but rather thousands of them; there’s really a lot of them waiting for their share of the daily catch. They sit on the sand, some circulate in the air like huge galaxy of stars in random movement. Years of living there and the seagulls exactly know what they are waiting for. I am also getting lucky – after a cloudy morning some sun rays are breaking their way through the clouds.
This hard work of sardines sorting is done partly when the boat is on its way back to the shore. The baskets full of sardines are delivered right to the beach while the nets are pulled out by the tractors for both drying and fixing and untangling them. They must be ready for the next fishing day. Now the crew from the boats go home for a meal and this is the time when special hands of other people will repair them right on the beach.
It’s afternoon and the early beach rush seems to come to a standstill. Net fixers are working on the nets, some tourists slowly walk on the beach and the seagulls stopped their crazy circles but there’s something strange hanging up in the air. This is a tension of waiting for something and the seagulls are those which build this tension. Once in a while a small flock of birds start their flight from one spot on the beach; they fly some short distance and land in another spot, never too far from the area where the fishermen disembarked their yellow baskets full of sardines.
After 2-3 hours of relative silence on the beach, the fishermen come back from their siesta. They will be sorting out the catch and this is what the seagulls have been patiently waiting for. The sorting crew comes up to the yellow baskets and right then all the seagulls start flying as if they got a new boost into their life. Of course it’s a boost. There’s a lot of leftovers waiting for them as a result of sorting the catch and they know and live up to that.
I am coming up to the group of men who start sorting duty on the catch and with the best Spanish I can speak I ask for permission to take a few action shots. The leader of the group is nodding his head and from that moment on I feel I become a member of the working team and start shooting.
The leftovers end up in shallow water once in a while being just thrown away but nothing is wasted. The seagulls with absolutely crazy shrieks come down towards the dump and pick up everything what’s in their ability to grab and take away with them. They fight for the leftovers but they don’t fight between themselves.
After an hour’s work, the daily catch is ready for shipment out of the beach. Seagulls still fly above but their main meal seems now to be over. Tractors are gone from the beach as if the seagulls drove the technology away and took over the natural course of things. Rare beach visitors assist the sorting crew of men when coming up to them and stop by for a short conversation.
My day was full of new experiences that I wouldn’t like to swap for experiencing the old Roman ruins. I was glad not to have made too hard time for myself when looking for a bus to Conimbriga and went with an easy flow after ending up on the beach. This event was worth while to experience and see people, nature and technology working for everybody at Praia de Mira.
