[Pedro the Fisherman]

Not sure if I'm writing this for myself, or if anyone else is interested. It's nice to look back at one of the best periods of my life, so I'll continue for now.

CR is a wonderful place, made special too by the people you meet. I'd gone for a cheap holiday and a chance to prepare myself for a return to the UK after 6 years in Spain and the end of a 17 year relationship simultaneously. I thought I might be able to meet some nice single English ladies, but never imagined what the next few days would bring me.

The course was quite interesting, using psycho drama, one to one encounters with course members, revealing your darkest secrets and desires amongst many other weird and wonderful stuff. As well as J (now my lunch and dinner partner), we had a famous painter (female, based in Brighton who's paintings feature cartoon like figures and dogs, featured on posters and prints around the world) as well as a doctor and a young lady psychiatrist from Pakistan. The psychiatrist was with her boyfriend (based in UAE) but also from Pakistan. They went to CR to escape family and religious restrictions...they smoked pot, drank alcohol and swam naked, because they could never do this at home and nobody from home would ever set foot at CR!

Being local, I was used to nightime temperatures of 26C and no aircon, the Brits struggled with it, so I introduced them to my patent cure for sleeping in a hot climate. After dinner and plenty of cheap wine, I would lead my small (but growing) band of sleep deprived fellow guests to the pool. Officially, when the noise curfew came into force at 10pm, the pool was closed. However, if we were quiet, nobody bothered. With dim (sometimes just starlight) pool lighting, we all stripped off and entered the pool.

Now, to work properly, we should immerse ourselves for a period of time until our body core temperatures fall to point, you feel cold. This can take up to an hour, so how did we pass the time? Some floated looking at the milky way, some chatted others (the Muslim couple) pretty much had sex in the far corner of the pool.

One evening, myself and the artist were together (we had been paired up for an exercise that afternoon) with P** a 64 year psychologist and one of the older single men. J had gone off to a pre booked Flamenco evening, so was not there. I was aware of a new arrival at the pool steps, it was the lady on the left of the group photo, called J*. "I can't get to sleep and my roommate told me to come to the pool" she said. I bobbed over to the steps and explained what we were doing. "OK, I'll go and get changed and join you, if that's alright" she said. I quickly replied "only works if you are naked" and stood up in the shallow water. The artist and the other two also stood up and waved at her. "Oh hell" said J*, I've never been naked in front of strangers. Good time to try it then, said I.

With that, she took two steps backwards and went behind a palm tree! About a minute later she came out, one arm across her chest, another covering her lower regions and edged down the steps. Once at thigh depth she dunked herself below the surface and let out a huge sigh of relief. "I can't believe I've just done this...and in front of two naked men too". We welcomed her into our little group and returned to our chat.

Things would take a very unexpected turn over the next few minutes and J* would add something even more daring to her holiday memories before the evening was over!

Photo below, the pool in daytime, taken from my just outside my room.