Chapter three is edited! Yay! Now I actually have to write chapter four...
Please review! ;D
"Wow!" exclaims Amanda, as we drive through the barrier announcing Welcome to Nautic Almata! that a receptionist opens for us. "This place looks amazing!"
"I know right!" I'm amazed by what I've seen so far too. After dropping Faye in a nearby village called San Pere Pescador, full of restaurants and beach shops, Amanda and I headed to the campsite where we'll be staying. The entrance, once I'd managed to finally locate it on the map and get us there, was a long, pretty track through a nature reserve. Then we drove through a mini-golf course and some other out-buildings that looked as though they might belong to staff, and then under this archway, which contains the barriers and reception. We were given a car sticker to prove we'd booked, and then directed to a large orange and blue tent with the words "Canvas Holidays" on the parasol.
Amanda pulls up outside it, leaving plenty of room for any other vehicles to pass by. It's on the middle fork of a three-way split. The first is labelled Zona 7-10 and Playa, our one, Zona 4-6 and Picina, and the right hand one Zona 1-3.
A young woman, probably about the same age as Amanda pokes her hear out of the tent at the sound of Amanda's door slamming, and grins broadly when she sees us. "Hi there!" she walks quickly over to us. "Amanda and Alex?" We nod. "Cool! Follow me and I'll show you to your tent! I'm Caroline by the way! Companion to Centaurs!"
Amanda climbs back into the car to follow Caroline, or Carrie as she says she prefers, but I get out of the stuffy car and walk beside Carrie. She pulls the pink hair band from her pony tail, and her long, wavy brown hair flops across her shoulders. She scrapes it back up again, and ties it just as it was before. Then she turns her attention to me.
"So what companion species are you?" she asks in a friendly tone.
"Phoenix!" I reply, smiling. "Amanda is my mentor! Were Centaurs one of the summoned species?"
"No," she replies as we continue up the road labelled Zona 4-6. "None of my chapter had any of the species they wanted, there are only ten of us, and so I volunteered to become a courier here to welcome Society members, and help to organise the camping arrangements! It's been great! Amazing tan!" She giggles, and so do I. "And I'm studying for a degree in Spanish, so this is great for my studies. I'm especially interested in all the different variations of Spanish they speak; Catalan being one of them! Normal," she holds up her hands to demonstrate quote marks, "Spanish is called Castilian, and one of the other main ones is . . ." She continues to chatter aimlessly about her Spanish course, and I listen, kind of interested. I don't speak Spanish, although I would have liked to take it as an option too.
Soon, Carrie leads us into the third row of large orange and blue tents on the right. She stops at the first tent on the left. "This is yours. Katya and Tara should be arriving later in the afternoon. If there's anything you need, just pop down to the main tent, and one of my colleagues or I will be there! Got another tent to clean out now! Enjoy yourselves!"
"See ya!" I call.
"Bye!" she waves cheerfully, then hurries off and grabs a large metal wheelbarrow and heads off to another row.
"We're here!" laughs Amanda with a mixture of happiness, excitement, relief, and just her normal hyperness.
"I know right! Yay!" I hi-ten her, and miss. Completely. It just makes everything twice as funny. Then we become slightly more sensible and decide to unpack.
We heave everything out of the hot car into an almost as hot outside, and then Amanda parks the car better; alongside the tent in a more out of the way position.
The tent is huge. Standing in the doorway, the kitchen is straight ahead, and contains a fridge, coolbox, cooker, and some racks of cutlery. On the left, and also in front of me is the spacious living area, which until we dumped all of our bags in the middle, contained only a folding table. On my right is one of the pods with two single beds in, and with a clothes rail at one end, and the other pod is opposite me on the back "wall", and slightly to my left, and is what makes the kitchen separate from the living area.
"Bagsie the one with the clothes rail!" Amanda appears at my shoulder, making me jump.
"Sure!" I'm not bothered whether my clothes are crinkled. Inevitably they will be; clothes rail or not. I walk over to the other pod, and unzip it. The zips are weird: one vertical one down the middle, and two horizontal ones going opposite directions along the bottom, outwards from the vertical zip. It does, however, mean you can roll the halves up, and tie them back with the Velcro on the poles on either side which makes it look very inviting.
There are also two single beds in here, and I push one against the kitchen wall, and the other against the outside. I choose the one by the outside; the fridge rattles.
Then I drag in all of my bags, and unpack them, except the clothes. Those I decide can stay in the bag and I shove them under my bed. I add the finishing touch by placing my cuddly horse on my pillow, and sit down for a rest. It's too hot. Way too hot. I decide to change into cooler clothes; namely dark blue mini shorts, and a pink sleeveless top.
Then I walk out of the tent, and drop into a chair around a white plastic table, shaded by a parasol. It's slightly cooler out here, but not much. Amanda, having also unpacked and changed, comes and sits beside me. I look at the clock she's put on the table. Five o'clock, and thirty two degrees.
"So when do you want to start training?" my mentor seems unbothered by the heat. I envy her. Perhaps she's used to it. She's always telling me about the exotic holidays she goes on each year with her parents to the Caribbean, Australia, or on safari in Africa.
"Bleurrrrrrgh." I reply. I always find that bleurgh is a very expressive sound.
"I'm guessing that's not today then!" she laughs.
"Good guess."
We both lean back for a while, lost in our own thoughts, and enjoying the peaceful buzz of activity that we can feel but not hear all around us. Now that I'm not in a stuffy tent any more, I can feel a slight breeze brush past me, and see it whispering in the leaves of a young aspen tree above me. A small bird is singing high in the branches, and a family crunches past on the gravel track, chatting and laughing happily in Dutch. But perhaps best of all is the smell that suggests holiday to me more than any other - the smell of the sea.
My peaceful daydream, or possibly real dream, though I'm never going to admit that I was asleep, is broken by the scrunch of tyres on gravel, and the voice of Carrie introducing some new guests.
I leap up, poke Amanda, who is most definitely asleep, and run over to greet Tara and Katya.
A woman who looks a bit older than Amanda, but who can't be by much if they were friends at her old chapter, jumps out. She's a bit taller than my mentor, and her light brown hair is tied in a tight ponytail. She is followed by a girl with shoulder-length, pale blonde hair and dark brown eyes who looks much older than me. Suddenly, I'm very, very shy.
