Ventorrillo El Chato

The hotel wanted to know if we needed help with reservations so we reel them off, one-by-one, from the list on Sophie’s phone. What we get back is mostly advice; we’ll need to get to Manteca early, and same with Chef del Mar, and La Marea should be fine, but just book it when you get to the beach in the morning. El Chato? We will need to book El Chato and you’ll need a taxi because it is too far to walk. Fast forward four days and we are back in reception, thirty minutes earlier than our taxi is booked, asking if it is possible to go there now for a mooch about to see the surrounding area. No, they say, there is no point, there is nothing around El Chato. Nada. Zilch. Zero. You go to El Chato to eat and then you come back. It is the way. He is right. Our fifteen minute taxi takes us quickly out of the old town, and through a strip of high-rise hotels which line Playa de la Victoria. We keep going towards San Fernando, onto a narrow breakwater that has a slip of beach on one side and a…