Boyfriends are trouble, I said. He leaned over and gave me a high-five

Along the beach, surfboards spring up like bunches of tropical flowers; they lean against wooden posts, their tails planted in the sand. Tanned merchants scamper to and from the ocean, filling plastic buckets with salty water, then they rinse the surfboards clean and run their wrinkled fingers down the smooth surfaces. The faded colours are left to blossom in the sun.

Men with dark sunglasses and raspy black beards wheel their painted food carts onto the sand and unfold them near the crumbling stone barrier that divides the beach from the street. They flick their cigarettes with their lips and place beer, pop, packages of rice crackers and greasy fried potatoes on display.

Groups of women crouch in the shade of palm trees, talking in low murmurs and preparing baskets of pineapples, mangoes, papayas and water