My ninth graders and I spent Friday cleaning a beautiful beach, Cuesta De Maneli, in Mazagon. Although the area itself is stunning– a boardwalk winds through sand dunes to the beach below– there was a surprising amount of trash. We filled over twenty big garbage bags (as the students squealed in disgust when they found increasingly yucky things) and although it was hot, stinky work, the day went by quickly and we rewarded ourselves with an afternoon spent in the ocean and siesta-ing on the beach. Not bad for a school field trip…The tricky part came when we had to lug the garbage bags two kilometres back over the sand dunes to the parking lot. I was informed by the students that it should be considered “explotación infantil”, but we made it.