Canadian Stargazers

I got a couple of day's work looking after some Canadian visitors to the island. (Actually they're Americans who've lived in Canada for a long time.)  Nice people. They run a hotel called Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia, and they're hoping to start astrotourism over there.

They were staying in a hotel I wasn't previously aware of, the Hacienda de Abajo in Tazacorte. It's gorgeous - it's a converted  16th century manor house, on an estate which used to produce sugar cane. It looks really nice, something like a National Trust property.

This made for rather long days, though.  On Saturday morning I distributed copies of my books to shops in Los Cancajos and Mazo, then in the afternoon, I drove over to Tazacorte, left my van near the hotel, and got a lift back to the airport where I met my clients.  I went around with them in their hire car for the rest of the day. We looked at one of the country cottages for rent, then went down to the astronomical viewpoint at Fuencaliente to see the sunset followed by dinner at Casa del Volcan, followed by stargazing.  I finally got to see comet PanSTARRS!

But that meant we got back to their hotel at midnight, so I didn't get home until 1 am.

I was quite glad that they didn't want an early start on the Sunday.  I got there for 9 and we had a brief look around Santa Cruz before heading up to the observatory. They were suitably impressed by GTC and the view from the Roque itself.

Then we went down the Garafía side and ate at El Bernegal.  (Yum!)  And back to Tazacorte.

They had a meeting in Santa Cruz on Monday, and in the rush on Sunday morning I hadn't shown them where it was. So I met them briefly on Monday and showed them to their meeting.

And then I had to leave rather fast because the meeting was beginning, which made for a rather rushed goodbye.