Going up in the World

The Palmeran violet, Viola palmensis

Today the whole family wound up at 2,400 m.

My husband works up there, at the Galileo telescope.

My son had a school trip, helping to plant out native flora, like the violet above. The island government's been doing this for a while, and the results are really starting to show.

And I was tour guiding. I showed two groups round the Isaac Newton Telescope. It was quite a rush to get up there for a 10 a.m. start, but I managed. And I finished just in time for my son to ride down with me, instead of on the bus.

Since I'd been out all morning, I hadn't had time to cook, so we grabbed a pizza for lunch instead.

Duh!

I had the first part of my morning all planned: drop my son off at school, take little Sam to creche, and then swing by Cancajos for a photo on my way to breakfast with Norma. They were all quick jobs, so I expected to get to Norma's just after nine.

Sam wasn't his usual happy self when I got there, so we waited a while before I took him to nursery. This was OK - two year olds are not machines and I knew Norma would understand. In fact it's nice that Sam's usually such a happy, placid little boy.

As I left the nursery, I realised that I'd left the bacon for our breakfast sandwiches in the fridge. So I phoned Norma to warn her that I was running late, and went home.

Carlos was still there, having breakfast. We chatted while I added some ketchup to my bag and left. I got most of the way to San Antonio before the penny dropped. Still no bacon.

I parked and checked. Nope. No bacon.

I went home again, feeling really stupid. Although I suppose it's not all bad that I still find my husband distracting after almost 14 years of marriage.

I managed to grab my photo of Cancajos, and got to Norma's, a mere half hour late.

Ah well, as Cervantes said, "hunger's the best sauce." I really enjoyed my bacon sandwich when I finally got it.

Fun at last

Lately it seems to have been all work and no play (except for writing just a little about my hamster secret agent every day). I'm behind with everything, and more stuff to do arrives faster than I deal with the old lot.

So I felt it was urgent to recharge my batteries. I talked Helen and Theresa into visiting both flea markets today: the monthly one in Santa Cruz, and the weekly one at Argual, on the outskirts of Los Llanos.

I haven't been to the one at Argual for at least ten years, and I really enjoyed it. But I'm not going to give a long description here, because I'll do that in the other blog tomorrow.

And then we went off to Puerto Tazacorte for lunch. And then we came home. The late afternoon light was beautiful when we arrived, but it soon started raining.

At least I don't have to water the garden now. And I've got material for at least four blog entries about La Palma.

The Caldera

I just got back from taking 14 kids into the Caldera. Well, their teacher was in charge, but they needed a second adult along. Now most such school trips have to stay in the campsite, which means carrying tents in, but we were seriously lucky. The teacher, Miguel Angel, is friends with the man in charge of looking after the irrigation canals inside the Caldera, so we could stay in a hostel which isn't available to the public for rent. It was pretty basic, but adequate, except that it has 12 beds and there were 16 of us. So four of the girls shared beds, and two of the boys slept on the floor, including my son the first night. (He hardly slept, which left him rather maungy.) But there was a toilet and shower and kitchen with three gas rings. And a water tank which makes a great swimming pool!



I'm a writer. I have a serious case of writer's bottom, writer's thighs and writer's tum. In fact the only parts of me that are fit are my fingers (all that pounding a keyboard). So it's been a long time since I've walked more than a couple of miles. On this trip we spent about half our time walking, and it's emphatically not flat! I'd gasp my way up a 30º slope at what the teacher considered an insanely slow crawl, and flop down for a rest for a while before I even raised my head to look at the view.

And then the scenery would knock the breath out of me all over again.

To be continued...

A Funeral at Last!

Last night I went to the delayed Sardine's Funeral in Los Sauces. I finally discovered why people say it's better than the sardine's funeral in Santa Cruz.

They say it because it's true.

The crowd was far bigger than in Santa Cruz, and over half of them wore fancy dress - mostly Halloween theme costumes. This is my hairdresser. I didn't recognise him nutil he spoke.


First they had a butaca - serious percussion. I took a lot of video, but there wasn't much light and most people were wearing black, so it's not brilliant. I need to learn to edit video.


At the end of the butaca it poured with rain for about ten minutes. Imagine a couple of thousand people all looking for shelter and saying, "Oh no!" all at once. Thankfully it stopped pretty quickly.

Then I wondered about for a bit and had a beer (alcohol free - I was driving).

Then the sardine appeared.


Now in Santa Cruz its a funeral procession, and the mourners are wailing with fake grief, but they're walking in a dignified way.

In Los Sauces, the sardine is being tossed around as though it's on a rough sea. The pall bearers really work up a sweat. I found out the hard way that it gets a fair bit of momentum - the guys at one side can't necesarily stop just because they're going to crash into a phtograher. I was glad I only took the compact camera. And the mourners jog and pogo and scream like banshees. It's like Santa Cruz used to be, only better. Monty Python eat your heart out. What's more, there were a couple of smaller sardines brought by groups of kids. The sardine goes around the square twice, and then through the back streets towards the huge new bridge, back along the main street, round the square twice again, and finally onto the bier in the square. The kids' sardines went under the bier.

Of course it ends with the sardine being cremated. And in Los Sauces, the crowd doesn't just watch and cheer. They pogo and boogie and scream again. And there are lots more fireworks.

By then it was one in the morning, so I didn't stop for the public dance. I just ate a sandwich and went home.

Next year I'm going back, and I'm definitely dressing up.

Teneguia

Hurrah!

After seventeen years on the island, I finally got to the summit of the volcano Teneguia.

It's only 400 m above sea-level, and I didn't walk all that far. But I'm horribly unfit and it's a rough path. And besides, I have a horrible tendency to leave everything to some mythical day in the future when I won't be so busy.

So I'm proud of myself for getting up there. And boy was it windy!

Los Indianos

Today was Los Indianos, which is usually my favourite night of Carnival. It's the night when people dress up in white, maybe have a suitcase full of Monopoly money, and for some reason throw vast quantities of talc at each other. By vast, I mean tons. Literally tons.

My son spent last night with my friends on Franceses. The plan was for them to bring him home this afternoon, then we'd all go out and get covered with talc, and then they'd stay the night.

How do you make God laugh? You tell him your plans.

Since I went out with my husband last night and had a good time, I was hung-over this morning so I never got my costume ready. Then Helen got a stinking cold, so they brought my son home, and then went back to Franceses. And then it started raining.

So we stayed home and I got the novel up to 75,000 words instead.

GranTeCan

On Friday I showed another group of tourists around the William Herschel Telescope. Afterwards they were going on to GranTeCan, which is the huge telescope the Spanish are building at the Roque (see Thursday, July 26, 2007). I managed to tag along and finally see inside.

I've seen a lot of telescopes, and I knew it was huge, but I still wasn't prepared for the sheer size of the thing.

This is the dome floor, which is 32 metres (93 ft). You could fit a full sized tennis court in there, and only the corners would be outside the rotating area. The huge red thing is the bottom of the telescope, with the main mirror (10.4 m) just out of the picture to the top.

The telescope isn't finished (one reason why they allow so few visits) and they were working on the azimuth drive - the one that moves the telescope about a vertical axis. It's silent, partly because it's one, huge, linear motor.

I'd have loved to climb up inside the dome, but I was delighted to see this much.

Peas

Although our garden is tiny, our balconies are large, and this year I decided to see if I could grow a little bit of organic veg in containers. For one thing, there'd be no food miles involved.

My friends from Franceses gave me three pea plants. When we went on holiday, they were about a foot high. When we came back they were about four feet high, and caterpillars had chewed all the leaves into lace. I picked off the caterpillars, but it was already too late.

Last night we ate the entire crop - 15 peas each. Theyw ere very nice, but I don't think I'll be getting the Nobel Peas Prize this year.

Bad news

We've had a heatwave, and I've been busy.

On Monday afternoon as I passed through town with my son, the thermometer outside the port read 40C (104 F). In that sort of heat, you don't feel like doing much, although I did continue my battle against the fleas.

On Tuesday my friends Helen and Theresa finally collected their Spanish number plates, so later that morning I went with Helen to sort out their car insurance. The office had aircon, which was lovely. The girls stayed for lunch, and the day just disappeared, with nobody feeling like making much effort. Meanwhile massive forest fires raged on Tenerife and Gran Canaria. There's a rather spectacular satellite photo here.

On Wednesday it was a little cooler, thank goodness. My friend had to go and deal with a family crisis, so I acquired a temporary daughter. I took her and my son to Franceses to see Helen and Theresa. For once I didn't take any photos because it's all so dried up at present. Their vines look sick, which is probably the heat, but they've been doing wonders in the house.

Today the fires are both out, but the beautiful village of Masca on Tenerife has been burnt, and a missing teenager has been found dead on Tenerife. It seems all the news is bad today.

I'll just have to hope tomorrow is better.

Franceses again

My friends in Franceses needed some help translating at the Town Hall, so today we went. On the way there we saw this practice rescue. At least I assume it was a practice because that's the coastguard cutter.

I left Julio with Helen while Theresa drove me to the Town Hall. There we established that a) the official permission for them to build steps to the house entrance isn't ready yet, b) the woman we needed to see about planning permission for thir new bathroom was out for the day and c) there were no tech jobs going at the Town Hall.

Oh great.

Then I phoned the previous owner of their house and I finally got though to him - it turned out that he'd lost his mobile and my number with it. And he planned to come next day and fetch the stuff he'd left in their cellar. So that was something positive to report.


When we got back to Franceses we had a go making paper logs.
Helen and Theresa's stuff has arrived from the UK, and much of it was packed in shredded paper. So they'd soaked the paper in water for a couple of days and were now making it into paper logs for the fireplace they haven't got yet. We had a go. You fill a mould with strips of soaked paper, put a mesh lid on, and squish the water out. After that you remove it carefully and set it to dry.

We had a lovely lunch cooked on their newly-unpacked gas BBQ and watched some DVDs before we came home.

An uninvited guest

Life's getting a little less frantic. Julio's school term has ended and Farida's better, so yesterday I took my son to see the friends at Franceses for the first time for almost a month. They've got a lot of re-wiring done, and they're busy hacking up the floor to put in a damp-proof layer. While they were doing that, the weeds underneath the vines shot up, so after a lovely lunch we helped pull them up. And then Theresa found an uninvited guest inthe bedroom. Here's Helen evicting it.

el Socorro

I sneaked out time to take some photos of El Socorro church. It felt great, since I haven't taken any photos for two weeks.