Going Bananas!

I finished the rush translation job and decided that I'd earned a morning off. So I went off to Tijarafe to see the banana museum.

I had trouble finding it, but it was a lovely, sunny morning, and the old part of the village was nice, too. I stopped to ask an old lady directions, and we had a nice chat, and I found the museum with her help.

Well, it's a pleasant enough little museum, and I'll blog about it in due course. And I found some other nice little nooks and crannies to photograph. But the highlight of the morning was the church. I popped in on general principles, because a) I was there, b) most old churches on La Palma are pretty and c) it's the oldest one on the island (which was in the text I'd just translated).

I got a big surprise. The test I translated said, "It has been restored, enlarged and altered on several occasions." They weren't kidding. One nave is 15th century, and the other looks like it was built in the 1960s. and the most amazing bit was that the two look good together! (There are more photos on the La Palma blog).

Mostof the morning had gone by then, so I headed back towards the car. I stopped onthe way to photograph a nice old balcony with an old woman on it. As I got closer she waved at me, and I thought perhaps she was annoyed at being photographed. But no. It was the old lady who'd given me directions to the museum and she wanted another quick chat.

I feel I've come up for air.

Of course I should really have stayed home and caught up with cleaning the house, but I'm getting on with that today.

New experiences

Last night I finally got to see the dancing horses (caballos fufo) during the fiesta in Tazacorte. I wanted to get photos, so I made sure I charged up the camera battery, and tookthe full kit. When I got there, I found that the horses were dancing in pretty dark streets, and that they move really fast. So I was really pleased that I'd brought along my big flash gun, the one nicknamed "the tactical nuke."

I put it onthe camera, but it wouldn't switch on.

No batteries.

*head-desk* *head-desk* *head-desk* *head-desk* !

So I went in for creative use of blur!

The photos are on my blog at http://lapalmaisland.sheilacrosby.com

The other new experience was my first ever yoga class tonight. It's much harder work than it looks! But I had a nice surprise.

Some months ago, a friend tried to teach me the yoga salutation to the sun, and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't even do it badly. My spine was too stiff, my arms too weak to lift my upper body off the ground, and my hamstrings too short. So I settled for doing a few gentle stretches a day. And for the last six weeks or so, I've been spending a couple of minutes a day lifting weights to strenghten my arms. Yesterday I noticed that I've got tiny biceps for the first time in years.

And tonight I could do the salutation to the sun! OK, I did it badly, because my hamstrings are still too short, and by the time we finished, my biceps were trembling. But I did it!