Chasing the Sun

Have I mentioned the dogs?

Las Vegas is built on slopes overlooking two ravines. Other villages and farms cling to the mountainsides all around us. Everyone, apparently, has at least one dog. Nobody takes them for walks. They're never allowed inside. And nobody, as far as we can tell, ever tries to curb their barking. Sound travels a long way in mountains. You get the picture.

There are individual dogs who will bark constantly for well over an hour at a time. They sound frantic. It’s like the people we see in public sometimes who talk so much, so fast and so non-stop that Karen will mutter, “Take a breath!” But it’s never just one dog, it’s almost always a chorus. Sort of like The Sound of Music, except howling and yapping instead of yodeling across the valleys.

It’s a good thing Shelley Boyes isn’t here. She’d be reduced to a gibbering lunatic.

The saving grace is that most of the time we’re inside because the air is too cool outside, or it’s raining, or both. I still need music sometimes to drown out the doggy chorus even when we’re inside. (This year, I have my entire library with me, transferred to a portable hard drive about the size of a wallet.)

Speaking of rain and temperatures, Karen read this morning that it will be 15C and rainy in London ON today (Tuesday)! That’s what it’s going to be here tomorrow.

Are we having a good time yet? Actually, we are.

On Sunday, we set out to walk up the side of the Caldera de Marteles – up the mountain we can see from our terrace, off to the right. We walked through the village and along small, but surprisingly heavily trafficked, semi-rural roads, then onto a single-track paved road that went straight up into the hills. The dwellings got fewer and further between, and finally we were on a rocky, rutted track switching up the mountain. The air was a good temperature for walking, about 14C. We had been promised sun and cloud but that was beginning to look like a familiar lie. We could see clouds and mist hanging on the mountain tops not that far ahead of us. The sun? It was elsewhere.

Mist on the mountain

The hills are very green. It’s hard to believe that if you drive 30 or 40 minutes south and east of here to Maspalomas, you hit essentially desert. They say Gran Canaria is like a mini-continent because there are so many different topographies and climates. At this time of year, the green in the hills is studded with pinks, whites and creams of almond and broom blossoms, which are out everywhere now, and purples, reds and yellows of clover and other unidentified wildflowers. The landscapes are probably more colourful this year because of all the rain.

Almond tree and cactus

Up the mountain

At one point, as we looked back, we spotted a herd of sheep, harried by dogs, coming down the mountain along another track, bells clanging. Sound carries a long way in mountains. You can see up here, literally, for miles and miles and miles. We were so high  that we looked back at one point and realized we could see all of Las Palmas, right out to the point, the so-called Isleta, at the north end, laid out in the sun. (It’s always sunny where we’re not!) Las Palmas is about 25 kilometers away as the crow flies.

The Almond Girl

Karen, broom bush, Las Vegas

Las Vegas

This being Sunday, we were not alone on the path. Sunday is family day for Spaniards, and we walked by, or sometimes briefly with, a number of family groups, sometimes large extended families out for a ramble. They always say, ‘Hola’ or ‘Buena’ as they pass. Those who passed us heading down may have come all the way from the trail head at the other end, about nine kilometers away. We were on one of the groomed and guide-posted walking trails maintained by the municipality. The recommended itinerary is to walk from the other end to Las Vegas, which would make it all downhill. Sweet!

We, however, were out for serious exercise and got it. Despite the temperature dropping a couple of degrees as we climbed and the clouds lowered, Karen had to shed a couple of layers, and I was damp from exertion.

We walked for about an hour uphill, sometimes climbing steeply, until we came to a place where the road wound away into pine-forested hills. We could have been somewhere in northern Ontario or BC. If we'd walked much further, it looked like we’d be walking in the clouds. The sky was pretty solidly overcast by now, with mist coming down lower than when we’d set out. We began to wonder if we’d make it back before the rain came.

We turned back at this point and walked down by the same route. Walking down was definitely easier and faster, but we did have to be careful of our footing. It’s easy to slip on the loose stones and grit when you’re walking down at such a steep angle. We both did slip a couple of times, but caught ourselves.

Heading down

We were only out for about an hour and 45 minutes, but it felt like a pretty good workout. I rewarded myself with a beer, and lunch, and spent what was left of the afternoon processing pictures.

Yesterday, Monday, we had sun on the terrace briefly in the morning, but then the clouds came in again. We could see it was sunny – or sunnier – on the coast (we can see the coast from our terrace), so decided we’d walk the beach promenade at Maspalomas today.

The walkway extends from San Agustin, where we’d had lunch with Caitlin and Bob the week before, to the Dunes Reserve at Playa del Ingles – over four kilometers. It’s easy walking on a paved path, with one detour onto streets to get around some renovation work. The sea is off to the left walking this direction. At first you’re at beach level, but at the Playa del Ingles end, you’re well above it, with sweeping vistas of the ocean and the point at Maspalomas.

Playa del Ingles in the distance

The path is lined with hotels and holiday apartments. Once again, we were struck by how quiet and civilized it was at the San Agustin end, where you’re mostly passing owner-occupied casitas hidden behind privacy fences with locked gates. And how awful it is at the Playa del Ingles end where it’s tacky hotels with flabby, wrinkly northerners lolling around pools out front, or sunning on lounges on their balconies. One little hotel we passed, quite nicely kept, had astro turf lawns in front of the units, one with a neat pile of drying dog shit on it. Lovely! Others looked more tasteful and cozy with climbing roses and camellias – no doubt horrendously expensive.

All along the Playa del Ingles stretch, you’re approached every five hundred meters or so by hucksters, usually offering “free maps,” actually advertising for tours.

An African woman in a traditional brightly-coloured dress was offering, I think, custom hair styling. She was holding a card with pictures of different corn-braid dos. Her scruffier-looking associates, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, were lounging on park benches nearby. Presumably they were the stylists, presently without customers.

She must have been desperate because she approached me. Maybe she was hoping I would persuade Karen to have her hair braided? (The horror!) She said, ‘Excuse me, where are you from?’ I muttered, ‘Canada,’ and went to walk past her. She stuck out her hand for me to shake and said, ‘How do you do?’ I felt badly. It seems rude to refuse to shake somebody’s hand – which is of course exactly why they use this tactic – but I really did not want to engage with the woman. When we were walking back, 45 minutes later, she was still out trying to drum up custom. She glanced at me and, maybe it’s just my imagination, but I thought her expression changed to one of distaste.

We saw one artiste selling his wares, a middle-aged man with the most god-awful monochrome paintings (or something) of tourist scenes. Caitlin and Bob would say they were for the chav market. (Chav: a classist term in Britain for working-class folk with more money than taste. According to middle-class folk.)

The other thing you see is “performance artists,” dressed in sometimes bizarre costumes, holding a pose, hoping punters will throw coins in their baskets. You see them everywhere in Europe, of course, and in North America too. But here, some are laughable no-hopers. One fellow we passed was wearing what appeared to be a native American costume of fake buckskins, carrying a tomahawk – and wearing a Guy Fawkes/Anonymous mask. Huh? He was standing on a park bench, but made no pretense of staying still, which is what these “artists” are supposed to do.  

In fairness, we did see a couple who had taken much greater pains. One was wearing a wildly creative and elaborate wizard costume and had an ingenious piece of apparatus, an s-shaped steel rod with a long tail and a little platform at the short end that made it look, at a glance, as if he was hovering in mid-air. His staff disguised part of the apparatus, the rest went under his costume. He didn’t seem to be doing any brisker a business than the Guy Fawkes Indian, though. The other guy who had made an effort wore an equally impressive macraméed King Neptune costume and carried a trident. Who gives these people money, I wonder?

Playa del Ingles: closer than we really wanted to be

When you get to the real build-up in Playa del Ingles, it becomes a horror show of restaurants, bars, tacky tourist shops and mid-rise hotels. At one point, we passed a little restaurant with a dance floor and a fellow singing some cheesy 1970s song to a recorded accompaniment. People were dancing. We didn’t dawdle. We walked to the centre, then turned and started back.

It wasn’t that long a walk, maybe seven or eight kilometers altogether, but we were walking for almost two hours and, perhaps because it was all on paved paths, I was feeling quite foot-sore by the time we got back to the car. We had thought of stopping and having a drink, but decided it was better to get on the road before the traffic built up around the airport in the late afternoon. It was about four o'clock.

Curry for dinner, made with curry powder from the San Mateo market, possibly the mildest curry powder ever mixed.

Sunshine Walks

When we rented our mountain villa, Karen and I imagined long country walks in the hills – we hadn’t quite registered yet that these were proper mountains not hills – and sunning on our terrace, reading. You can’t do those things, though, when it’s pissing down rain, or threatening to, with temperatures hovering below 10C. What a difference a week makes! The sun has returned to Las Vegas. Yesterday, we woke to blue skies and brilliant sunshine. It was 14C by mid-morning and we sat over our tea on the terrace and read the papers.

A little after 11, we donned our walking shoes and shorts and headed down the lane for our first proper hike – from Las Vegas, the tiny village where we’re staying, to Valsequillo, the ‘capital’ of the municipality to which Las Vegas belongs, a somewhat larger town across the ravine. The path goes down into the ravine, the Barranco de San Miguel, and up the other side. It was once the only way Las Vegans could reach the outside world. It’s a little over a kilometer and a half. The highway we take to get to Valsequillo by car was built in the 1930s and crosses the ravine at a bridge. 

The path to Valsequillo: before the descent

The path starts about 200 meters down the lane from our house. The first couple of times we looked at it, it was quite muddy. Today, it was more or less dry. It’s not a wide path, but appears well trodden. It goes for a short way through grass, past farm fields with flowering almond trees. When it comes to the edge of the ravine, the path turns and begins switching down the steep cliff. The walking is not difficult. The route guide we found on the Web says it’s about a 20 degree slope at its steepest, and the footing is mostly good. The views down into the ravine and across to Valsequillo on the other side, at the top of almost sheer cliffs, are impressive. 

Ruined mill at bottom of ravine

Starting out

View across the ravine to Valsequillo

At the bottom, we confirmed what we already really knew, that there are two routes to Valsequillo. The otherwise excellent signposting gives you no clue as to distances, and from this point, you can’t see where the paths start up the cliff, so we had to guess at which was the best and fastest route. We guessed wrong, but it didn’t really matter. It meant we walked a little further along the ravine bottom and then up a relatively steep, rocky path. The total walking distance was maybe 750 meters longer. We were out for a walk anyway, and the sun and warmth were lovely. Pixel boards in Valsequillo when we got there said it was 20C.

Bottom of Barranco de San Miguel

The ravine still has farms in it and once had a mill. The mill lies in ruins today, near where the path from Las Vegas comes down. We’ve been trying to figure out what Valsequillo means. My best, but mostly uninformed guess, is that it means Valley of the Biscuit. Valle is valley in Spanish, but could be shortened in a name to val. Sequillo is biscuit. The mill, when it operated, ground grain into gofio the local all-purpose flour. With which they could have made biscuits. See? Valsequillo. Anyway.

Bottom of Barranco de San Miguel: bamboo stand

The walk along the bottom took us through a bamboo glade. The ravine turns at one point and as we followed it around, a light breeze sprang up. We had been thinking that the one nice thing about being down so low was that there wouldn’t be much wind. Gran Canaria is known as a windy island and we have had our share of stiff, cool breezes. But this was a mild and pleasant one. 

Stopping for a rest on the way up to Valsequillo

Starting up the other side to Valsequillo

The path up was steeper than the one down from Las Vegas, but the views up and down the ravine and across to the sea are lovely. We made it to Valsequillo in a little over 50 minues. And that was with dawdling and stopping for picture taking.

View along Barranco de San Miguel: Valsequillo on right, Las Vegas in distance

View down Barranco de San Miguel: Las Vegas on left, Valsequillo on right

On the way up: view over farmhouse to sea

We had explored Valsequillo a little already. We did find the Tourist Information office this time, where we were able to pick up some seemingly quite good brochures on local walks. Each one has aerial-view maps, elevations, detailed descriptions of the route and the flora and fauna, along with nicely reproduced pictures. There are nine routes in the Valsequillo municipal area. 

Valsequillo: village church

We also stuck our heads into the village church, a relatively austere space with only a few nondescript paintings and some small 17th century carvings in a glass case. The stations of the cross are marked with simple brass Roman numerals bolted to the nave walls, that’s how plain it was. 

We sat at Bar de Tito, a little restaurant across from the church, and had a coke, and did some people watching. The bar itself was patronized by a trio of middle aged and elderly locals talking with the bar tender – Tito? It was a place people came for take-away lunches apparently. One fellow in gym shorts and a t-shirt stood at the bar for 20 minutes – waiting for his box lunch to come out of the kitchen, as we discovered – while his wife sat in the family SUV, parked up on the sidewalk out front. 

Valsequillo: hanging out at Tito's

Karen watched a little drama at the Santander bank next door, where a patron at the ATM had apparently had his bank card stolen by the machine. He started banging on the door to the bank which was already closed for lunch. Somebody finally come out. The same banker, a scruffy-bearded young man in a suit, emerged again soon after, locked up and came next door to Tito’s to pick up his lunch. As he came back out, he said to us, “You are from Canada?” A conversation in broken English – on his part, we spoke quite fluently – ensued. Tito had apparently told him we were from Canada, which he had gleaned from the fact that European card transactions with foreign cards give you the option of paying in Euros or your own currency. He would have seen that our option was to pay in Canadian dollars. We always pay in Euros, though, because the local banks never offer as good a deal on the currency exchange as Visa. This fellow wanted to let us know that we could have paid in our own currency. Yeah, thanks.

We decided to find the other path down into the ravine, which should have been, and was, at this end of town. There were no signposts pointing to it, but we found it and started down along a brick-paved street. At one point, we overshot the turn on to the path into the ravine, partly because it appeared to be a walkway into somebody’s farm, and was clogged with malodorous, bleating goats. 

Goat gauntlet

A fellow working in front of his house a little further on stopped us and set us on the right path. This route between Valsequillo and Las Vegas was both shorter and easier going than the way we went on the outgoing leg. We were back at the house in well under an hour.

The Almond Girl

Looking up to Valsequillo

The afternoon we whiled away with working on pictures, reading newspapers and soaking up the lovely sun on our terrace.

Today, Saturday, has so far been almost as sunny and warm as yesterday. We sat on the terrace in the morning again, then set out for another hike in the late morning. This time, we had to drive 20 minutes or so up the mountain to a little village off the main highway, Rincon de Tenteniguada. The walk sounded ideal: circular, about 3 km altogether, without too much climbing. 

I had punched the map coordinates of the starting point, given on the brochure we’d picked up the day before, into our GPS. It took us to a place where there were signs up with maps ostensibly showing where the walking routes were. But we couldn't make head or tail of the directions or the maps. They referred to places and streets that weren’t identified in the real world. We walked up in one direction a couple of hundred meters. I asked a guy working in a farm field if he could direct us, showed him the map and asked where our start point was. I think he might have been a foreign worker or possibly spoke some mountain dialect. In any case, he couldn’t understand me and/or didn’t know the answer. 

We tried driving back down a way but could find nothing that looked like the start point. So we went back up to the village, re-parked and asked in a little bar. The two people working there, a mother and her son, I think, were very helpful and did give us directions, but I don’t think they could really figure out the map either. It’s too bad. The municipality has obviously gone to some expense erecting guideposts for some of the walking trails – though evidently not the one we were looking for – and producing these elaborate brochures, but then drops the ball by not providing detailed enough directions to actually find the trail head.

Rincon de Tenteniguada: view over village to sea

Rincon de Tenteniguada: up the mountain

We ended up following the bar people’s directions, but it was clear they were not right. So we followed another walking route that took us up a steep paved road, then off on a narrow dirt path up a hill, past farms to a place where there were cave homes, Cuevas Blancas, according to the guidepost. The path petered out before we could get close enough for a good view of the cave dwellings. One of them looked as if it could have been inhabited until fairly recently. 

Rincon de Tenteniguada: prickly (the cacti)

It wasn’t the most successful outing, but the views – all the way to Las Palmas in places – were spectacular, and the ramshackle farmsteads we passed, interesting, the wild flowers and almond blossoms, very pretty. With all the back-and-forthing and looking for the right path, we were probably out almost as long as we had been the day before, though we didn’t walk as far. It was lunchtime by the time we got home, which we ate on the terrace again. 

Rincon de Tenteniguada: almond blossoms

International Caitlin Day

On Sunday, we took Caitlin and Bob up to San Mateo for the market. It was threatening rain, but we managed, yet again, to evade it. The place was even more crowded than the week before, possibly because we were a little later getting there. There was a traffic jam coming into town, with people waiting to get into the downtown so they could park as close to the market as possible. We had to wait 15 minutes to turn off into the same municipal lot we’d used the week before, and it’s right at the edge of town. 

San Mateo market: revolting-looking sweets

The main market building, which was closed last time, now has hoarding around it. They must be renovating. The smaller building was much the same, with shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. The produce looked as fresh and inviting. We paid more attention this time to the cheese, for which the area is known. There are several artisanal cheese stalls. The plan was to try some of the San Mateo-branded cheese that Karen had read was famous on the island, but that place only had cow cheese. We found another stall that had a newspaper clipping pinned up with a picture of the woman who was behind the counter. The headline was something about it being a fifth-generation cheese maker. She let us try a couple of the goat cheeses, a mild soft one and a stronger-flavoured, hard crumbly one. Both were excellent, both we purchased. 

San Mateo market: our cheese seller

There is a kind of pavilion, a large open-sided, canvas covered area, between the two market buildings, with a stage. Last week there was just canned music playing and a few people sitting around chatting. This time, there were live performers on stage and people dancing. After the market, we wandered into a pretty, older section of the town and sat outside for a coffee before heading back down to Las Vegas. 

San Mateo: coffee near the main square

There was actual sunshine on the terrace when we got home, albeit weak and not for long. We sat outside until the clouds came in. It was too late to do anything else, so we sat around the house for the rest of the day, had nibbles soon after getting back, then a very nice dinner made by Karen later in the evening. Later still, we introduced Bob to Seinfeld, available on Amazon Prime Video, which he had never seen! A little surprisingly to me – because it’s so American, so New York – he liked it.

Our terrace

View of the coast from our terrace

The next day, Caitlin and Bob were anxious to get back to the sunshine down on the coast, so we headed for Playa del Ingles. The weather has been slowly improving, getting milder, if not sunnier, but this day was a backward step. Caitlin took her bathing suit in hopes of being able to dip her toes in the Atlantic, but it was not to be. The sun did come out occasionally, but it was mostly cloudy and got cloudier as the day wore on. It was also very windy near the water. According to the pixel boards, the temperature dropped over the course of the day, from 20C when we arrived to 18C by the time we left. 

Playa del Ingles: the upper promenade

The beach of the English

We walked down to the lower promenade and sat in a bar for a coffee near where Karen and I had sat the week before. Bob researched lunch places online and found one that wasn’t far away that had lots of good reviews on TripAdvisor, in fact was rated the tenth best of three thousand-odd restaurants in Gran Canaria. We had some discussion about the trustworthiness of TripAdvisor ratings (conclusion: not very), but thought we’d take a chance on this place. It was a 15-minute walk away, back up the hill to one of the streets lined with holiday chalets, shops and hotels parallel to the beach. 

It wasn’t a terribly promising-looking place, an open-sided, glass-covered terrace in a little plaza, with shops at the back. The staff all appeared to be northern European. Our waitress turned out to be from Norway, but had been in the Canaries for 18 years, she told us. The food was okay, but it’s hard to believe this is really the tenth best restaurant on the island. I thought the food was maybe fresher than in some places we’ve eaten, and the mains came with a very nice beet salad. When I was paying the waitress at the bar, she mentioned that this had been the coldest February in Gran Canaria in 44 years.

The plan for the rest of the day was to walk down to the Dunes Reserve to show Caitlin and Bob. There was no question of walking in the sand to the beach. The wind was blowing enough grit onto the promenade to make it a little unpleasant. It would have been far worse out in the dunes. There were people walking out there, though, including young boys body surfing down the sandy slopes. It’s such fine sand, it will be in their clothes for months. 

Playa del Ingles, Dunes Reserve

We walked all the way to the end of the Playa del Ingles promenade where it turns up to go around the reserve, golf course and resort development – the interruption to the promenade that took us over 90 minutes to walk around earlier in our stay. 

Playa del Ingles, Dunes Reserve

Caitlin and I had to use the loo so we went into a posh-looking hotel at the top of the walkway. I commented to Bob as we approached it that the trick was to walk in with confidence, without hesitation, as if you belonged there. Unfortunately, Caitlin and Karen who were lagging behind, didn’t hear this. Bob and I both marched past the bell hop manning the door, to whom I smiled and nodded as we went past. When I’d  located the loos and walked back out into the lobby to direct Caitlin and Karen to them, they were stopped at the door, being questioned by the bell hop. I beckoned them forward and they slipped past him. He followed, but didn’t say or do anything when we disappeared into the toilets. 

What could he do, though? Follow us in and roust us? The hotel would no doubt like to prevent non-guests from coming in to use their very nice toilets. There are loos at the Dunes Interpretation Centre 100 meters away but they unaccountably close for the day at 2 pm. Lots of people must come looking for them, find them closed, and do exactly what we did. The young bell hop didn’t quite have the confidence to deny us. It must be difficult for them. They don’t want to take the chance of offending legitimate guests.

We drove back to Las Vegas via the Telde Mercadona and had snacks and more Seinfeld – at Bob’s request – to finish the evening off.

Tuesday, we drove to Cruz de Tejeda for the view, and on to Tejeda for lunch. The clouds were very low as we left. After San Mateo, we were sometimes above them. But they cleared away when we got over to the other side of the central mastif. The drive up seemed slower than when Karen and I had come the week before. We thought, it being a Tuesday, that there would be less traffic and fewer people, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It was Shrove Tuesday, which may be a holiday for locals. It’s traditionally the last day of Carnevale. 

Cruz de Tejeda

In any case, there were just as many people at Cruz de Tejeda – possibly more – taking in the vistas. The views weren’t quite as pretty as the week before, I thought. The sun was out by this point, but the air was hazy. The parking lot was full, with cars clogging the entrances and pulled over on the roadway waiting for spots to come free. We had to park at the side of the road climbing up out of the village and walk back. At the little market, we bought some more of the hard, crumbly goat cheese we’d had from the San Mateo market.

Tejeda: view across valley

By the time we got to Tejeda, the sun was out full, and it was very mild – 16C or 17C. Everything looked even prettier than when we’d come before. The original idea was to eat at the same little restaurant and have the same tapas platter Karen and I had the week before. Caitlin had seen our pictures of it and thought it looked good. But they didn’t like that restaurant because it had no view over the valley. 

Tejeda: restaurant overlooking valley

So while Caitlin and I were in the almond sweets shop stocking up on supplies to satisfy her pregnancy sweet tooth, Bob and Karen chose a restaurant with a sunny table overlooking the valley. The food was good, but a lot more expensive than our little tapas place. We poked around in the village for an hour after a long leisurely lunch, then headed back down the mountain. 

Tejeda

Tejeda

Tejeda

Wednesday was Caitlin’s birthday. When we got up in the morning, the sun was shining brightly, just for her, and it was mild enough to sit sleeveless on the terrace by mid-morning.

Caitlin wanted a plate of pasta for her birthday – Bob, cruel man, denies her pasta at home – and a swim in the ocean. We proposed Las Palmas, which they hadn’t seen yet. The weather, for a change, cooperated.  The forecast for the coast, including Las Palmas, was 20C and sunny all day. And that's what we got.

We drove to the old section at the south end of the city, the Vegueta. The highly-rated Italian restaurant we’d targeted turned out to be closed for a few days. We walked over into Triana and found another place with a table in the sun. Las Palmas has a lot of Italian restaurants. This one, Vai Piano, looks fairly new. It  was pretty decent. Karen said her saltimbuco was the best thing she’d had in a restaurant here. Mine, a breaded veal scallopini, was a bit disappointing. Caitlin had her plate of pasta and seemed pleased with it. Bob had a pretty good-looking pizza. All good – well, except mine.

The waiter was entertaining, a young Parisian Frenchman who spoke very good English. He reminded me a little of Mr. Bean - not his manner or personality, but his face. He was very animated and cheerful. He also, oddly, followed NHL hockey, although he admitted he never watched games, just checked the scores. He even knew that Toronto was doing fairly well this year, and Montreal not so well. He ice skated, he said, but had never played hockey.

Las Palmas, Playa de las Canteras

We drove up to the north end of the city, to a point near where Karen and I had stayed, and walked along the Paseo de las Canteras. What a change from when we’d been here before. It was cold then, and rainy most of the time, and there was hardly anyone about. Now the plae was hopping. Sun bathers and beach volleyball players were out in force. We found a restaurant with a table by the beach. Caitlin went in and used the loo to change into her swimsuit. She and Bob walked down to the water and she did go in, although not without some squealing at the water temperature apparently. She ran in – well, lumbered in probably – and came right back out, she told us, then talked herself into believing it wasn’t all that cold, and went back in again for a little longer. Bob, sensible man, didn’t even bring a bathing suit on this holiday. 

Las Palmas, Playa de las Canteras: Caitlin preparing to brave the Atlantic

Birthday missions accomplished, we drove home via the Mercadona in Telde, and whiled the evening away eating birthday cake and quaffing champagne Bob had brought from airport Duty Free.

Caitlin and Bob flew back today. We drove them down to the airport in the morning for their noon-hour Ryanair flight. It’s cloudy today, but milder – forecast to go up to 17C here in Las Vegas. We’re determined to drive less in the next few days, just stay put for awhile, maybe do some walks around the village. Saturday is supposed to be a lovely sunny day.