Third time’s the charm

Finally! A decent pic from the top. Shadow of Papa Teide on the morning mist and anticrepuscular rays

I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but I went up to the top of Teide twice this year. And my stupid persistence finally paid off. Although I am still to see all the other islands from the top, we had a beautiful and not very common view during our ascent at down — anticrepuscular rays. On the first ascent we saw very little because of the calima, on the second the wind was so strong that all we cared about was not to be blown away, and now, finally, a few good pictures, yay.

Honestly, I feel so ridiculously proud of the pic above, as if I have gone and painted the rays in the sky myself.

Up we go

Alien tentacles! Cthulhu raising to the surface! Tremble, you feeble humans... etc

When I went up the Mount Teide two years ago I didn’t really have a plan. Well, I had the most basic of all plans — to go up and survive. People told me two things at once — first “it’s kinda easy, you just need to pace yourself” and the second “but the altitude sickness can strike even the most fit people”. With this mixed message in mind, I can tell you I was going up listening to myself and asking all the time “am I ok?”, “am I still ok?”. I was perfectly fine, but this type of self-monitoring is not conductive to enjoyment.

This time I knew it was doable, and my first concern was the weather. What if the (blasted) calima turns up again? We won’t be able to see anything!

I can say straight away that we were much luckier this time — there was almost no dust in the air and the visibility was a lot better. First day, we saw Gran Canaria, La Palma and La Gomera above the sea of clouds while still on the bus. Next day, only La Gomera was visible from the top of the mountain at dawn, but that was also fine — I personally didn’t even get the camera out of the backpack, see the explanation later.

Ascent of Teide

The summit of Teide is small, so there is only a limited number of people who can fit.

This summer started well for me — I went up Teide, the tallest mountain of the Canary Islands, Spain, and the entire Atlantic basin. Sounds impressive, right? Though of course, as mountains go, it is not that huge — under 4 km. Still, I have never been anywhere over 2000 metres before, so... I am really quite pleased with myself and with the way it went.

It was all a bit sudden. I was studying the Arawak webpage for a while, thinking that maybe one day I should do it, while we live here on the Canaries. When on a walk with Arawak, I spoke to our guide about the indicated level of difficulty (3+/4 out of 5, that’s pretty high). He said that in his opinion I had nothing to worry about, level-wise, but that if I wanted to do it in June, I had to book immediately, because there were very few places left (like, two). I nodded along, still undecided. Later, on the bus back to Las Palmas, he fiddled with his phone, turned to me and said “You know what, I’ve booked you just in case. You can always cancel it”. That was a «волшебный пендель» (magical kick in the butt that speeds you along), and the end of my hesitations.

Yarn Bombing, Calle Viera y Clavijo, Santa Cruz de Tenerife

We had quiet and uneventful Easter holidays on Tenerife. I didn't take a lot of pictures, except for some plants in the Botanical Garden and a whole street full of knitted trees in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. I am not sure who are the authors and how all that came about, but it looked cute. Have a look if you are interested.

Gardens, gardens everywhere

Anybody who knows anything at all about me knows that I like flowers. And in Puerto de La Cruz there are at least two big gardens. So I went to both this time :)

One is "Jardín Sitio Litre", which is confusingly marked as "Orchid garden" in the little tourist map, private property attached to a largish house where the current owners live. The current name is the result of somewhat japanese-sounding transformation of the original "el Sitio Little", "Little's Place", after Archibald Little, the first owner of the estate. It's not big, well established, nicely laid out, with some space dedicated, yes, to orchids, a koi carp pond, fountain, small cafe etc.

Another one is the "real" botanical garden, know as Jardín de Aclimatación de la Orotava, Jardín Botánico or El Botánico. It's larger, but still nowhere as large as Cambridge botanical garden for instance, let alone Kew. Acclimatization bit in the name is there because it was used to acclimatize plants brought from different parts of the world.

Well. I liked the second one more. It's bigger, collection is more impressive, the entrance is just 2 euro for Canarian resident (dat's me) against 4.75 for the Orchid Garden. Plus, to be honest, I was lured to the Orchid garden by the name, hoping to see a lot of beautiful, well, orchids. I don't know if it is the season or what, but you will see more orchids in Scotsdales garden center. Maybe the garden holds more variety - I don't remember seeing Lady slipper orchids in Scotsdales, for instance. Maybe. Still, I was somewhat disappointed

Now, I wrote this sorry excuse for a text just to be able to post some flower pictures. So here they are :)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival Parade 2013

I've heard many times that the carnival in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is something worth watching. "Second biggest in the world", "immediately after one ends, everybody starts preparing for the next one", "amount of feathers and sequins like you won't believe", etc, etc...
Last year we were quite content with much more humble offering of Corralejo and Puerto del Rosario, but this year I figured I should go have a look at Tenerife.
Now, I am not an expert on carnivals. Carnivals that I saw in the UK are basically few days affairs, sometimes just one-day affair, when you have a procession and that's pretty much it. Here it is not the case - various events leading up to the main parade start a few weeks in advance. But I couldn't of course drop everything and go for a few weeks, so I restricted myself to just four days. That allowed me to see the two biggest parades on the island - one in Santa Cruz on the day of arrival, one in Puerto de la Cruz on the day of departure, with the Burial of the Sardine and drag "put your heels on" parade in Puerto fitted in between.

Las Palmas

This weekend we went to Gran Canaria for the first time. If you consider that we've been living on one of the Fortunate Islands for over a year, it is a bit odd that so far we've only been to Fuerteventura and Lanzarote (ok, ok, and Isla de Lobos, if you start counting smaller ones too).  But time came to check the rest out and off we went on Fred.Olsen ferry from Morro Jable.

Ferry itself theoretically takes one hour forty minutes, but in reality it took about two hours in both directions. Both ways we also swayed quite alarmingly from side to side, maybe the "normal" timing really happens when the ocean is a bit calmer.

Important note: if you plan your journey yourself and are a foot passenger, i.e. one without a car, don't be fooled by apparent proximity between the arrival point of this ferry and town, as I was. I looked at googlemaps, checked the distance using my fingers and figured it's about one kilometer. When we arrived though it became clear that the arrival point is not where the googlemaps think it is. It's a lot deeper into the "container area" of the port, and you have to walk along Avda. de Las Petrolíferas, which is indeed lined with those huge cylinders full of something oily and therefore doesn't exactly smell of roses.