Controlled burn, silver tansy, and heat of May

An eruption? A wildfire? Nah...

After years living on Gran Canaria I have identified for myself the three main "hanami" events. I try to go and see all three of them each year, but sometimes it proves impossible.
One of them is the blooming of almonds. Another - the blooming of tajinaste azul, blue bugloss of Gran Canaria. And the third one is the blooming of silver tansy, much less obvious event. I guess my attachment to these rare plants is mostly due to the fact that I found and identified them myself, while both almonds and tajinaste are well known seasonal attractions.

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.