We finally got up to the top of the snow covered mountains today.
You can normally drive right to the top but the road was blocked below the summit so we had to climb the last 1,000ft in brilliant sunshine taking 130 photographs on the way. As you can see in the pictures the constant wind and cold made some interesting pattens with the ice. We were going to do a ridge walk but the snow had turned to ice and was rock hard, very treacherous when close to the edge of any cliffs so we kept to the observatory access roads.
When travelling between the Canary Islands local residents only pay 25% the amount that we foreigners have to which seems unfair but imagine my delight when today I discovered something for which we foreigners get half price, saving me 150€.
Speeding fines! With savings like that I might speed more often.
I was caught doing 75kph in a 50kph zone and was flagged down. The policeman was very polite and even apologised as I paid the on the spot fine (they take credit cards) and I now have another overseas speeding fine to go on the toilet wall with those from Morocco, South Africa and Tanzania.
The weather app on my phone – AccuWeather – reported that Tuesday would be dry all day so armed with that promise we hired fancy e-bikes with the intention of cycling 20 miles to the south tip of the island to a trendy restaurant where we would have a nice lunch overlooking the blue ocean before cycling back.
It rained and the restaurant was closed!
On the outward leg we took shelter in two coffee shops and two bus shelters each time the drizzle turned to rain, Google Maps then came to the rescue “Open restaurants near here” revealed a restaurant down a side street where we could dry out a little and recharge the bike batteries whilst eating some very good food. Fortunately on the way back it was largely dry. The bikes were very powerful, we tackled a number of 1 in 4 hills, some of which were quite long, with little effort and in the end had a good day out although our bums will take at least a week to recover.
By the time we got home the sun was out and we took lots of sunset pictures sitting by the beach (see below).
We continue to follow the progress of the Atlantic rowers, two Dutch guys who obviously take it much too seriously will have finished by tomorrow and win the race. They even beat the four person teams which must be a little embarrassing.
Frank, the 70 year old we are supporting is now half way across and is keeping pace with the other solo rowers most of whom are half his age.
Two of the boats have been holed by marlin, the boats are carbon fibre and supposed to withstand all the Atlantic can throw at them, the race organisers think the marlin were attacking tuna, perhaps they thought these great big placid white things were big fish! The race blog says the crews were able to repair the holes with epoxy resin but they don’t say what happened to the marlin who must have a sore head and missing a bit of their noses. One of the crew had to go in the water to effect a repair from the outside, marlins grow to 5m in length, I am not sure I would be keen to jump overboard in the circumstances.
We had booked flights home on 1st February but Easyjet have now cancelled them probably becuase Spain have extended the ban on anyone other than Spanish residents travelling in or out of Spain to the UK until 2nd February Reading the various travel forums here it also seems that the local entrepreneurs have not yet got covid testing for travellers well organised but hopefully they will get their acts together soon so that when the flights resume we can be passed fit to get on them.
We have now booked 10 nights back in Santa Cruz from next Sunday, goodness knows where we will go after that.