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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 3, 2017 17:22:09 GMT 2
We arrived here 20 minutes ahead of schedule this morning after a 3.5 hour flight from London (£85 return on EasyJet). The weather is perfect for people like us who have just suffered a gloomy summer: blue skies, sun, occasional little breeze and 27C. The airport is within an easy taxi ride of Santa Cruz, the capital. Calling it capital makes it sound very grand but it is just a small seaside Spanish town. Our tiny apartment (studio with kitchen corner and bathroom) is on street level in the historic centre. There are some lovely old buildings around with picturesque wooden balconies.
It has been a morning of orienting ourselves. We have a town map but it is not 100% useful as a lot of the streets have no name boards on them. So it has been a time of wandering and looking. The seafront is a stroll away. The locals are proud of the new beach they have created right in the centre of Marine Parade (or whatever it is called). I don't find it enticing as the sand is black (volcanic) and totally devoid of shade. Also from the Marine Parade you have a view towards the port jetty where a German cruise ship is docked for the day (it will leave at 6 pm we are told). So a lot of Germans are wandering around, mostly looking glum.
We paid a visit to the tourist office. The woman there was initially grumpy so Mrs Faz pushed me forward to charm her. By the time we left she was all smiles. That wasn't just a plus for us it meant that she enjoyed her work more. She explained the bus system which seems pretty straightforward so tomorrow we'll take a bus north along the coast and then do a walk inland.
Mrs Faz has offered to make me a cup of tea but has been totally flummoxed by the cooker so she is boiling water in the microwave. I doubt we shall be doing any cooking so shortly I must go out to settle on restaurants.
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Post by auntieannie on Oct 3, 2017 17:34:58 GMT 2
have a lovely stay, both of you!
and I see Mrs Faz is very cunning indeed, to be throwing your charming self at the recalcitrant tourist office employee.
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Post by sophie on Oct 3, 2017 18:05:05 GMT 2
Sounds as you two are off to a good start! Enjoy!
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 3, 2017 20:29:24 GMT 2
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Post by Voy on Oct 4, 2017 1:51:56 GMT 2
yes please ! ^
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Post by auntieannie on Oct 4, 2017 8:16:16 GMT 2
looks very nice! enjoy the walk!
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 4, 2017 12:05:30 GMT 2
Unfortunately try as she does Mrs Faz can't get the photos to display, only links.
Somehow we have been very lazy this morning, didn't set the alarm (yesterday morning it was set for 4 a.m. so maybe we are entitled to a little extra sleep), had an indulgent breakfast, discussed getting a bus - and then did nothing. Looks like being a museum day in Santa Cruz.
Last night we had a chaotic dinner at a restaurant on the Marine Road. Dishes arrived when the kitchen had prepared them. So one fish soup arrived. After a long wait my gofio arrived. Now on the menu gofio was listed under soup. This was not soup. What it was we have no idea, even after eating half of it. I must get round to googling it**. Then a plate of salad arrived. A little later a dish of fried potatoes was put down. Finally the fried fish came. Instead of leaving the fish whole it had been opened and spread out in a mess. Under the fish seemed to be 2 more small (very small) other fish which had about a mouthful each. Fish bones were everywhere. Not a success. If the fish had come whole I would have filleted it but instead it looked as if a child had played with it. And we have no idea what kind of fish we were eating. At the end of the meal (perhaps as a prize for tackling the fish) we were each given a glass of lemon flavoured rum.
A sort of tapas mentality has taken hold here so you just order a dish or two to go with your wine or beer. Tonight will be different. We have booked a table (because there are only 4) at the restaurant just round the corner from our apartment. There is no choice. You simply get given what the chef has cooked that day. According to reviews it is very good.
The morning started cloudy but the sun has broken through. I think it is time to go out and have a midmorning coffee.
**Mrs Faz has googled gofio and we are still no wiser. It is apparently flour ground out of various grains and maybe made into a sort of bread or else "scalded". I ordered it scalded. It was simply piled up in a bowl. I kept digging in hoping to find hidden treasure but without success. You can apparently get gofio in South America. I am just warning you,
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Post by auntieannie on Oct 4, 2017 12:46:34 GMT 2
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 4, 2017 20:22:57 GMT 2
Wikipedia doesn't convey the stodgy tastelessness of gofio. Keep clear of it Annie.
We visited the Naval Museum this morning. This is inside a full size replica of Christopher Columbus's vessel when he sailed off to discover America from the west side (as various Asian venturers had already discovered it from the east side). It is sobering to see how small the boat is. Columbus didn't set off from La Palma but mamy other boats did on their way to the Caribbean. It was interesting to learn that between 1850 and 1930 some 30,000 La Palma men shipped off to Cuba to work in agriculture (sugar) and building the railways. Of that number 6000 returned as rich men. No one would go to Cuba now to become rich. Lots also went to Venezuela. Enough said.
After a sandwich lunch we climbed up above the town and found our way back to our little temporary home by Baz using his old (pre-sat nav) skill at map reading. This was quite a feat as there are few names either on the map or on the streets.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 4, 2017 23:54:46 GMT 2
***STOP PRESS*** We went to a good restaurant just down the hill from us. One of the choices for dessert was a lemon mousse on gofio. We tried it. It was good because the gofio had been blended to a purée with some of the lemon mousse. So it tasted OK. But even so the dish would have been good without the gofio. It added nothing.
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Post by shrjeff on Oct 5, 2017 8:20:48 GMT 2
to me gofio looks like a variant on starchy masses used in many subsistence agricultural regions to provide a caloric supplement to the diet (obviously with a rise in standard of living, many of these dishes, these days, have been enriched with butter, cheese, etc.) such as polenta, hummus, mushy peas, corn meal mush and grits, mashed potatoes, etc....
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 5, 2017 8:58:42 GMT 2
You're right Jeff. It is just a starchy mass from a poor agricultural community. I don't see why it is being served here.
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Post by OnlyMark on Oct 5, 2017 9:20:30 GMT 2
"Canarian friends of mine had warned me it was vile, and it is. Mixed with milk, it forms a thick sludge that sticks to your palate and has to be removed by increasingly desperate movements of the tongue. It would be like eating wallpaper paste, except that the cloying pale purée is partly redeemed by the toasty malty taste that could be kindly described as ‘comforting’. On the whole, though, gofio is one local speciality I would cross the street to avoid, along with Tibetan yak-butter tea and jellied eels." www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-best-and-worst-of-canarian-food-97297130/I'm also wracking my brains because there was something like this I had at a restaurant near where the house in Spain is. Only had it once though.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 5, 2017 18:34:00 GMT 2
Today we took a bus along the coast and then a taxi up into the hills so we could have a good hike up (and up and up). At the cafe where we were starting our hike we had a strengthening coffee. An idle glance at the menu showed the first item was gofio. It is pursuing us.
We bought sandwiches and got going on the upward path. It was mainly a gentle climb with a few steeper parts but the end had an unfair series of stone steps. The mirador is what we were aiming for. After 90 minutes of effort we achieved it. Congrats all round. But the fantastic views we had read about turned out just to be tree covered hillsides. There were no mountain peaks or vistas down to a distant ocean. We had a sense of achievement mingled with anticlimax.
We think we'll give our leg muscles time to recover tomorrow and go to a beach. The newly made town beach does not appeal but there is another one a bit south of town and we can take a bus to it.
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Post by slowcoach on Oct 5, 2017 20:47:11 GMT 2
That you see it is offered so frequently must tell us something; maybe that there are sufficient people who really like it.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 6, 2017 0:05:57 GMT 2
nWe had a lovely meal tonight of globe artichokes stuffed with bacon, then bonito with stirfried veg. At the end of the meal we chatted to our waiter. He spoke excellent English but he was black. We asked where he was from and he said the Ivory Coast. They don't call it by that name so we said Cote d'Ivoire. He was happy to switch to French. He has a degree in criminology and he has come to La Palma to learn Spanish. Then he will return home because he has an idea for a "project". A good man and I'm sure he will succeed.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 6, 2017 23:48:51 GMT 2
You can't come to a seaside town without going to the beach. I have to be careful about getting too much sun(I had a serious melanoma back in 2002) so I can't show off my body on the sand for long. Anyway we walked out of town, past the harbour, and almost immediately came to the first beach. It at least had a few palm trees, unlike the new beach actually in town, so there was some shade. The beach is of black sand which just isn't right. Sand should be yellow or white. Black seems as wrong as yellow tomatoes. Colour is important. We lazed a bit in the shade of a palm tree then Mrs Faz went for a swim and then I did. It wasn't altogether a delight but at least we did it. There were few people on the beach but I was amused by watching a German man setting off to go down to the water, hesitating, and then come racing back as he realised his feet were being scalded by the black sand. So he put on sandals and tried again. Then having had his swim he returned to his place and rubbed himself dry. Then had second thoughts and decided he would shower. He had entirely forgotten how hot the sand was and set off for the shower and then began running and doubtless uttering curses I didn't understand. I found it amusing. Schadenfreude?
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Post by tiltedflipcurves on Oct 7, 2017 5:24:34 GMT 2
Perhaps "gofio" stands for "Go Figure It Out."
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 7, 2017 23:41:58 GMT 2
This morning we took a bus up into the hills to a town called El Paso. Who could resist a place named that? Our idea was to have a hike from there so we went to the tourist office. The girl there said she spoke English but I think her boast was wrong. She explained some route by pointing at photos on the wall which was not helpful. However she did say we could walk on a marked trail to the next town Los Llanyos. I asked if she had walked it and she said no. In fact conversation with her was very difficult and the man who next spoke to her in German had the same problem.
We followed her instructions and the route was actually down a road so we had cars all the time. When we got to Los Llanyos we felt we had not had a proper hike so decided to go down to the ocean we could see in the distance. And we did. And had a good hike. At the end we went into a café to ask where the bus stop was and the man spoke good English. He said he had been living in Durham and loved England. In fact he was Italian and after Durham moved to La Palma with his girl friend. This is the European Union in action.
We went to the bus stop and just had time to buy an ice cream. Aaargh, one of the choices was gofio.
A bit of a garbled report but we feel tired tonight.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 8, 2017 23:38:28 GMT 2
All days here seem to have strange occurrences. First we had the disappearance of Mrs Faz's pill. It was in her hand when we left our apartment but it wasn't there when we reached the café for breakfast. Oh well. After a long hike yesterday we decided on a shorter walk today. We spent a lot of time squinting at the bus timetables because the symbol for not running on Sunday was very small. Decision made. We walked to the bus station. Hot sun. Bit of a wait so I needed my sun hat. Disaster.No hat in my pack. Nobly Mrs Faz gave me hers. We took the bus up 35 minutes to our destination, waved the bus goodbye - and discovered Mrs Faz's hat was now missing. More disaster. Anyway we had a cup of coffee and Mrs Faz went off to buy a hat (and found a pharmacy that sole her Naproxen tablets). Great result as I discovered my own sunhat was buried under the picnic we had bought. No excuses. I am an idiot.
Anyhow we enjoyed our walk (now both hatted) back down an old trail that crossed the island back to Santa Cruz. Nice views down to the ocean and no more silly mistakes.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 10, 2017 0:10:41 GMT 2
We think we have cracked the island's bus system. For a start you have to get used to the name. In La Palma the word for a bus is guagua (pronounced wahwah). The timetable lists arrivals but with a #. And the # means the time is approximate. In plain English it means the bus will be late. Never mind. Today we took a bus to the south of the island. There are some small extinct volcanoes round there and you can walk down to the coast through them. So we read. So we bought sandwiches for lunch and set off. At first it was down a road. Then we swung off left to the first volcano. What? Pay that much to see a crater? No thanks. So we then took the path down towards the distant ocean. I don't remember whether the drop was 650 or 850 metres but the beginning was horrendous. The path was black volcanic sand and grit with stones to trip you up. I had appropriate footwear but Mrs Faz was wearing her walking sandals which which scooped up the sand. She was not amused when I told her that was how sandals got their name.
After a while we switched to a dirt road which was a great relief. We walked on that for half an hour or so and then it was off on a path again, down, down, down. We were aiming for a lighthouse on the coast because we knew there was a bus from there which would take us back up. We could see the lighthouse but sometimes we seemed to go left away from it, sometimes right. Finally we reached a tar road and made easy progress the last bit.
I think it took 3 hours. We ate our bocadillos while considering the journey back up. We had missed the 1.45 bus. The next bus was 3.45. The journey back up to Fuentecaliente takes 25 minutes so we would miss the 4 pm bus back to Santa Cruz. Mrs Faz says that one of the advantages of being old is that you can go and ask someone for a lift. So she did. As we drove up we were impressed by the distance we had walked down.
Tonight we had our last meal in the restaurant at the bottom of our cobbled street. It can seat a maximum of 12 and serves the most interesting food on the island. Lovely last meal.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 11, 2017 23:52:49 GMT 2
Bye-bye La Palma. We enjoyed our week there and we had good healthy hikes. Somehow it just missed that extra oomph that makes you want to pay another visit. We returned to England yesterday but as usual the French tried to make it difficult. La Palma is a Spanish island stuck out in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa so the worst the French could do is have an Air Traffic Controllers strike. They strike once or twice a year just because they like to. On the flight out from London to La Palma we had flown over France. Yesterday, with the air traffic controllers striking, French air space was closed. So our EasyJet flight went straight north up the Atlantic, west of Portugal, and over the Channel. It meant we were just 20 minutes late.
We went to Brighton to say with our daughter last night. My ex-wife has a granny flat there so we all had dinner together. I am very lucky to be married to Mrs Faz.
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Post by Baz Faz on Oct 12, 2017 10:35:43 GMT 2
Postscript to our visit.
I read in the paper today that a volcano could be about to erupt on La Palma and that if it did the resulting landslide would unleash a monster tsunami. The energy released would apparently be the equivalent of the electricity production for the whole of USA for 6 months.
There have already been tremors and the one on Sunday prompted "panic" among the islanders. Hmm. We were there on Sunday. We felt nothing. We noticed not one single person panicking. I think Trump has been releasing fake news.
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