May 13 - Crossing the Island

Silvio and I were up far too late showing each other our favourite YouTube channels, and it was closer to six in the morning when we finally went to bed. Although it took me a while to get to sleep, it was so late that I didn't sleep more than six hours and was awake by one in the afternoon.

That meant that we were slow getting going again. We had no special plan, and Silvio slept until three in the afternoon, after which we had a leisurely breakfast of vegetarian quiche. We then decided to drive out of town to explore the island. We went vaguely toward the main volcano in our quest to find the highest town in Spain, Vilaflor.

We couldn't really see the Teide volcano from the coast, for like many islands, cloud banks covered the lower altitudes, but we could see one peak drifting in and out of the clouds as we drove numerous switchbacks and finally came to Vilaflor. It bragged that it was the highest village in Spain, and sometimes they said Europe, but actually it was neither, according to Wikipedia. Vilaflor was a pretty little town surrounded by vineyards and small farms, however, and we pulled into a café parking lot to sample the local wares. Silvio came out with orange juice for us as well as una factora, in this case a kind of yam-filled doughnut. It was tasty enough, although my large breakfast had dulled my taste for difference.

Once we'd eaten we drove closer to the volcano, only to discover that the mountain that had hung over us as we mounted the hills was actually lower than the road that we would soon be traveling on. The Teide was still ahead of us. The road began to climb into the pine forests and before long we came to the site of Pino Gordo, supposedly the largest tree in Europe--perhaps Tenerife was insecurely posturing with all these claims. The giant pine was nearly three metres in diameter although I couldn't tell how tall it was. When I looked up its height later I found out that it was actually called Pino de las Dos Pernadas, although I didn't see any signs to that effect, and that it was fifty-six metres tall.

According to Arina and Alisa--Silvio's Russian neighbours who visited us later that night--the tree was apparently the site of many robberies. We had locked up as we would normally and had no problems. When they told us about that, I mused aloud that the robbers must be locals, for no one else would merely hang around a tourist site all day hoping someone would leave valuables in a car. There were a few houses across the road from the tree, and others beside it. That should have made finding the thief a trivial matter for the police, but there had been no arrests as far as our neighbours had heard.

We took the obligatory pictures of the massive pine, and then drove farther into the mountains. I called out to Silvio to stop by some crumbling ruins, but they were so deteriorated that we could tell little about their history. They only housed a large lizard, some twenty centimetres long, and even it was gone once my camera shutter clicked.

After I'd taken the pictures to show my nephew in order to whet his appetite for antiquities, we went higher and still higher until we came to the plain at the foot of the Teide volcano. The view of the tortured stone hills was famous enough to feature on the hundred peseta bill, and the island had made the area a park. Several tall, stone towers remained from a volcanic eruption centuries earlier, and because the surrounding stone had eroded it left them standing like the hoodoos of the Grand Canyon or the Badlands of Alberta. We walked on the trails for an hour or so, and Silvio talked to several people along the way, only to come to the conclusion that those from northern Spain weren't nearly as friendly as the older southern couples we'd met.

We drove farther into the hills until we came to a parking lot in front of a set of sand dunes. Even while the sun was dropping, the dunes were so inviting that we walked amongst the outcrops of rocks and onto the sand. We were at high altitude, approximately 1400 metres above sea level, and before long the chilly air reminded us of that. We scrambled back to the car and then aimed for the other side of the island. Shortly, the barren rock became covered with pine trees at first and then gradually the greenery consisted more of thickets sprouting flowering plants and bushes.

We lost altitude quickly, following the switchbacks and convoluted road to the town of Puerto de la Cruz on the other side of the island. The descent was so steep that even though we knew that our cameras wouldn't do it justice we stopped several times once we got below the cloud cover to take pictures. In the distance, the sun was shining off the ocean and a few other people picked spots on the narrow road to see the view. On our way home we went along the coast. We were too exhausted to revel in the views, and the highway demanded more attention than we had because we had spent the day at high altitude. We were both suffering from a kind of sinus pressure and lethargy that I had come to associate with the rise and fall of the mountain roads.

We were passing through a small town when Silvio was suddenly taken with the urge to stop at a restaurant. He even had a meal in mind. He wanted to order roasted peppers--a kind of speciality in the area which comes with a cilantro sauce and some spicier alternative--and some grilled mushrooms. We ate fairly quickly, since the restaurant was soon closing, but when Silvio found out the waitress was an Argentinean from Mendoza he suddenly had to compare notes. When we left the restaurant by way of the bar that we'd passed through on the way into the dining hall, a woman who'd finished her evening in the bar called out to us. She suggested that we were drunk like her, probably because we were acting in our normally silly way, but we waved goodbye and walked up the street to where we'd parked the car.

The drive home seemed to take a long time, but once we finally arrived and I had a shower, I had some time to write. Silvio was talking to David, who'd been thrown out of the US. He'd been using a student visa, and not really attending an educational program. He'd been foolish enough to keep a bunch of photos of himself posing holding tools and working on a house. Silvio had warned him to keep his phone clean, since the American border authorities had started invading people's privacy, but David hadn't listened. He was still on the phone when I answered the door and met the neighbours, Arina and Alisa.

I introduced myself and we talked while Silvio finished his discussion. Once he'd advised David to be smart in how he handled the problem--especially given the economic problems that Argentina already had as well as the issues it was going to have in the future--he came to join us and we talked until they went outside to smoke. I stayed inside to write while they vaped and sat around on the balcony.

Alisa the Lithuanian and Arina the Russian were a gay couple. That would have been unremarkable in North America or Europe, but they were trying to sort out a future considering that Russia had increasingly supressed gay rights. It was no longer safe for them to be in Russia, and the regular problems with homophobia had been exacerbated by the war. They were hoping to stay in the Canary Islands. They brought Silvio a bottle of wine, and some to drink themselves, and when I went to bed at 3am--which was late enough--they were still talking.

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