Today is our excursion day. Everyone was slow to get up, including myself. My sore throat kept waking me up. We went to breakfast and waited for our ride. I realized just how American I look today. My Bigfoot in sexy heels with my Big Lebowski hat. Yes! We climb in a well loved van. The windows were hand cranks. The girls got a kick out of that! Our guide was Lola. She was fantastic!
Every home building is painted white. No matter where you are. It’s a stark contrast to the black ground volcanic pebbles. Very little vegetation. I did see a few shrubs and lots of cacti.
Volcanos erupted from 1730-1736, six years of explosion! (This now makes up Timanfaya National Park.) The rock feels very rough; black and porous with little holes from gas bubbles. It’s easy to see why little crabs like to scuttle and hide in the rocks. Olivina (green crystals formed by volcanic flow reaching the ocean) can also be found here.
We went to this area to the south of Timanfaya (Salinas lagoon) where there are tide pools. Natural pools Los Charco es de Playa Blanca. They went exploring. I didn’t want to make the trek down in the rock…and back up. I sat and enjoyed the breeze and the sounds of the waves crashing onto the rocky shore. Very peaceful.
It started to sprinkle on the island that it isn’t supposed to rain at this time of year! Annicakes opted not to swim with Ed and Lex and our guide. So we sat and enjoyed the view for a bit until the rain became enough to head up the rocky incline to the van. What did we do? We listened to Rotten Mangos, a YouTube show about real crime.
We went Salinas de Janubio where they harvest the salt from the sea. That’s the flat squares you see in the photos.
We drove to another beach which was all black. Playa de Salinas. Very much like the big island of Hawaii. This was different. It was some black sand but mostly little small black pebbles of volcanic rock. Not jagged like the previous beach. I stayed on the “shore” and sifted for Olivina while Ed and the girls walked the “sandy” shoreline. We found some decent sized stones which will be perfect for jewelry making.
It was interesting to me that where we were on the island rained and was overcast versus where we were staying that is much warmer and sunny. We headed to a little town, Yaiza, for a tapas lunch at Artisan. I snapped some pics of a really neat Catholic church, the government building, a town square. The food was delicious. We ordered a few different entrees and split them up. We had meat fiesta, which is marinated pork. Solved that mystery from the other night about meat fiesta. We had Canarian potatoes, papas arrugadas, (salted and boiled). We had some chorizo. Some insanely good garlic bread and bakery bread. And our Coke’s served with a slice of lemon.
We hopped back into the candy to head to the bodega area, of wine country. Finally, some green! (I also learned that the southern part of the island is desert whereas the north is very green). We saw fig bushes on the side of the road. Quite a few things grow wild here, including tomatoes! The landscape up the mountain was peppered with these half moon rock walls. They are placed around the grape vines to protect them from the wind.
We arrived at La Geria Bodega for a wine tasting. Ed and I tried two wines. One was a 20 year old aged Moscato. This was so thick and dark and very much like caramel. The second was a 2 year old Moscato, which was lighter in color than option 1, however, still much darker than our Moscato back home. I made myself finish the carmely concoction. I ended up buying the 2 year old wine and another semi-sweet wine to try. Will be saving that for Thanksgiving or another family dinner. We made the drive back to our hotel and decided to book Lola for another day. She was that good!! So she’ll take us tomorrow.
Due to tomorrow now being a busy day I needed to start packing things up. Gotta figure out where I’m putting everything we bought! The majority is ready to play the dual games of Tetris and make-up-a-cool-scale-game-name and chuck into suitcases.
We opted for dinner at the buffet. The food is really not good here. The resort, not the Island. Canarian food is very delicious. Tonight at dinner, Annicakes filled out the comment card at the resort. For the area of “Entertainment”: “Didn’t like how a turtle chased me.”
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