Prickly Pears

I thought a moment could be spared to honour the prickly pear. It is so very tasty, and I probably won't eat another one for a very long time. I did get prickled by the plant once, but the inside are a sweet dragon-fruit/papaya type flavour with tiny pips you just have to get on an eat. But doing so means you can eat quite a few in a row without stopping. They're called tuna on the Canary Islands but I think the Mexicans call them nopal. Prickly pear or Barbary Fig to you and I.

I'm leaving in two weeks for Brittany and most things are sorted, it's just a matter of deciding what I need to take in one 20kg suitcase.

Making flowers

As a bit of fun learning Nora and I made paper flowers and planted them in the garden. She had a set for doing this but we departed from the advice and made ones like my Dad does. Trying to trick insects into thinking they´re real. We´re going to do butterflies next.

PS I´ve realised you can click on pictures to make them load full size. Just realised.

Dragonflies

I was sitting for a while trying to snap them hunting in the garden, where there are a lot of flies for them to catch (as shows the second one down). They have grown fat but still fly far too fast for me to get many pictures.

 

Cotillo

The beach with lots of coves. 

View from the top

On the way to climb the hill/mountain that towers over the house, I saw some wildlife! First was this bird, and then something that looked like a chipmunk, maybe a squirrel-type thing? That was unfortunately too fast and small to take a photo of, although it did freeze and stare suspiciously at me for a little while before hiding in the stone wall. 

 

A cricket I think.

 The view from part-way up my climb, yes all by myself! Perilous rocks etcetera, and a bee that had a black and white striped bottom were my only obstacles. I think if I had named that bee I wouldvé called it a robber bee. It was all by itself so I decided it wasn´t trying to sting me, instead was wondering if I ad pollen attached.There were some parts of the ascent that meant climbing using all my limbs up rock, but this was far less than the climb with Nora the other day. The main issue was coming down again, because volcanic rock has a tendency to be very crumbly and shingly in places on the slope. So there was an element of sliding happening every now and then when I couldn´t walk near the rocks that were big and stable in the ground. Walking with bent knees and such on the way down definitely knackered by legs far more than marching up! When you´re leaning against the direction you might fall rather than into it, that´s a lot less effort. The thin line you can see running along the ridge of the mountain in the picture above is a stone wall that has been assembled by people, by hand, to act as partial protection for the goats that are roaming all over the mountains. Though hiding a lot from me.

  

Here´s one!

The picture above looks like a river doesn´t it? Well it is, but there is absolutely no water running in it. Silverio told me that occasionally it does, in the winter when it is a little bit wetter here, but in reality these rivers are never as full as they were thousands of years ago when this was a tropical island. In the time of the dinosaurs...

You can very slightly see here what I think are caves maybe formed from lava flow, or something to do with rocks that I don´t really understand. Anyway these were on the side of the mountain away from the the house, roughly southside (hence the slight tiny trees) that was far too steep for me to climb. But to the right hand side you can just make out the cluster of goats that were happily browsing here.

The view of the land just lightly to the right of the house. Below is one of a pair what maybe an Egyptian buzzard that were hanging around the mountain, coming closer to see if I was a rabbit or a threat.

A closer view of the stone wall. Additionally I realise I haven´t put up a picture of the house here, this is it from outside with the Euphorbia Canariensis sitting right by the window.

By the by, for our English lesson today, Nora and I played food shops.

Agave

On our way up the hill I made a point of stopping at the cluster of big agave plants at the foot of the hill. They really are enormous, and I wouldn´t be surprised if bigger ones exist. I´m aware that I am going on about a plant again, but this one really deserves a mention. I mean look how big it is! And I´m talking about the height without the flower.

The Agave family spreads over quite a number of plants. I wonder if they are somehow also related to pineapples at a distance, which also grow in the ground with blue-grey spines. If you look at the Agaves they chop up, they have a pineapple like core as well. You can vaguely make this out from the photo directly above where the dead leaves have died away. They are chopped up a lot, these plants. Most famously they are made into Tequila, but Agave syrup is also widely used sugar substitute. Amoung other things they can also be turned into paper, biofuel and apparently musical instruments. They look very at home here in the desert landscape, a place that could easily be in Arizona or down into Mexico, reason being that they were probably shipped over by some green-fingered conquistadores when they took a liking to the Americas. The original name for this plant is Mezcal, which since gave its name to the top Tequila.

Nora and I then climbed the mountain almost to the very top, though it started to look a bit perilous for a five year old despite her very nice indeed Quechua boots (name a brand after an indigenous South American Language? Why not!). Here´s a vista:

Looking down on the house.

Beach

I was right about the weather after all! 

This is the beach at Puerto de Laja. The water was still relatively warm despite wind and waves. And I love waves, they make swimming so much more exciting.

This was a rocky shelf at one end of the beach. This bit was slippy and not really good for swimming, but further back there was a cove-sort of area where the water level rose really quickly which was great.

I have no idea whether this green thing is a sort of seaweed or whether it was was alive at some point, if it still is, if it´s normally green or if that´s just slime.  At first I thought it a mutant jelly-fish.

I´ve already forgotten the name of these fish!  Sounded like gorrio or something. There was a man gutting them in a rockpool (charco) with his children.

The way home on the carretera:

I heard something about beach tomorrow as well. That´d be too much.

Cold Mountain

Ada left the porch and walked down past the barn into the pasture. The sun was long gone below the ridgelines, the light falling fast. The mountains stood grey in the dusk, as pale and insubstantial as breath blown on grass. The place seemed inhabited by a force of great loneliness. Even the old timers talked of the weight that bearsdown on a person alone in the mountains at that time of day, worse even than full dark on a moonless night, for it is at twilight that the threat of dark makes itself felt most strongly.

I´ve woken up to there being fog surrounding the house. I wonder if this means it will clear into a sunny day? Can´t really trust this to be like British weather though. Last night there was a full moon that rose enormous and yellow over the hillside. The country then becomes this eerie shadowy landscape. The mountains most of all become big hulking black things cast by the moonlight behind them. There´s a window in my room that´s circular and facing South so the full moon passes directly through it. Lovely as this is, I´m always bad at sleeping with a light on. It was so bright I could see the shadow of my hand on the bed. Apparently the hunt started yesterday with a pack of dogs at 6 o´clock, but I did not wake up. I can imagine this would be a spooky site on the hillside first thing in the morning just as the sun is about to rise. Equally because I´m reading a bit of Sherlock Holmes in Spanish (an odd thing it is too) for atmosphere.

Last night was very, very windy. This shouldn´t be surprising on an island called Fuerteventura, but it was so strong that a window I thought I had closed blew open again, and I had to stuff a pillow up against another window to stop the draft because it wouldn´t fully close. On a warm night it lets in a nice breeze. Last night I tried to close it but it just made howls of various pitches, one of which was an uncanny owl impression. I think beach may be off today, as of yesterday because of the wind. Wind is this country´s rain. Yesterday, what for me would´ve passed as a great beach day in England was turned down as not pleasant enough. Apparently when asked what their favourite weather is, people here say rain. 

Reading Cold Mountain by Charles Fraser makes a nice change from the aridness outside. It´s full of cool air and mountain farms. In some ways it reminds me of the books by Laura Ingells Wilder about her life in Wisconsin and then on the Prairies, because it details so atmospherically the little processes of life. But with a grand narrative of two people trying to get back to the same place. Ada, the protagonist, has taken on a girl-hand called Ruby who actually knows what to do with the neglected farm and turns it into a fully working biscuit and cider and tobacco producing plantation that they live of more than adequately during the Civil War. In the other half of the story Inman is, by contrast, making his way back to Ada eating little but stolen cornmeal and catfish found on neglected farms that won´t know he´s deserted. I haven´t finished this yet but I can already recommend it, especially if by chance you find a fireside to sit by in the winter for atmospheric enhancement.

Excursion to a Puddle

There are living things here after all! Omar and Nora´s Uncle took us for a walk down to the only bit of water about half a mile from the house if that. He´s a vet (with a sideline in butchery...) and had a lot to say about the plants and animals. Two ducks. The plant below is medicinal but I didn´t catch the name..? It´s flower is beneath.

                       

Bamboo has spread everywhere, I highly doubt it is indigenous!

Everything mountainous is a volcano, in which the lava is capped off and dormant. Unlike the mountains that are formed by movements of plates shifting about, a lot of these were outlets for lava and so have craters!

View from the road down from the house.

In the evenings I have been out for two little strolls. One was up the slope of the hill by the house. Falcons of some kind nest on this slop and you can hear the babies shrieking! I whistled back unsuccesfully, but the bird was really close hanging in the updraft, I thought it might swoop down on me. It´s nice and tranquil in the evenings and the breeze is a lot fresher. Coming in from the ocean it brings clouds that sometimes slide in between the mountains until you can´t see much further than the nearest hill. Yesterday I just walked down to the big agave plants that may or may not have been on someone else´s land. It´s hard to tell because of the lack of fences. These were enormous plants. Unlike the ones in the garden they were easily nearly my height, the flowers being much, much taller on a stem as thick as my leg. Tequila anyone? Oh and some advice: best not to go for a stroll barefoot in a country full of cacti and spikey things.

I found Euphorbia Caneriensis, it was right outside the front door. In Las Palmas there is an enormous one, will take a photo of the picture in the book.

I´m going to try writing less about plants soon.