Barbara's Travels

Bodega Stratvs, Lanzarote

The Bodega is a combination collection of buildings which are an open air museum and a wine and cheese tasting. Good cheese. The vines are sheltered from the winds by semicircular dry stone walls, as seen in the first picture.

Your Intrepid Travelers

Pictures at two different locations. At the Pyramids and at a shop which sold aloe products. Didn’t buy anything but did learn that aloe is good for rosacea, from which I suffer. So when we got home I started using it and it has made a big difference.

The Pyramids

No one really knows who built the pyramids or why but they are impressive structures of dry stone walls and terraces. We walked around the perimeter and wondered what the purpose had been. Some appeared aligned to astronomical events. Heyerdahl was able to call attention to them when a developer wanted to level the area and put up more apartments. The man who owns the inter-island ferries bought it and established the park. Thank goodness.

The Mysterious Pyramids of Guimar

The Ethnographic Park contains both the Pyramids and the museum dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl, who spent time investigating the pyramids. The museum was interesting but the pyramids are truly mysterious.

Tenerife

This is the Canary Pine, which is found on all the islands. If the tree burns, it loses its foliage but new foliage breaks out along the trunk, as you can see on the tree to the right. Growth here is much thicker than on La Gomera, and what you see depends on the altitude. It was especially notable how a few centuries or millennia of wind and water erosion can change the landscape.

There was much overbuilding of apartments and condos on the islands before the Great Recession brought growth to a halt. There is a lot of unemployment and underemployment as a result. Tenerife is home port to a lot of oil drilling rigs, many of which are in dry dock due to lack of work.

Mount Teide from La Gomera

We could see Mt. Teide from on board ship but it was just a blocky shape on the distant horizon. These two pictures were taken on our excursion and are better.

We are going to take more than 10 hours to sail from LaGomera to Tenerife. As you can see from the pictures, they are very close to each other and the ferry takes between one and two hours, depending on which one you take.

Before the settlers deforested the land it was covered with the laurelsilva forest. Now the land is covered with cactus, most with ripening fruit, and lots of agave and palm trees. 

Being from the Pacific Northwest and used to big volcanic mountains, Teide is not very impressive but it sure does dominate the island of Tenerife.

Wednesday, November 18

A distant view of Chipude Village showing how steep the slopes are. And the second picture is out stop in El Cercado, across the valley from Chipude. The guide book says it is famous for its pottery but I didn’t find it to be anything special, unless you are looking for primitive art. This is a poor area.

Nov. 18, La Gomera, Canary Islands

Strange landscape. So much rock and drywall rock walls to terrace the steep land. Very little level land anywhere with many steep ravines.