Learning Spanish would have been a start...

Finally, Part 1 of my summer 2005 travel chronicles. I know you all have been sitting on the edge of your seats. ;)

june 6-7 ~ flying is for the birds

Already, from looking at my father’s meticulously planned travel itinerary, I knew it was going to be a harrowing beginning to what I hoped would be a wonderful vacation. Three flights in all over the course of a 24-hour period, a 6 hour layover in Newark...April and I were determined to make the best of it, and I had already jokingly agreed to take her to dinner at some horrid airport restaurant-bar during our holdover in Newark. Unfortunately, as is often the case, in exchange for our eventual safe flights and lovely vacation, the Travel Gods extorted a toll. In our case, it was a 6 ½ hour delay—due to storms somewhere in the “friendly skies” between Western New York and Newark—made all the worse because we weren’t any closer to our intended destination. In fact, we were sitting, stuck, in an airport not five miles from our house where are pets were probably already starting to suspect that we weren’t coming back for a while. We were practically tearing our hair out by the time we made it to Newark and ran pell-mell through the airport (terrifying how a six-hour layover can turn into an almost-missed connection at the whim of the weather) just in time for our flight to Madrid. And once we settled down on the last leg of our journey, from Madrid to Santa Cruz de La Palma (the capital of the island of La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, an archipelago owned by Spain but located off the northwest coast of Morocco) we had almost forgotten our annoyance. Regrettably, just as our anxiety level was simmering down to a low rumble, it dawned on us that we were flying to a Spanish-speaking island and hadn’t bothered to learn any Spanish.

I have an (lame) excuse for this glaring cultural snafu: my aunt and uncle (on my father’s side) live on La Palma and as they are German, it had never occurred to me that I might have to anything more linguistically difficult than translate German to English and back again for April. In my mind, La Palma was an island inhabited only by Germans (or, perhaps, just my aunt and uncle) and any other language skills wouldn’t be necessary. Okay. Really, we just forgot. I blame travel anxiety.

So, all other boring travel details aside, we did, finally, arrive in La Palma. And yes, the sun was shining and the air was dry and warm and refreshing all at once and, Madonna wasn’t lying, “la isla bonita” (yep, that’s what they call it) has a lovely tropical island breeze. I’ve been to La Palma before, years ago, but I had forgotten the intense beauty of the stark volcanic landscape—black lava rocks covered in hardy grasses, cacti, incredible tropical flowers, and skittering lizards—and the never-ending blue of the sky (or, alternately, the studied concentration of the clouds cascading over the Caldera—the main volcanic crater of in the center of the island, surrounded by high, mountainous ridges which run down the central length of the land).

My aunt and uncle picked us up from the airport, exhausted but happy, and we all drove back to their gorgeous house in El Paso (on the western coast of the island). The photo below is an image of their incredibly lush yard—the climate is so temperate on the island that plants just grow all year round. You may also be able to see one of their gorgeous Spanish hunting dogs (Podenkos) in the background—they got both dogs from an organization that specializes in rescuing these often mistreated hunters.















From the moment we arrived my aunt began plying us with fantastic Spanish champagne (also, bourbon in our coffee) and she didn’t stop offering (but we stopped accepting) until the day we left. She even left a big bottle of champagne (which we drank, of course) in the apartment where we were staying in Puerto Naos. Usually used by my uncle’s mother when she comes to stay in the winter, the apartment is literally two blocks from the beach (my aunt and uncle live slightly further inland) and April and I spent our first day after our arrival lounging on the beach and eating pizza (We embarrassed ourselves completely, by the way, when we couldn’t even manage to say “the bill, please” in Spanish. We gestured wildly until the waiter took pity on us.).




















This picture, of me and April floating on our backs in the ocean, was taken by my father when my parents arrives a few days later, but it conveys our feeling of relief and relaxation on that first day just the same.

In part two, we’ll hike along cliffs, wade through watery tunnels, eat lots and lots of good food and bid farewell to sunny La Palma on our way to Berlin. Stay tuned.

Don’t worry, the subsequent parts of my travel log will be much shorter with far more pictures; this is just the verbose intro.