Gran Canaria

Tuesday, 19.6.2012
Due to a missing internet connection I was not able to write something into the blog yesterday other than the two photos sent over the phone. 
Our time here in Las Palmas is slowly coming to an end. As I had not seen anything from this island so far, we decided yesterday to take the car while we still have it (we returned it today) and drive around the island. Since Marcus has travelled here before it was my wish to go up the highest point in the mountains, down the other side and then back to Las Palmas. I had no idea what expected us. All I knew is I wanted to go up there and on the way there pass by the old cathedral, which I always saw from the freeway passing by on my numerous trips to LIDL, Carrefour and Leroy Merlin (the home depot store). Always wanted to stop there, nevere had the time. Looked so beautiful from the distance. So we passed by there. It's a cathedral from the year 1858. The church which belonged to it has broken down. I don't know why. You'll find pictures of the cathedral in the following. Also we took the chance to go up the cathedral and enjoy the view over Las Palmas and the old town. The old town looks like the housings of the poor people in Caracas. Built into the mountains, small, one on top of the other, different colours. The difference is that in Caracas all these houses are painted in many colours (reminding me of La Boca in Buenos Aires), here the majority are white (marokkan style). 

From there we took the street up to the top of the volcano mountains. They have three peaks here: Pico de las Nieves, Roque Nublo and El Chorillo. The highest peak is 1949m (about 5900ft.). I don’t know which is which, you’ll see one peak in the picture with a big rock on top. I thinks this must be Roque Nublo. The view going up there was amazing. What seemed most interesting to me is that the vegetation changed a lot from the very dry desert that you have down here to a nice pine tree forest with some palm trees and lakes onces you’re up there. Looks a bit strange however when you see all of that in the red/ black lava stone. 

We took the way down via Ayacata, Presa Las Ninas (lake with at dam) to Mogán and from there St. Nicolas (westernmost point of the trip), Agaete, Gòldar (north-west corner) and then back home (Alita=home!).  What followed us that day were millions of curves. Already at the top of the mountains Marcus said he’s sick of the curves. Since we were both tired (Marcus more than me cause he had gone to bed at 4 a.m. after having prepared the computer with all the maps) we both got a bit “curve sick”, which made us stop for lunch (and dinner, cause it was already 6p.m. by the time we had food) in Agaete, at the Cactus Garden. After that lunch we got to see an incredible view from “the balcony” (I think close to San Felipe) when we came to the ocean which itself was worth the whole trip. Since the lava stone is balck it heats up a lot. The wind carries very humid air to the coastline and clouds build up so fast out of nothing like I’ve never seen. The effect is that at this point you can see it very extreme the clouds build and quickly rise up over the rock. I tried to catch that in a picture. I was stunned. 

From there on we got to drive on the coastline high up with a road winding in the mountains high up, but this time instead of inland it was finally doing that on the seaside. On the highest point I think the drop from the road to the water straight down was about 1000m (3000ft.).  Amazing, beautiful and frightening.

From up there we saw boats coming and going and I thought “well, now I’m ready to go out there”. Lots of stress the last days, you could sense our nerves were a bit blank. Today we were better. I was very tense yesterday. Still things to do.
Now I know everything will be fine. Now that I finally got another mattress (see post from today) I will sleep fine. That helps ;-) I am happy I got some creative things done as well today. The last days (except for yesterday) I had only been running around, doing all the necessary shopping, running to the home depot fifteen times just cause every day we find something else we need for the constructions of that day. So whil Marcus was building and constructing I was running to organize the things he needed – and do the shopping and cooking for the next weeks. Very important, but tiring and missing success. So today felt good.
So today we decided to leave on Friday night after the soccer game Germany against Greece. Marcus wants to see it, I don’t mind. And it’s fun to leave at night. Have to turn on our typical leaving music though (Conquest of paradise). Slowly I get nervous. So far life has been like at home. Working, repairing, constructing. Can’t wait to be sailing and then SWIMMING in beautiful turquoise water. Let’s go.
So this was a long story now. I sent all the other posts from my mobile phone, that’s why they were shorter. Have a good night everyone.
Michaela

Here some pix that Marcus took of me: