Recently Jenifer and I struck out cautiously on a little tour of the island. I say cautiously because I was driving the car and I hadn't driven a car in years and it took me a certain while to feel being behind the wheel again, to gauge the bulk of the car on the road and steer smoothly around even the narrowest and tightest of bends with complete security - with an almost exagerrated caution, so as to avoid awakening any type of anxiety in my passanger.
First we walked down to Cuevas Negras - an abandoned village nestled in a gentle green barranco which drops from the village of Erjos at 1000m to the sea at Los Silos. We were going to camp out but then we met Jens - a Walt Whitman type with bushy grey beard and amused gentle eyes. He had been living in one of the old houses by the side of the path for eleven years and seemed to be thoroughally satisfied with his lot. He said the only inconvenience he had encountered were people stealing his fruits. As he said this I looked up to lush boughs of an immense orange tree covered with countless gleaming orange fruits - undoubtedly the biggest orange tree i have ever laid my eyes on - and i could see what he meant. He had an abundance of avocado trees too, and gave Jenny a big bag of their dried stones, after she had mentioned how much she always wanted to carve some. One night, back at our cave, Jenifer dedicated about four hours to hollowing one out, intending it to be the head of a pipe, pressing in tiny glimmering stones into the sides and rubbing the finished thing in olive oil. The next morning it had mystifyingly disappeared, and with its disappearance went Jenny´s interest in those avocado stones. We can only assume that this was perpetrated by the rat - who we consider capable of doing things purposefully to annoy us - who perhaps felt peeved by us not having left anything tasty for him that night.
Through Jens we heard about another abandoned property we had passed but not paid any attention to along the way. Over the years people had stayed there only briefly. The heavy door had come off its hinges but Jenny soon saw that it would be easy to put it back in place. Before long she was dreaming about really doing the place up. Jenny has this characteristic, I am learning, of looking around any beautiful place she finds herself and wanting immediately to make it more habitable. She is a powerhouse of dreams of a practical nature, utilising, somehow or other, the resources at hand. i.e. "we could use the clay soil outside to plaster over the holes around the window" or "look, someone left a tin full of seeds. all we need to do is sprinkle them over the soil - coming back regularly and cutting the weeds back - and in a few months we can have our own vegetables!"
The best thing about the place was the water. The house was surrounded by luxurious green plant growth. Trees, ferns, succulents, flowers, vines and other climbing plants. Plants that grew on the outer walls of the house. Moss that grew on the trees. A bright fungal growth from the moist earth that looked like a mixture between a flower and a mushroom, or a very colourful petal-shaped mushroom. And always the wonderful moist smell of organic growth in the air. What a contrast to our cave 30 or 40 km to the south! Along that arid rocky strip of coast it has become a little fixation of mine to develop a garden, necessitating frequent trips into the nearby barranco where until recently the rainwater from over a month ago still lay in the shadiest, coolest pool. I was glad to fill bottles with 20 or 30 litres of this muddy water and carry it back to the cave because then it gave me a good feeling to distribute this magical fluid, granting the most generous splashes to my favourite plants. The plants respond immediately. If I give the crawling succulents a drink of water, the next day they will give me a flower. Den wahren Geschmack des Wassers erkennt man erst in der Wuste is another German saying I have picked up from Jenny. The true taste of water can only be appreciated in the desert. Calling the sunny south coast of Tenerife a desert may seem like an exaggeration, but, honestly, the growing conditions there are quasi desertic compared to the moist woods we found a little bit further north.
Then we arrived right to the north, to the peninsular known as the Mountains of Anaga. An incredible place! It makes me excited now just to write the placename and think about what it signifies. I could not have suspected that a place of such captivating natural history not to mention natural beauty was to be found, hidden away on the northern tip of tenerife. Previously I had heard people talking about the fine walking opportunities of Anaga, and had even spent a day walking dubiously around the wet woods at the fringes of the protected reserve before scurrying back to the south and its sun.
Something spurred us along the coast beyond Roque de Dentro where a huge boulder lying on the hillside caught my eye. We scrambled up and found a spacious cave with a fireplace and lots of wood and a wonderful view across to the rock. The rock held me enthralled from the first. I didn't know it had been given its (rather prosaic) name Inner Rock by the Spaniards until after I had climbed up. This Francesco told me later that day, as well as clarifying many of the other questions we had regarding the place and its history. The smaller rock further out to sea is called Roque de Fuera and is one of the few places where the endemic giant lizard is still to be found. Climbing the inner rock is forbidden by law, something I did not know as a I waded with trepidation through the waist deep waves early in the morning. The day before I had observed the tides and saw that at low tide it would be feasible to cross if the waves were not rough. Jenny had told me that this north coast claims more lives every year than the south coast, where, it could be said, people are constantly being swept away by the sea. "I hear the sea can be pretty rough here" i put to Francisco. His eyes widened as he described how the huge rollers during storms are swept magnificently up the steep smooth side of the rock.
"este aqui no es mar," began francisco offhand
". . . es océano" he finished, expressing all the danger the thing contained, and the respect which it commanded, through the emphasis of its name.
I was well aware of the dangerous nature of the ocean as I first waded in. The ocean is dangerous because unpredictable. The waves rolling in now may pose little threat, but who can tell when the next big roller will roll in? The poor souls who get swept away by the sea don't even suspect the lurking danger out at sea until the big wave is upon them. Midway I grew fearful and turned back. My voice of reason said "why take any unnecessary risks? what do you have to gain?" but as i pondered this second question i realised how strong and irrational my desire to climb the rock was. I could not explain it, and soon i was wading back in again, even more determined. I am not sure to what extent I believed my inner reasoning, "even if i lose a limb or something, I will probably get off with my life, and even if i lose my life . . . well, better to have lived and died taking a stupid risk than not to have lived at all."
I had noticed no seagulls before I began climbing the rock, and also noted next to none when back on land, but as I climbed up the rock, I was surrounded by a noisy gathering of them, who screeched and wheeled above me. Every so often one would come descending upon me, screeching past a couple of metres above my head. I soon saw the reason why: speckled grey eggs, lying in clusters here and there hidden among the bushes, and little grey hatchlings, darting clumsily around. I attempted to ward them away by gingerly waving a stout bamboo cane I had found washed up at the shore. The seagulls did not mean me any harm; they merely wanted me to buzz off.
I judged the last perpendicular summit rock plug unclimbable, and turned around, permitting the gulls their peace, and allowing me to get back before the big lurking unsuspected, possibly speculated danger wave barred my way. Later I learned that on the very top of the rock there grow about a hundred Dragon trees, ancient indigenous trees which grow slowly for hundreds of years, and which I feel attracted to. It fills me with gladness to see a Dragon tree growing.
Francesco told me that at the back of the rock was a cave where the Guanches laid their dead to rest, looking out over the ocean and into its endless beyond. Two mummies - one male, one female - were found lying next to each other and taken to the museum in Santa Cruz. Very little is known about the aboriginals of the Canary Islands, but remains of mummified corpses lead some to hypothesise that their forefathers must have had contact with the Ancient Egyptians.
Francisco impressed me by how he had set up a really lovely simple home in nature, starting from scratch. His house was homely, bothyesque, whitewashed stone surrounded by stony rugged land of cactus trees and stiff spikey agave leaves, a wild stretch of coast riven by spectacular barrancos plunging into the blue sea, and the view of its endless wide horizon. He clapped a piece of rock jutting out of the back wall of his kitchen, and showed me a photo of the very same jutting rock, surrounded by nothing but bare rock and ruins. “This was ten years ago” he said, and his vital strength shone from his eyes with every word of the telling. The four 4 metre long beams that support the roof were carried in on the back of his donkey perrico, as well as anything heavy. “Apart from that” - Francesco nodded to his large marble tabletop - “that I carried in on my back.”
Jenny and I had given Perico an apple when we first went past. Francisco was not at home then. Jenny had looked around at the arrangement of potted plants and flowers, and the way pieces of glass had been incorporated into the simple clay walls and said, “an artist lives here.”
I was alone that day as Francesco hollered after me, “hola! Come and have a bowl of lentil stew. . . just finished eating myself. . . some bread with it?” and me feeling like a hungry boy in a fairy tale, who gets lured off his route by the whiff of something tasty. A couple of hours later Francesco had pulled out his timple - a traditional canarian stringed instrument - and was going through his repertoire of romantic mexican folksongs along with other south American ballads, looking at me meaningfully meanwhile with eyes expressing love lost or love longed for, sorrow or meaningful melancholy according to the lyric flow of the song. I always answered with eyes of enthusiastic appreciation and encouragement, until I got up from sitting so long and set about stretching and, feeling free, began to dance, my most visceral response and mode of thanks for the musical treat being offered me.
One of the questions Francisco cleared up for us was: why are there wild mother goats roaming around with bulging breastbags pendulating heavily and obstructing significantly their free movement? "this is a crime" explained Francisco, "it is completely illegal, but the young of the wild goats are frequently sequestrated for their tender meat, leaving their milk to uselessly gather in the mothers´ breasts. the milk will eventually turn bad and lead to disease and the death of the mother goat" ¨Corruption¨ was the idea I discerned as Francisco muttered some half-comment about the local government.
One of the questions Francisco cleared up for us was: why are there wild mother goats roaming around with bulging breastbags pendulating heavily and obstructing significantly their free movement? "this is a crime" explained Francisco, "it is completely illegal, but the young of the wild goats are frequently sequestrated for their tender meat, leaving their milk to uselessly gather in the mothers´ breasts. the milk will eventually turn bad and lead to disease and the death of the mother goat" ¨Corruption¨ was the idea I discerned as Francisco muttered some half-comment about the local government.
Francisco told me about his love for roaming around the wild parts of Tenerife, and mentioned one place which in particular has taken my fancy: barranco seco - a wild barranco north of Los Gigantes, accessed by a kilometre length tunnel through the mountain - where you will likely not meet another soul, where you descend to the sea passing a huge fig tree which when in season gives bags of fruits and close to the sea the rocks rise so abruptly, so immensely hundreds of metres high that you can’t help but be struck by their towering strength and majesty.
Glad we saw you healthy and well today online :-) Just remember your life is valued by your family and friends. Enjoy the adventures.
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