Oye amigos,

Today marks the half way point of our Canarian escapade and a feeling of normalcy has set in - in a good way because it's starting to feel like we live here which was kinda the point. Two weeks is usually when the longest of holidays ends so it'll be interesting to analyse how we feel from here on out.

These are our adventures from this week.

🌋 Adventures

We started off with the dunes at the southern tip of the island, not far from where we're staying. They're like a little marooned piece of the Sahara and were great fun to cross, navigating the crests of the wind-whipped sand.

After a picnic, I managed to get to within three metres of this kestrel. It must be a local and confident with how ungainly humans are on sand because I've never gotten this close to one before.

The dunes are one of the few spots on the island that have golden sand. Many of the beaches are darker black sand with the exception of the man-made beaches. This one below, Anfi del Mar, has the best sand, which apparently has been imported from the Caribbean. In fact this whole area has been landscaped.

Note to self - plant a palm tree at home for tropical vibes.

One of my all time favourite activities is snorkelling. I have my PADI diving licences but I prefer the casual and solo nature of just throwing on a mask and flippers and seeing what you can find. I'm yet to find any particularly good spots so this trumpetfish is the best I've seen so far.

We then ventured into the interior to visit a small gorge reminiscent of Antelope Canyon in the US (think Britney Spears singing I'm Not A Girl...).

While similar, it's not got the sandstone hues of its American counterpart as the whole island is volcanic. So next we went to see a caldera.

We hiked around the rim of this crater which due to its vastness was hard to get into frame. I'd like to tell you the bubs enjoyed it but this week he's finally learnt to crawl so any activity that stops him doing his new found skill is frowned upon screamed at.



Today we ventured to the west coast of the island. This is far more rugged and harder to access than the rest of the island but the views made it wholly worthwhile. On a clearer day we'd have been able to see right across to Tenerife.

The Opel Crossland has been very reliable. I rather like this mini-SUV class of vehicles and think they'd make a good family car as well as for better accommodating building materials compared with my Astra.

That said, being higher off the ground, it's poor at driving around the tight hairpin bends here, lunging from side to side, so I sometimes yearn for my hatchback.

Right, that's all I've got this week as I've been having too much fun to write anything of substance. You're probably getting a good feel for the things I'm not that into: the music scene, city life, art, food...I get my kicks from the natural world.

👋

Can anyone in the High Wycombe area recommend a really good heating engineer and plumber (can be a company) for our bathroom remodel please? We've tried a few and either haven't heard back or been left unconvinced they can handle the job. It would be great to get a date in the diary while we're away 🙏.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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