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A disease in a faraway country of which we know nothing

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We are mostly going to be walking down a road which technically we can but we really ought not.  We are following the non-motorway way to Los Cristianos. We may stay a day before heading into the mountain. We are here to complete the Covid Story. The trouble with memory, as Historians are beginning to find out, is that it is a trixy thing. The Gallipoli effect describes how veterans of that unholy invasion attempt gave different accounts after the film of the same name came out. The same can be spotted Post Saving Private Ryan. I knew of Covid, mostly by listening to ‘Science in Action.’  It appeared a bit like Bird Flu - something distant and abroad. It then spread to Italy but when you are engaged in the everyday and with a holiday planned, like most people, I wasn’t sure how it applied to me. End of the holiday we arrived to find the airport in chaos. The sandstorm had closed down flights and we were stuck in the terminal. The relief when Jet2 told us to get on a bus and go...
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I've fulfilled one of my dreams

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  We are heading up the hill towards Guaza. Guaza has a market. Guaza is essentially a street with lots of shops and few houses nearby.  We might as well look at some of them. Bazar Boukaddor sells clothes. It has now reviews and so really doesn’t exist at all. Motos Speed Garage Tenerife has 7 reviews and gets a Five.   Lachi said a week ago ‘I'm really happy and I've fulfilled one of my dreams.’  Who are we to pry further. Rotulos Sur is a sign shop.  Five stars, 3 reviews.   Janis was fulsome.  ‘A month spent on signs in my town and it seemed like a world of effort to make a 30x42 poster and a month for a budget that never arrived.  So I called Rotulos Sur and was delighted. In one day I had the design and budget and the next day it was being sent to my home by parcel and with chrome dividers. The design was done so quickly.  Well, everything was extremely fast. I loved the sign. From the moment I called him until I hung up my sign, only 3...
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The Cookie and the bananas

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  We are in Las Galletas.  It has Spanish people living it, as well as tourists, which is a bonus.  Google translate calls it ‘The Cookies.’  It grew as a fishing port and has a fish market - we passed it on the breakwater.   Crossing the water front of the rocky beach we will pass El Fraile, a grid development plonked on available land.  Beyond them are the banana plantations, protected from the elements by great curtains of gauze.    They are one of those startling things the first time you see them. The Canaries produce about 430 million kilos of bananas.  This is about 60% of the European production of the stuff.  Apparently the Portuguese brought them over from West Africa in the 15th century but it was not until the 1880s, when the British promoted the cultivation as a crop that could be brought up by ships that had stopped to take on coal. That’s it.  A market tomorrow.
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Curated neatness and blasted heath

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Tenerife happily bobs between areas of curated neatness and blasted heath. Today we begin with the former and pass near the Hotel Westhaven Bay - a counterpoint to all those El Pasos one might find in Sussex.  When then turn across a bit of scrub, which has an abandoned sports field and turn out going up the back end of some hotels, a rather splendid garden and the Ten Bel shopping centre - which is a subterranean collection of eateries and providers of seaside essentials.  The main reason we are here is to visit the hotel we stayed at, the Ona Alborada.  If you like design this is the place for you.  Mentioning brutalistic concrete may not, at first, win you over, but stick with me. It is designed in a series of lines, which means every apartment has a balcony with a sea view.  The internals have been modified recently to update them so it has moved, slightly, from the 70s chic which it once had.  It has long, cool corridors, with openings onto the norther...
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The storm before the storm

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  Stumbling along the track, across the blasted heath it becomes clear, from the photo at the other end, they no longer want you to go down this way. I think you are old enough for this. Let’s talk about Calima. No one told us and we didn’t look it up.  We had gone to Tenerife for the first time on a ‘we are exhausted and it is winter and we need to do nothing’ holiday in February 2020.  The hotel, as you will see soon, was by the sea and below the surrounding landscape.  We had an afternoon pick up for the airport so planned to swim, change, lunch and go.  The lifeguard was wearing a face mask.  This was February 2020 so that was a bit unusual.  It was only when we went to the entrance of the hotel, some significant metres above ground level, that we noticed the world had gone yellow. [see photo] The Calima is a dust filled cloud which blows in from the Sahara.  It can last a day, it can last a week.  It is most common from February to April...
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