Epiphany 5

In the US, today November 11th, is Veteran's day. I'm remembering my friend B... who survived the war in Vietnam, but died of cancer due to what was thought to be exposure to agent orange. He was a good guy who died too young.


Epiphany #5

Travel is my passion and if there’s an opportunity to travel to a new destination, I’ll take it. One of my relatives owns a time share in Tenerife http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife, which is one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. I had never been to Tenerife before and I was invited to join them for a two week vacation there. Excitedly I made arrangements and booked my ticket from New York to Tenerife. Because I was completely unaware that there were two airports on Tenerife, I landed in the northern part of the island which necessitated taking a taxi 70 miles to get to the southern end of the island. I enjoyed the ride because I was able to see a part of the island that tourists rarely visit.

I did not like Tenerife because it was choked with British tourists. The Paradise club where we stayed was filled with mostly British tourists, and they even served fish and chips (British style) in the nearby restaurants. The beaches were interesting because they were black lava beaches, something that I had never seen before. The only thing that interested me was Mount Tiede, the third highest volcano in the world. I was somewhat interested but not that much.

I wanted to go exploring. It really wasn’t practical to rent a car so I signed up for an all-day tour around the island. The bus stopped at various places of interest and culminated at the summit of the volcano. I was interested to see how a bus full of tourists could reach the summit of a volcano and indeed it did.

I had an interesting experience half way to the summit. On the way up we stopped for lunch at an interesting little town. The town was very picturesque and had a few nice places to visit, but there was a surprise waiting for me inside the restaurant. They served a buffet meal and after piling my plate high, I sat down at a table alone. When the waiter came to my table to take my drink order, I asked for a glass of red wine. He said, “No” and brought me a glass of water instead. I left my food on the table and made my way to the bar where I asked for the glass of wine explaining that I meant to pay for it. Mistakenly, I thought that the waiter had refused to serve me because the meal was included in the cost of the tour and it did not include alcoholic drinks. They refused to serve me at the bar and although they spoke in Spanish, I understood that they were prohibited from serving alcohol to ladies who did not have a male escort.

After lunch, I had two hours to explore the town but as soon as I stepped out of the restaurant I was surrounded by a large crowd of beggar children. I was going to throw them some coins but just as I reached into my purse, an old lady who was dressed from head to toe in black clothing approached with her bag swinging. She chased the children away, screamed some abuse at them and then smiled and said, “Buenos Dias Senora.” That was nice of her and I appreciated the help.

My bus tour was beginning to get interesting and as the bus started to wind its way up to the summit, I experienced exactly the same creeping sensation that happened to me in San Francisco. The road was narrow, winding and steep. The humidity level started to rise and I was very interested in what was happening outside the bus due to climatic changes. The tour guide explained that on our way up to the summit we would be passing through a few mini climatic zones. Sure enough we went from blistering heat to cold, damp and clammy. We passed through a climatic zone that was so cloudy and damp that it looked like it was raining. The condensation ran down the windows of the bus both inside and out. As we neared the summit it became blistering hot again, and it was so dry at the top it was comfortable because there was no humidity.

I stood in awe. It was a magnificent place. The red lava basin under the snow cap was like a Martian landscape. I desperately wanted to take a piece of lava with me but the guide had forewarned us that nothing could be removed from this national park. I managed to separate myself from the rest of the group and stared all around breathing in the solitary beauty of the place. I fell in love with volcanoes right at that moment. It was a divine experience.

The top photo is Mount Tiede.
The bottom photo is one of me on the balcony at the Paradise club. 

These are the lava formations at Mount Tiede.

Truly I have adventures when I travel and I think it’s because providence just gives them to me because I enjoy them so much.

On the return trip from Tenerife to Madrid, they announced that anyone transferring to Iberia airlines should be prepared for a long delay because the Iberian pilots had just gone on strike. I wasn’t worried about the delay but I started to fret about my suitcase, hoping that the transfer from one aircraft to another would go according to plan in spite of the strike.

It was a long strike and I spent 24 hours hanging around Madrid airport. Iberia airlines eventually issued all the passengers a voucher for a meal in the airport restaurant, but that was over 300 people. As a result, when I entered the restaurant as a solo diner, they kept me waiting quite a long time for a table. Eventually another solo diner walked in and to my relief the waiters seated us at a table for two. She was an Irish nun and very good company. I laughed my head off when she ordered a bottle of red wine for the two of us. We were in an International airport and it was the year 2000.  The waiter just stared at her for a few silent minutes and then decided that he didn’t want to risk the ire of an Irish nun. He brought the wine and one hour later he brought us another on demand. We spent the rest of the time together and by the time we boarded our flight for New York we were feeling no pain.

Unfortunately, although I arrived safely my suitcase didn’t. Five days later Iberia found it still in Madrid and by the time it was delivered to my front door, the lock had been forced open and the contents had been ransacked. I lost some expensive clothing, all of my souvenirs and my international hair dryer. Oh well! Lesson learned.