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.

Epiphany 4

Epiphany #4

San Francisco! Who doesn’t love San Francisco?

I used to work for a large nutraceutical company in New York, and one year they decided to send me to San Francisco to attend a Consumer Affairs conference. It was November but I was excited to go because this was to be an all expense paid trip lasting for 5 days. The main speaker was Ralph Nader and there were a lot of cocktail parties to attend. I became a fan of Ralph Nader after listening to his speech because he was surprisingly charismatic. Because it was a last minute decision to send me, there weren’t too many hotel rooms available and I ended up staying at a rather expensive downtown hotel.  The trip started out good and it ended great.

Before journeying to San Francisco I had tried to book myself on one of the bus tours linked to the conference, but to no avail. The tour was fully booked and so was the boat trip to Alcatraz. However, on the Sunday before the conference started I took a taxi over to the point of rendezvous just in case there was a cancellation for the bus tour. It was November 1999 and the weather was not good. I woke up on Sunday morning to a dreary, rainy San Francisco and I had a hunch that someone would probably cancel out because of the rain. My hunch paid off.  Quite a lot of people had cancelled the trip because of the rain and the bus was half empty.

I boarded the bus and settled back to enjoy the tour. It was very pleasant, the rain cleared for a while and I teamed up with another conference attendee so that we could enjoy the day as much as possible.

Our last stop was Muir Woods http://www.nps.gov/muwo/faqs.htm and as the bus began to wind its way up to Muir Woods, I had a creeping sensation that this was going to be no ordinary thing.  As the bus made its way up the narrow winding road, my travelling companion closed her eyes because there was a sheer drop on one side of the road and it had started to rain again. The road seemed to be winding higher and higher and it became very humid inside the bus. When we finally arrived it was teaming with rain and everyone on the bus except the tour guide, me and another passenger headed for the coffee shop. The other passengers declined to enter the woods.

The three of us went in together and as usual, I wandered off by myself because of the need to be free to explore. It was amazing. The giant Redwood trees were magnificent and the natural tree canopy overhead was so thick that it prevented the rain from coming through. It was peaceful, deadly quiet and once more I felt at peace with nature. These trees are the tallest in the world and I could have stayed in there forever. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I could be at peace in my life more often if only I could live in a place that was surrounded by old trees.

This is one of my treasured belongings. It's a handmade coffee table made from a slice off the root of a fallen Redwood tree. The base is driftwood.

The conference was great, all the speakers were good, and the entertainment at the grand opening was superb. Japanese drummers similar to those at Epcot in Disney World performed, and their performance was better although I still enjoy the drummers at Disney. The breakfast croissants and cappuccino at the hotel were really good and I was so glad that I didn’t take the boat tour to Alcatraz because the weather was so rough that most of the passengers became seasick. Instead of the boat trip I treated myself to an early steak dinner in the hotel rooftop restaurant where I could gaze out at the sparkling lights of the city. The waiter brought me an invitation to join a gentleman at the bar and we spent a nice evening together.

On the last night of the conference there was a dinner dance to attend. I was dismayed to find out that I would need to stand in line at the entrance to the hotel and wait for a taxi. It was raining again and although I was wearing a jacket over my finery, the weather had turned freezing cold. When I asked the doorman why there was a line for taxis he explained to me that there was always a shortage of taxicabs in San Francisco. I thought that I was going to be late for the dinner dance but after five minutes the doorman approached me and said, “Would you follow me please, ma’am.” He lead me around the corner to a waiting sedan, opened the back door for me and since it was pouring rain I didn’t argue and stepped inside.

            “Where to ma’am?” the driver said.

I gave him the address of the hotel that I was heading to and then asked him why I was fortunate enough to be sitting in this beautiful Mercedes-Benz. This is what he said.

           

On mulling things over I began to understand why the ancient trees had such an effect on me. When I was very young, my mother used to sit me under a big old Rowan tree (mountain ash) that grew in our side yard.  She gave me a blunt needle and some strong thread and I was totally at peace picking the berries that had fallen off the tree and stringing them into necklaces. I knew that the berries were too sour to eat and I knew not to wander away from the tree. Because we moved to a different house when I was six, I calculate that I was between three and five years old. Thanks to satellite photos on the web, I was able to zoom in and have a look the old house, but the tree is gone (replaced by wide driveway).

Take a look at where I live now. These old oak trees are not on my land, they grow on the golf course that snakes in and out of the housing development where I live. I derive immense pleasure from the fact that I can look at the trees whenever I want to. The trees, most of which are over 100 years old are a protected species and can only be cut down if they die. The trees are growing a short distance from the edge of my property.

I also love the two palm trees that grow alongside my pool and I’m coaxing the palm tree at the front of the house back to life. This tree was uprooted during hurricane Charley in 2004 and it’s taken this long for it to spring back to life

 I'm still working on the landscaping at the front of the house. We had a cold winter last year and a lot of my foliage plants died. I'm learning to plant hardier species this time around.