Nov 18 from Cap Ron
Erasmos
Ron Stubbington
Wed 18 Nov 2009 20:17
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Las Palmas 28:07.679N 15:25.617W You will
have caught up with some events from Andys blog, however, yesterday some
of us rented a car and drove around the island. All of us could not have
had a more wrong impression of this island. We had thought that this would
be a lush tropical island covered in vegetation with lots of beachs and
resorts. However, we were completely wrong.!!!!!! As soon as we left
Las Palmas, the landscape became very barren and mountainous. There
were no massive amount of beaches or resorts. We headed south and then
around to the west. We stopped in from the coast a few miles at a small
village for lunch. The owner told us not to continue around on the coast
road due to construction and rain but to head inland. We followed his
advice and began our climb up into the hills. The road is very narrow with
many switchbacks and hairpin turns. There were times we had to slow to 5
km to make it around a corner, with the outside edge of the road a drop of 1000
feet almost straight down. We got up into the clouds and then crossed the
top of the island into the north side which is the green side. We slowly
worked our selves down and back into Las Palmas late in the afternoon... We did
not get to the sand dunes but we did see a varied sense of sceneary that rivaled
both Nevada and Arizona. Last night we cooked on board and had a
quiet night at home. The rains came last night and it rained so hard
that I believe there was some flooding in places on the island.... Today was
warm and sunny with some cloud. We took delivery of our liquids, water,
milk and orange juice... We had a visit from the official meteorologist, Chris
Tibbs today. It was both a social visit and an official visit. Brian and I
had met him in February in Guildford at a conference and it was great to
catch up with him again. Then we had to pay Chris for money owed to him for
services rendered for the run from Gibraltar to the Canary
Islalnds.
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