On a bright but cool day we went off to Garachico. Nice place. Quiet and picturesque. A good choice if you wanted solitude to write your novel, or if you were on the lam, hiding from the authorities… or the mob. There’s very little there, a nice hotel, a couple of restaurants, churches of course. And, most bizarrely in this tiny village, a museum. We paid two euros and went in. The building, a fifteenth century convent was more interesting than the eclectic collection of exhibits. Old farm tools, photos and manuscripts. Although they did have a collection of seashells. I have collected seashells myself over the years, I keep my vast collection on beaches all over the world. Perhaps you’ve seen some of them.
The seafront has many rock pools, cordened off for our visit due to seasonal high tides but in summer you can see a lot of tropical fish there. Theres also a castle. It’s really small for a castle. Four or five determined marauders could probably take it. Although I don’t know why they would bother. Inside there are only two rooms. A crap venue for a game of hide and seek but we gave it a go for five minutes.
We had coffee and ticked the ‘off the beaten path’ box for this trip and headed back to La Orotava for R&R in our little garden.
Early evening and time to eat, so we walked steeply downhill to town for dinner. It took about 20 minutes There were two reasons to walk rather than drive. Firstly, I had managed to find a parking place within 100 metres of the house and I didn’t want to lose it. Secondly, without the car I could have a drink. I’m not gonna lie, the second reason was the main reason. I wasn’t really too bothered about the parking space. On the way down we passed a church square with a stage erected and figured there must be music later. Duly noted.
After dinner as we mooched around the bars in town we heard music. People were walking up a very steep hill in the direction of the square we had passed earlier. The Little Nurse is none too keen on steep hills, indeed any hill, and was quite prepared to stay on the flat bit until closing time and then get a taxi up to the house. I said it wasn’t much of a hill (it was a massive hill). Persuasion wasn’t working so I threw a massive fake sulk which did the trick. She wasn’t happy, but I was, and that’s the main thing. Up, up, up we went. I was out of breath. Like an asthmatic in a marathon. But pretended it was nothing. I tried to speak normally like you do when the police ask you if you’ve just been running. Finally we turned left at the top and entered the square.
It was full of local people, all friends, most in fancy dress. We got the impression that the party was a very local affair and that most people lived right around this part of town. Behind the church, in a residential street, the local grocery store had turned itself into a bar and the local butcher had a barbeque going. Brilliant atmosphere. We got a beer and a glass of wine. It was €2. Yes, Two Euros. I had about 150 Euros in my wallet so I could afford another 75 rounds. I mentally scratched any ideas of an early start the following day and got tucked in.
We took our drinks to the main square and came across seven guys dressed like me! White trousers and white hats. They were the band. I told them I was the new guy and that I’d forgotten my guitar. So of course we had a photo taken of the new line up.
We had a great night, drinking and dancing with the locals. I needed a breather and as there was no VIP area provided for us I decided to make one. In the absence of velvet ropes I improvised with some builders barriers.
It was one o’oclock and time to go. There didn’t seem much chance of a taxi so we set off to walk the twenty minutes back to the house. It took about an hour. All uphill. You can imagine how pleased The Little Nurse was. Or wasn’t.
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- Start of the Tenerife trip HERE
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