When Mamma comes to visit

It was a very intense and adventurous week. I have to say that I’m lucky to have Mum who mostly accepts my decisions and life choices. Even though sometimes she voices her concerns loud and clear, in overall summary she is fine with what I do. And I get it – being a mum involves worrying from time to time. We didn’t do everything we planned for this week, because Teide decided to get icy, snowy and unreachable, but we still managed to have a lot of fun!

My Mum flew here on Friday the 4^th. We picked her up with our freshly rented car, white and shiny, ready to be our companion for the upcoming events.

 

We took it very easy this first evening. Nick prepared nice dinner, my Mum brought us some tasty vegan and vegetarian food from Germany and she gave me the best present EVER- the book “Anna Karenina” that I wanted to finish reading so badly, but couldn’t find.

The next day we drove to Anaga which is a subtropical forest in the North of Tenerife. It offers a lot of different paths to cross, some more challenging and some reflecting a nice afternoon walk in a very tangled and green park.

This time we chose a light walk, just to warm up before our main goal and a summary of our stay here- Teide volcano. The forest was magical.

Long and curvy roots brought to mind all these legends and fairy tales your grandfather read to you when you were a child; one can imagine that Andersen and Grimm brothers themselves walked these paths decades ago, taking inspiration whispered by the trees.

The walk was easy and pleasurable, we marched through a symphony of different smells and sounds. Despite the poetic impact of the place, there had to be time for fooling around of course.

Sunday was the day of rest for some. We did training, trying to implement new stuff, however the wind was very strong that day. Plus we also slowly need at least a mattress to practice everything we have in mind.

On Monday we got up quite early and went to see Masca valley. It’s one of the most beautiful places known on the island and it’s not that challenging to cross.

It’s basically around 3 hours of going down to the shore, being surrounded by small but charming waterfalls and … well, nature.

We started our journey in the early morning, so it was quite cold. Jackets were definitely a must.

However, it started getting a lot warmer as we went lower and lower.

Soon enough, we didn’t need our jackets and later on even jumpers were not necessary. The weather was wonderful, however staying in a shadow made it hard to take photos of particularly sunny places. Our camera just couldn’t manage. ^^

Nick got so happy with the golden rays of sunshine that he even tried to suntan a bit.

We had to cross a lot of creeks, which was sometimes quite difficult for my Mum and me, as we are both small. ;D I even fell in one and my shoe got completely soaked through.

At the end of our journey there was a small bay. After purchasing tickets for a water taxi we enjoyed lunch near the ocean.

It’s a shame that it was quite windy there and neither of us had swimming gear, as Nick would have definitely taken a swim! The water had this marvellous shade of turquoise.

The water taxi was quite boring itself, maybe because we didn’t spot any dolphins around. The cliffs were pretty spectacular, but it was getting colder and colder on our way to Los Gigantes.

From Los Gigantes we had to take a regular taxi to go back to Masca, as we left our car there. And you know what? It was a great idea, because the taxi driver told us that all the routes leading on Teide and in the National Park are closed due to bad weather conditions. We were really upset to hear that, but on the other hand if we didn’t, we would be all packed and ready for nothing on Wednesday. If we didn’t call the shelter to verify the message, we would find out about it somewhere on the way. That would be a bummer, wouldn’t it?

We were really tired when we got home, but we’ve decided to go to work anyway. When we got to the place we normally perform, an unpleasant surprise was awaiting us. The manager said that we are there too often and she doesn’t like it, because the musician takes a 10 minutes break during our show and he’s paid to play; hence we are only allowed to perform once a week. Maybe. It was very weird and unexpected, however we chose to treat it as a sign. It’s time to leave Tenerife. From this day on we started planning our journey back.

Next day was very relaxed. We went to visit my Mum’s friends in Las Americas. They are a really lovely couple with hearts on their sleeves. As a woman’s day treat my Mum got new eyebrows and other cosmetic abra-cadabra. We talked a lot and ended up inviting them to our Fire Show close by. Thanks to them a part of it went on Youtube. ^^

Wednesday was supposed to be the day of going to Altvista Refuge. We called in the morning and got the information about all the routes being closed. You can imagine our disappointment… We had to skip a luxury of seeing sunrise on 3718m volcano.

Instead we went to Garachico – a town which was twice completely destroyed by the eruption of Teide. Due to these incidents Garachico is known from its natural pools in the ocean, created by the unbelievable fight of two elements – fire and water. All passages are made of cold lava rocks.

It’s a truly apocalyptic view. It looks even more creepy during sunset.

Unfortunately we couldn’t explore too much of it this time due to a high tide. When we tried, we got our shoes wet. ^^

After that we went to Icod de los Vinos to see the oldest Dragon Tree in the world. We also learnt that it belongs to the asparagus family, so basically we drove to see the biggest asparagus ever. We couldn’t get too close to it though. Climbing it was also out of line. :P

On Thursday, before taking the car back, we went for a short trip to El Médano, the windsurfers’ Mecca. It was too windy to enjoy the views for longer than 15 minutes, so we left to Las Americas, had a nice meal in a Chinese restaurant and met up with Mum’s friends again. We both got a farewell gift from them- a haircut. ;D

Today in the morning it was time to say goodbye. My Mum’s alarm clock didn’t work, so she got up half an hour later than planned and everything was done in a real rush. Luckily she managed to get a ride to a bus stop from a local guy, so everything went smoothly in the end. I miss her already!