The Update #27 – It was time

We’re a little behind schedule with our updates. Since we are experiencing less, we don’t have the feeling to record everything right away. But… we promise to get back into the groove soon, because secretly we experience a lot and we like to capture everything. Also, immediately writing down what we all do ensures that we really think about what we have experienced and did, it is a good way to pinch ourselves again and feel that what we do is really mega special. And having that feeling is the best thing in the whole world, so there’s no good reason not to write. So here it comes:

This weekend Davide took us to his work, he is a tour guide for kayak excursions. On the excursion, you will kayak across the sea in search of turtles and dolphins and go snorkeling. Of course we had to see that. It was actually his day off, but an acquaintance of Davide and Amanda had asked if Davide could take him and his friends along for a friend price and we could join them. Perfect! It was only a short distance kayaking to the turtles. But even though we’ve seen them quite a few times, it’s still magical and I can’t help but scream of joy and say 100 times “wow they are so beautiful and so big!”. We dived right in from our kayaks to get a closer look through our diving goggles. I say we dived right in, and that was true for everyone, but not for me, Lon. Snorkeling, or actually being in the sea at all, is something where I am constantly suppressing 100 alarm bells. Traveling is something I love to do and for which I give a lot, but it is also always very confronting how many things I am afraid for. It will always be something I find hard to admit, I try to accept it more and more but it’s not easy. I also regularly hear: “But if you drive a bus and even consider traveling through Central and South America, then you really can’t be scared”. Well, they’re wrong. No I’m not going to list the whole list of what I’m afraid of because that’s not what it’s about. Perhaps what scares me most is that my fears will start to control my life, and that’s the last thing I want. Call it stubborn but for me it’s important to be in control of my fears and I don’t want my fears to get in the way of things I want to do. And for that I have to face them. So I say a lot and very often and very loudly to myself: Being brave doesn’t mean you don’t have fear, but it says something about how you deal with them. And that helps me. But it does not happen automatically and certainly not always well. It costs me Himalayan high mountains of energy, also Japs energy and a lot of patience. But here too I manage to get back into the water with a lot of preconditions. It has taken me a long time to care less about what others will think that I need those preconditions and to be proud of myself that I managed to not only be in the water but also to enjoy it a bit. Well that was very hard to write down, mainly because it makes me admit it to myself again and because I know that other people are reading this too. But hey, being honest is part of keeping a “diary” and this is something that keeps me very busy. It wouldn’t be fair to myself and the other person to pretend it isn’t there either. But back to the turtles and dolphins. Because we also saw dolphins, but… there are these fish farms at sea. Those fish in the farms are fed, some food escapes from the nets that the fish are in, that attracts other fish and those other fish are eaten by the dolphins. Normally, there wouldn’t be any dolphins hanging around in this area at all, but because the fish farms are there, they do. The dolphins circle around there all the time so that they can easily be supplied with fish. Think of it as a supermarket for dolphins. It’s still really cool to be able to see the dolphins, but idyllic? Nope. After we had had enough of the dolphins and turtles, we found a nice spot for a swim. Jap and I enjoyed the sun for a while on some rocks and then we paddled back. The group of boys invited us to dinner but we had other plans. At home there was a pizza party on the menu because Jennifer, the other volunteer, left for another place today. We wanted to fully enjoy our day off and after lunch we drove down the mountain to the tourist spots. We dropped Jennifer off at the bus station and parked Bob to stroll along the boulevard for hours. We enjoyed watching all the different types of people coming to Tenerife draws, marveled at the tendem mobility scooters, enjoyed the sunset and the surfers in the water. Around 9 pm we realized that we also had to walk all the way back and that we hadn’t eaten anything after this afternoon’s pizza. With blisters on our feet we eventually found a lovely Indian restaurant.

Tenerife is not necessarily known for good surf, but it is certainly an island where there is a lot of surfing. You see many vans driving around with surfboards on the roof and of course we had seen the surfers in the warer at playa de las americas. Jap has barely surfed after returning from Australia and is eager to get back in the water, especially after seeing all the people surfing. Because we will probably visit many more places where you can surf, Jap really wanted to buy his own surfboard. Of course he had a lot of good arguments for that, as you can imagine. Just how are we going to get that thing in the van. Because in Australia we had experienced that it isn’t convenient to have to take his huge thing in the camper. So, this time we wanted to come up with a better solution for this, but the fact that a surfboard would be bought was written in stone. So we went to a used surfboard shop, jap found a perfect surfboard there so he was as happy as a child and surfed the rest of the afternoon. The surfboard he has now is really a lot smaller than the one he had in Australia and that makes surfing a lot more challenging. So let’s just say the first time wasn’t very successful. But luckily he has enough time to get used to this board.

The next day we also went on the road after “work”, looking for good surf waves. But because it is so very busy in playa de las Americas in the water with surf schools, we went looking for another surf beach. Jasper had only forgotten due to his enthusiasm to go surfing, that in order to surf there must be waves and the weather conditions must be perfect for that. You have special sites and apps for that, which tell you what the conditions are for surfing per beach. Of course we all knew that from Australia because in Australia that was the first thing he did when he woke up: check the surf conditions. But we now arrived in El Medano, where we had already gone for a swim last week after “work”, but there were no waves, hahaha oops. Still, Jap went into the water with his board to play with it for a while and I tried to read something on the beach, although I fell asleep after 2 seconds hahaha. After an hour we had seen it there and we drove on to the natural rock pools at los abrigos. We had already heard a lot about this and Jennifer would camp here in the caves, which is apparently quite common here on the island, until she could go to her next work away address. The pools were really beautiful, especially the beautiful volcanic rock formations around it were beautiful. The water in the pools was quite rough, the water rose and fell in the pool for at least 1.5 meters, and to me it looked like a breathing monster that you could suck up at any moment. So for me it was just paddling but Jap had a lot of fun in the water and the view was really beautiful.

Chores of the week

Walking dogs, making pickled cucumbers, hanging tomatoes and repairing bamboo frames, preparing soil and making bamboo frames for planting soybeans, preparing soil and planting baby plants, roof demolishing, stone circles made around trees and filled with fermented horse droppings and hay.

Spendings of the Week

Budget per day €54 and per week €378 and per month €1700