A few days in fast forward in the Canary Islands

I hope it won't be hot like this for the rest of the holidays. I ended up falling asleep after 2am. The holidays are coming to an end soon, it is not the time to not sleep and to arrive tired at work…. Because yes, it seems like another life, but we will have to go back to work soon.

We go to the swimming pool of the nautical club a little further up the street. We spend the day there reading and cooling off. And whenever we can, we reposition our lounge chairs to get closer to a palm tree, because it is really hot in the sun. Louis has fun imitating me in the water. Well, imitating me is a big word, but I'm not a diving pro, let's say!

It's so hot that we don't even want to go to dinner. We see a refreshment counter further by the pool, here's dinner: a lemon popsicle for me (this word, they don't understand it here, so I try to say sugar water in English, she shows me something else , I say with ice (“hielo” in Spanish) and she understands me. Louis takes a beer, a popped rice and a bar of ice cream covered in chocolate. Here is dinner.

Then return to the boat around 4-5 p.m. We are still relaxing, the wind seems normal. We rinse with water from the bathroom tap which is colder. We took a break from the hose water because it was too hot. I think that sometimes I could almost have cooked pasta in it ;)

We have dinner on the boat, we don't want to go out and we try to eat what's left not to lose anything. There are cans that we have to eat before the next time, so we make ourselves a “clam chowder”. A can for 2 is enough for the moment. It is so hot that it reduces theappetite. We also have a bowl of fresh fruit. Fresh!! Mmmm. That and a glass of water with ice is great!

We hope the night will be better.

We feel a “fresh” wind, by which I mean a summer wind, a normal hot one, which seems fresh compared to the scorching wind we have had for 2 days. It's 9 p.m. so we hope. Yesterday the hot wind came back around 9:30 p.m. I go to bed around 11 p.m. hoping that doesn't change.

3am: an alarm sounds.

Louis gets up to find out if the shrill noise comes from Soleau or from a boat around.

Weird. Everything is quiet outside

He then opens the windows/portholes.

The propane alarm is ringing. It's very good. This is the first time we hear it and let me tell you that we hear it well.

Louis had closed the windows around midnight because the hot wind came back. So he only put the little fan in our “bedroom” so we could sleep. I also asked him for a wet dish towel. It's my way of sleeping if it's too hot. I put it on me and the wind from the fan cools the damp towel which also cools me down a bit. Don't judge me, it takes what it takes to lower ones body temperature in a permanent sauna ;) As Louis gets up for the alarm, he goes to rinse off in the shower and I do the same. The wet towel will be for the rest of the night.

We slept better last night, finally!

It was warm, but a “comfortable” warm.

Today we are working on one simple task on the boat: we are reorganizing the storage space. In this heat, all we can manage is a morning of work. anyhting more and we would cook.

We spend the following days in a very relaxed state of mind. A real vacation with nothing to do. In this heat it would be difficult in any case. We do a few tasks a day on the boat and that's it. Well, it's still a few hours a day, but we also take time to relax. We go swimming in the bay or we rinse off in the bathroom. We're going to do dinghy rides to see the tip of the bay, just to enjoy Solito, that's his new little name. Thanks Max!

One evening when there is more wind, we decide to ride around in the Marina in a dinghy and look at the boats. Too much wind for our little electric motor and it's still fun to watch the other boats seen from the water.

We walk around town. It really is a beautiful city. We go to the edge of the cliff and we walk for a while on the rocks. Young people swim nearby but we go further. We do not stay long at the place where we stop because the water is rising and already on the way back we find ourselves with our sandals in the water on the rocks. Fun little adventure!

Oh, another adventure: shopping around to find a charger for our Dewalt “drill” battery. The one we use to help us hoist the mainsail. But after several stores, we realize that we are sent everywhere but no one has one. All the same thank you for the helping hand to all, we will find some at home or we will have it delivered to the marina. Anyway, we don't need it until the next trip.