Lava tunnel and surpassing oneself

Today, we plan a short day: see a lighthouse and an old lava tunnel. We stop in a small grocery store, for me, because I would like a yogurt to drink instead of the sandwiches we have been having at the restaurant for 2 days. They are good, but I don't want them this morning. We then go get Louis's sandwich at the restaurant. He asks me to go with lots of new specifications. Grrrr! It had become easier, the lady knew what we were taking. There, Louis wants a different bread: a baguette (barra de pan), but instead of looking for a baguette on the internet, he translates “baguette” (junquillo). I understand now why the waitress did not understand anything. I didn't want a magic wand, I wanted bread. Anyway, I managed to make myself understood, thank you for his patience. Louis wanted bacon in his sandwich, he got… 8 slices. That's bacon! It also blocks the arteries :)

Then towards the lighthouse. My father loves lighthouses so we also go there a bit to take pictures of him. The road is magnificent. We stop to see workers in the pine forest to ask them what happened to the burned trees we saw yesterday. With their few words of English and mine, we understand each other well enough for me to learn that a forest fire took place 14-15 years ago. Louis tells me later that this is the only way for the pine cones to open to release their seeds. This fire was not planned, however, at least from what I understood. It's such a beautiful forest of trees that have worked hard to regenerate. We continue the road and we stop at a lookout on the side of the road. A woman makes her coffee in her little truck. Awesome! Then the road becomes a little, much more lunar.

After more than 1 hour of driving, we see the lighthouse. Gorgeous! However, we cannot access it. Is it because it's Saturday? Or because it is condemmed? We'll never know. We were also told that there was an old lava tube to see. Effectively! Just left of the lighthouse parking lot. There is a small path in the volcanic rocks that leads to a hole in the ground, with stairs. It's an appreciated luxury! We go down there and after a few steps, a minute at most. Louis tells me it stops. It's dark there and we only have our cell phones so we go back to the exit. We then meet the lady at the cafe who comes out of the underground speaking only Spanish and quickly. I understand that she says it's very big down farther but she needs better light. Well, she said more than that, but the essential is there, I believe. So I go back into the tunnel and I go to see the dark space at the back. “Louis, it continues”. The time to tell him, the lady has already returned with a frontal light and she disappears into the tunnel. We therefore follow it more slowly, having no frontal light and we therefore quickly lose sight of her. We continue in complete darkness. You have to bend a lot so you don't hit your head, but then it's quite high. There would be a few more difficulties for a 7 foot man, but the ceiling is usually quite/very high. We continue in the dark for a few minutes, then we see people who don't speak English very well, but they manage to tell us that there are still 5-10 minutes left before the end. So we continue. We see light at the end of the tunnel, with a staircase. Since it hasn't been 5 minutes, I look at the right side of the stairs and it's all black, so I go there in case the tunnel continues. Yes! So we continue our adventure in the dark and we will come back to climb the stairs on the way back. We see again the lady in the cafe, who does not speak English, but between all her Spanish words I hear an English word: “beautiful”. So I know it will be great. If she took the time to find a word in English to tell me, it must be worth seeing. So we continue in the dark until we see a light in the distance. Just at the bottom of the stairs, I see a hole in the rock and... the ocean. Oh how pretty it is once you've climbed the stairs. The ocean and the cliffs! How wonderful. We take a little break there.

Then, we retrace our steps and towards the other staircase that we climb. We arrive in the volcanic rock field with people near the entrance to the cave in the background with the lighthouse. So we go back to where we came from and in the cave, I tell a couple to continue to the right of the stairs. I remember “derecha” (right). It is still worth going to the end of the tunnel. Thanks to my Spanish classes in CEGEP. It's been a long time, but I still have a few words of Spanish in the coco.

We continue our descent towards the ocean. It's time to go to the beach. Well, the beach is easy to say, because there is not really a beach. There is a space of rock and concrete from which you can jump into the water. There are also picnic tables and restrooms. So the necessary is there. So we settle down and then go down to the water by the stairs. I actually see Louis also doing so, so I'm happy I don't have to jump, it's quite high.

We bathe, we dry off. Louis asks me if I want to jump: no, but you can go. No. Good. We meet a man who was at the Arbol Garoé (the tree over 400 years old) yesterday. I go back to the water and when I come back Louis tells me he's ready to go when I am. I ask him if he wants to go back into the water. He tells me no. I imagine he is hungry, it is after 2 p.m. I tell him that if he wants to jump, I will go with him. So he gets up to jump…. Mauzuss. We come close to the wall. We look down. It is high. We decide to let it go. Yippee! No, Louis changes direction and says we have to jump…. He goes to jump and looks at me:

“You jump after me huh? »

"Not sure"

"You have to jump"

"Jump and we'll see"

He jumps. Seems to me like he's been up in the air for a long time

“Go Cindy to you: 1, 2…”

"Woo woo, one minute there"

" Come on "

Then the gentleman from yesterday starts counting:

“One, two, three”

I go to jump and I have a sudden fear. I freeze

More and more people look at me and encourage me to jump…. It's getting hard to find an excuse and hey, I want to finish being the center of cowardice attention.

Her 6-8 year old son counts (it's starting to do there... but it's adorable at the same time)

“uno, does, tres”

I jump!

No, but I even have time to tell myself that it's high. I don't jump often and if I do it's 1-1.5 meters max. There. It must be at least 3 meters high… enough to wonder why I jumped. I have never been so deep when jumping. No, but you have to end up getting your head above water. Well I might be exagerating a little, but not so much. At the time, that's what I thought. Afterwards, I was very happy that I jumped.

So we leave, satisfied to continue on the road a little further and we branch off into a dirt road. We park at the end and we walk a little in the paths of volcanic rocks. You will never be able to guess what you will find there. I let you think about it. So we continue to see a hole in the ground and hear waves. So we want to go see. We therefore leave the path a little and we start to climb. As unthinkable as it may be: a fisherman is sitting in his chair hundreds of meters above the ocean and he is fishing. Well, I don't think he can catch big fish considering the height, but he is there. He is in peace, all alone! So we continue to see our hole in the stones and then we hit the road again.

We love to stop in unconventional places. "Want to go here" "Ok" are our most beautiful landscape finds on the island. So we take the road to the Frontena / Tigaday to return through the mountains. We stop on the way in a small restaurant on the roadside: Asador Padrón (Artero street).

It's 3:45 p.m. The waiter speaks to us in English. He is the first on the island (server) who speaks English. Well, we've always managed and people have always been patient, but it's nice and it's easier.

I didn't want to take dessert, but on my way to the bathroom, I see the waitress take a piece of cake from a cake pan, and the bottom of the pan is filled with white liquid. I want to taste this cake. So I ask the waitress later, who doesn't speak English, but she just doesn't understand. The lady next to us tells me it's the "tarta... tres leche" Ohhh, it was good. I thanked them both. If there are any in the other islands, I will take some more. We leave around 5:15 p.m.

We arrive at the apartment around 6:30 p.m. It's time to relax. We were supposed to have a short day! Not that we're complaining about it, it was great, but we're tired. Tomorrow, we leave to return to the boat. The holidays of the holidays are over, but we still have things to see before. It will be tomorrow.