Venturing North

At 9 AM, a dozen of us assembled in the courtyard of the apartment complex and waited for the bus. The guide who was multilingual explained everything in Spanish, German and English. Fortunately, the attractive young Russian women from the apartment next door understood English, so the guide didn’t need to repeat it all in a 4^th language.

We drove about an hour north along the coast, passing the airport we had flown into a couple of days before. We passed many wind farms producing electricity, and it was interesting to see some light industry with 1 or 2 turbines of their own.

As we headed inland and started to climb, the climate was obviously much different than in the south. The vegetation was greener and lush. Within 15 minutes we were looking down into the mouth of an inactive volcano. There were now houses and farms at the very edge of the rim, and a vineyard in the base of its throat.

From the volcano, we followed the twisty road to a finca. A finca is an estate farm, normally handed down through the generations. This one was involved in agra-tourism, where city types were working on the land for their vacation. That day, they were harvesting potatoes. Other vegetables were grown there too, along with oranges, lemons, olives and an assortment of flowers.

After leaving the finca, we stopped in a couple of tiny picturesque towns, one to visit a local market, and the other for lunch at a wonderful street-side café. The wine provided with lunch came in a ceramic carafe. I suspect it was either made in the basement or just down the street.

In all, we had a pleasurable trip to the northern and inner parts of the island with a very knowledgeable guide. It was interesting to see the diversity on such a small island based largely on a different climate.

Click here and we’ll tell you about cycling off the tourist grid and up a desert-like volcanic ravine:
http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2012/05/cacti-and-lava-caves.html