made it a point to get up early for a run on the same path along the coastline that i did yesterday, past playa hablillo and playa bastian, past the row of bright yellow outdoor workout machines where an older woman was "steering the boat".
then i doubled back to playa hablillo, stripped down to my bathing suit and got in the water. it was cold, even though i was sweating from my run still. i got my head in eventually. there were dense schools of little silver fish darting around my feet. bub and javi came ambling along with the snorkeling goggles, bub looking groggy before 10a.
this beach was a living swimming pool! boulders encircled a piece of the shore like open arms, breaking incoming waves into gentle laps. beneath the calm surface was a giant breathing oceanarium, and we were in it, hanging with the fishes. the colors of the fishes were muted, lots of silver, some striped or whiskered, the sleek black fish with a single blue dot on its head were the coolest ones down there. dropping down into the aquarium once, i saw a huge silver fish about 3 feet long, looked vaguely sharklike. i popped up and tossed javi the goggles but it had swum out of sight too quickly. bub spotted it again by the boulders, and so began our hunt for the mammoth fish that could have been a shark. javi thinks it was a morena, not deadly like a shark but it would have attacked and not let go. too soon, it was time to move on to the day's next adventure. but on the way out, bub spotted an octopus! it fanned out its tentacles as it tried to escape from view, and was about the size of a large pasta dish. it latched onto a rock, coiled and camouflaged. i saw one of its yellow cat's eyes when i lay belly down in the sand and put my goggles just inside the water. we both locked in for a hard stare-off. i lost. it was a regal stone gargoyle and i had to go.
we returned, for the second morning, to the tiny cafe at the hotel for english breakfast served by a sweet older filipina who had been in the canaries for 25 years and plans to visit her family who lived all over the world, including chicago and winnipeg, when she retires in 2 years.
we had checked out and were on our way to timanfaya, the mountains of fire. i've never imagined a landscape born of a volcano could look like this. most of the national park area looked like mars. black, coarse, jagged rocks piled high, creating a terrain that would be treacherous to hike through. i wondered what advice bear grylls would have for surviving this place. but on the volcanic mountains themselves, the surfaces were smooth. molten liquid, once upon a time. i wanted to run my hands over it, to feel the difference. and the colors! once the bus took us high up near the summits so that we had aerial views, you could see what lava as hot as 800 degrees celcius can do... it was a black canvas painted with reds, greens, and oranges of all shades gradiating into each other like oil in water. it was unbelievable. the eruptions that created this alien landscape occurred in 1730.
our next and last stop was el golfo. it was another mountainy area next to the ocean, where we looked off of some impressive cliffs. el golfo's most unique feature was a pool of water that glowed neon green. it wasn't radioactive, just had the right combination of minerals to mix a batch of that awesome color. i wanted to go into one of the caves in search of a very large paintbrush. it would have just been one more thing i've never seen the earth do before this weekend. there was also a salt farm which i wish i had photographed but didnt.
it was already late afternoon. we had lunch at cafe azul, perched atop a cove, waves slamming into boulders just meters away as we dined on arroz caldoso. one dish had giant red king prawns with mussels and fish stewed with yellow rice. the other had cuttlefish and squid ink that blackened the rice and gave it a rich, earthy taste, kind of like the taste of liver, or chinese preserved duck eggs. both were effin amazing. we didnt take long to devour it, had nothing to do with finding out our flight was leaving in an hour and a half.
we jetted straight to the airport, then the check in lady told us our flight was delayed. oh well. i was sad to leave the island anyway.
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