The Chase

There are moments in life were you wish your camera was on hand but instead it is neatly packed in it's case. Sunday evening was one of those missed moments. In Las Palmas, it was 36°C after sundown so we didn't want to cook inside an already warm boat and our propane tank for the BBQ is empty. Finding propane gas in Europe is like finding a needle in a haystack because they use butane. We did find some the next week by going all the way to a factory but they didn't have the proper adaptor. So no propane for us but that is another story. Back to this one, we decided to take our electric stove into the cockpit to cook a goulache (kind of like a beef stew with a lot of paprika). I'm inside cutting up some vegetables and Gaston is outside stirring everything in the cooking pot when a giant cockroach appears on one of our benches. By giant I mean we could of saddled it up to visit the island. So Gaston, armed with the wooden spoon used to stir the goulache starts hunting the reached bug. Tap! Tap! Tap! It is faster that he is and hides under the electric stove. All of a sudden, Gaston decides the meal is ready! So I take off the pots from the stove and he lifts it up but... no cockroach. Where did it go? It shows up in the cracks of our woden benches. Again, Gaston goes after it with his spoon and WAM! He turns it into fish food. Fiew! Gaston the Hero! Note that we have since installed traps all over the boat to get rid of these bugs. And the spoon was not use to stir the goulache again.
Yesterday, we decided to take a break from the preparation of our next trips so we could visit the island by car. Here is a tip, always keep an eye on the gas gage! On this Island the service stations are far apart. We found ourselves with the gage needle in the red on top of the highest volcano. The nearest station was at the base. Half way back down, a message that we were about to run out of fuel appeared on the dash. Gaston kept on going by avoiding to step on the gas as much as possible and keeping his fingers crossed (Thank God we were going downhill!). We finally managed to ge
t to the pump but we were running on vapors! It may be a good thing that we are not far-sighted because it would not give us any stories to tell other than the images of the mountains were so spectacular that our brains could barely assimilate them. We don't really enjoy staying in Las Palmas because it is a big city (noisy and polluted but we can find everything we need) but we really enjoyed the panoramic views of the rest of the island. Unfortunatly, I haven't started to put together my picture montage yet but I did add 3 others to the web site today (http://bidule.micro.org/Site/Canaries.html).
We will be leaving on Saturday morning to head for Dakar in Senegal. The trip should take us 7-8 days. According to our sources, the internet is available in the marina in Dakar so we should be able to give you more news from there.