Fancy footwork

I suppose it was only a matter a time but it still took us by surprise.
Our lovely neighbours informed us last week that we were required to help 'pisar.' It's a word I haven't come across so far.
Pisar? I queried. She motioned a stepping movement with her feet and said 'las uvas' - the grapes. Ah yes ... now I understood ... pisar means to tread, like don't tread on the grass. But this was treading the grapes.

'Surely they don't really do it with feet,' I thought with a certain degree of horror.

Oh yes, they do.

La Fajana

This is our local beach of La Fajana de Garafia. Generally, it is not a sandy beach (although sometimes there are patches of sand) but rather a rocky beach. To me, it is a wonderful place for a whole number of reasons.
When it is rough, I am amazed at the way the Atlantic rushes in to our shores with such enthusiasm and then breaks its neck on the rocks. Only to rush off and do it all again.
I am amazed at the way anybody every made a road down there. In the degree of difficulty it ranks as about 49.75 billion trillion.
I take my hat off to the eleven people that live down there, working in the banana plantation.
I pay tribuite to the people of El Tablado who would carry great stems of bananas down to the old port in days gone by (several times a day) and to the people who practically risked their lives getting provisions on and off the ships in the old days.
Oh, I could go on. The place is an amazing example of the determination of man in the face of apparent impossibility and of nature at its dramatic best.

Sleeping on the Job

Meet Pancho, the finca feline. But he wasn't always called Pancho of course.

When we first came here and cleared the waist-high weeds at the front of the house, the mice were fairly disgruntled at being evicted but more than happy to set up home in the casita. This was not entirely to our liking and we asked our neighbour if he could get us a cat or kitten.

He would be pleased to do so, he told us. But it couldn't just be any ordinary cat - it had to be a good hunter. He had one in mind for us whose father, he told us, was as big as a tiger.

One day, he presented us with Pancho, a tiny ball of fluff with big eyes.

'If you think it's ugly,' said the neighbour, 'just let it go.' The country people here are tough.

But since when has a kitten been ugly? So of course we kept him. But for some reason we assumed he was a she (cute, cuddly, all the female attributes). And so we called her Francesca after the area in which we live, Franceses.

Francesca grew up and not only became an intrepid hunter of mice, lizards and rabbits, but grew body parts that girls don't have.

So Francesca became Francisco.

'Ah,' said our neighbour, 'all Francisco's here get the nickname Pancho.'

So that's how Pancho got his name. Here he is keeping guard.

Dragon's Blood

Many things are written about the dragon tree. Some say it gets its name from the scars around its trunk and its spiky head. Others say it is because of its blood red sap. And yet others will tell of legends .....
Historically, the natives of the Canary Islnds made shields from the bark of the tree and the medicinal properties of the sap were known way back in Roman times when the dragon's blood sap was used for all sorts of homeopathic medicines.
It is now a protected species. This one, sitting at the edge of our drive and looking like a fairly calm dragon, was just getting ready to bed down for the night.
But who knows what happens when the sun goes down.