Feliz Navidad!

Yesterday we visited Igueste de San André, a little town at the end of the street north of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It is a fantastic place, you can reach the upper part of town by car, but you have to walk into the rest of the town which descends to the oceanfront in a little canyon. In the middle of the canyon are gardens, on the sides going up the mountains are the houses. Here you can see the church, we stopped there at a little playground to have our lunch. It was so peaceful with no cars, all you could hear were birds singing and dogs barking.




















Here is a look from the direction of the ocean into the canyon, you can see the gardens in the middle and the houses on the left and right.



















And here's a view of the Atlantic from Igueste.
































Walking toward the ocean you could hear rustling in the brush by the cacti and other succulents in addition to the birds singing and dogs barking, that noise was caused by these fantastic scaly friends scurrying about.























I was completely enthused by the lizards, but then I met Jola the white rabbit! We were chased by her owner Esther, who took us into her house to sell us some mangos. Esther lives right on the coast in a fantastic little house. She got Jola from a family in Santa Cruz who got her for their daughter, but she just kept growing and growing and got too big for them. So she came to live with Esther, and Esther can't eat her. I got all of this out of a conversation with my broken Spanish. I think we got the grand tour including Jola because of our two little blonde boys, they always seem to score us some extra points in Spanish-speaking countries.
























This is Esther.



















And there's her house. I wouldn't mind living there and selling mangos.
























Today we had a Christmas picnic on the beach and then hiked a bit in the forest. Later we continued on to another little town at the end of the road, Afur. It was also in a very picturesque location, lush green mountainsides with a little waterfall in the middle. As we were driving out of the village, a girl was running along the street and motioning to her mouth. We stopped, rolled down the windows, and as soon as she saw us, exclaimed "Oh, ellas blancas, no hablan castellano!" ("Oh, you're white, you don't speak Spanish!") This absolutely cracked me up. I speak enough to understand that!