Beautiful La Palma

The island of La Palma is really something else. I have never been on an island before and it is so beautiful here. It is hard to tell where the sky stops and the water begins. We landed here Thursday afternoon and caught a bus out of Santa Cruz headed to our new home for the next two weeks. We transferred busses a few times taking us about two hours total to get here. The ride up was amazing. La Palma has this huge elevation climb approaching the center of the island, so the roads were just two lane highways with sharp switch backs. The hills are covered in massive banana plantations, something I had never seen before.

The directions to the farm were pretty straight forward. At one point the directions said to get off at kilometer marker 91 and walk 500 meters to an old cement road, that was a bit tricky, but we managed. The old cement road was a beast. It was the better part of a kilometer with a vertical grade of maybe 10% or so. With heavy backpacks it was quite the trek. We arrived tired and hungry to meet the neighbor of the woman we would be wwoofing for. She showed us around a bit and told us the other wwoofer would be home soon. A young lady from Barcelona showed up a little while later informing us that she would be leaving in the morning to return home. So very quickly she gave us the rundown on the place.

Turns out all we have to do here is feed the animals twice a day, and water the garden, only about two hours of work a day. The lady who owns the house and animals has been gone for quite some time, so the information has been passed down from wwoofer to wwoofer. No one has ever meet her, and we only talk to her via email. There are no pictures of her in the house so I'm not even very sure she is real.

The animals are fun. There are eight icelandic horses here and one of them is a baby. Icelandic horses are just very small horses. Seven to eight cats live here, most of them are kittens. There are three chickens and a bunny all living together in a hen house. The four dogs are all of small breeds with lots of energy. We also have a baby turtle in the living room.

The land we are on is small and rocky and has two houses. The horses have a good size area to live in but not really anywhere to ride. Zoey and I don't know how to ride but wish we could because they don't get any exercise. We don't even know how to go about walking them.

The water system is quit intriguing. There is a natural spring that the system is tapped into with two main tanks one for drinking and one for everything else. This is really the only thing I can learn that interests me while I'm here.

Other than that we have been staying at the house all day with nothing to do. There are some movies to watch and I have been downloading podcasts from Adam Carolla and 60 minutes on the blackberry. We are stuck because we are pretty much broke. The banks won't take American travelers checks, they have to be euro checks and we hardly have any Dollars to trade in. So we don't have any money for the bus into town or groceries. The bank card of Zoeys has been frozen for about a week now, and there is no way to really call Nevada to see why. At least we have a return ticket back to Spain. My cameras memory card is full so I can't take any pictures. Bummer. So we are hitch hiking into town once a day to try the card at the only atm only to return with an empty grocery bag.

Lucky for us the house has some pasta we have been living on along with some dried beens and lentils, but we were told that since the work was so light we had to buy our own food. The land offers squash, onions, some chard, some lettuce, small carrots, and some other fruit that is not ripe yet. We have been crafty with what we have, but it is hard without oil and butter and what not to cook with. But I do think I leveled up on my gathering skills. So we hope everyday the account thaws and we can eat and replace what we have eaten already. There are almond trees here so lunch has been about 50 almonds or so a day for me. I know all things happen for a reason, but what I should be learning is still a mystery. Any bible verses I should meditate on? (I only have a new testament with me)

We are still in good spirits, but awfully board. You can only pet a horse for so long, and we feel bad sitting in front of the tv all day.

Tomorrow is Monday, and again we will try to get some money. I will let you know if we do.