Stranded

We had a bit of adventure in our last week in La Gomera. Darren’s laptop caught a virus while we were in Valle Gran Rey and eventually the entire system seized up. All Darren needed was a Windows Vista disc to repare the damage, but La Gomera is not a particularly large or advanced place – everyone is quite happy with XP it appears. Peter and Anna pulled out all the stops to try to find a copy and found someone who could download it for us. When we went back to San Sebastian on Thursday it still had 3-4 days left to download. Not much use when we only had a couple more days on the island ourselves. The last ditch was to plead if we could borrow a copy from one of the many computer shops in San Sebastian, a plea which was reluctantly accepted. We agreed to meet Peter in a bar as he had a little shopping to do, and after 10 minutes we headed off to the bar with a slightly more (if not fully) functioning laptop.

An hour later we wondered where Peter had got to. Surely he hadn’t forgotton about us? Darren went to check if the car was still there and it had gone! In a panic we headed to a phonebox to call Anna who said Peter had called her wondering where we were as well. Back to the bar where we waited another hour, but still no lift. Another call to El Cedro and Peter had just got home – he’d searched everywhere for us and must have just come passed the bar where we were waiting when we were making our phonecall!

So we were stranded. It was too late to eat, but we managed to get a bed in a hotel for the night. Santa Cruz de Tenerife were selecting their Carnaval Queen on a local TV channel, so this gave us a taster for next week. The next morning we found that the first bus back to the centre of the island was at 11am, so we allowed ourselves a leisurely walk around the town, got some breakfast and sent some postcards. The bus journey was fantastic. It is 15km as the crow flies from San Sebastian in the east to Valle Gran Rey on the west coast, but the road winds for 50km up towards the peak of Garajonay. San Sebastian is a very pretty little town to look down on. An hour later we alighted at Parajitos and braced ourselves for the 7km walk back. It was more or less all downhill and meant we had another chance to take in some more breathtaking views. This was actually a much more picturesque walk than the one we had taken to the top before, and we could see Gran Canaria from some viewpoints as well as some jaw-dropping ravines.

We got back at 2pm, freshened up and headed to work, ever so slightly late. We felt we ought to put in a few hours (otherwise we’d be working all day Saturday!) I was so tired and upset the night before, I found it quite unbelievable that such an amazing day could have come from our little misunderstanding.
Peter and Anna have been excellent hosts. They are both fantastic cooks (which always goes down well with us) and we’ve been treated to many German specialities. There’s only so much seclusion that we can take though and we have a couple of weeks “on holiday” in cities to balance all this peace and quiet we’ve had, starting with Carnaval today in Santa Cruz de Tenerife!