A moment's reflection...

It's been nearly two weeks in port. Tied to the finger mooring in Puerto Tazacorte. The days coming and going easy, I feel the time is coming to move on. In Los Llanos de Aridane I went to the dentist no less than three times. The first time with grating de humanising tooth ache and the other visits for continuation of my root canal treatment. The visits to the dentist were like a salve to my psyche as the kindness and intimate attention was showered upon me in the climate of the cessation of my pain. My stay here has found me walking the local byways, seeing the old shacks that are built into the caves in the side of the cliffs. Plantations replete with banana plants that are coming to fruition in the coming weeks. Dried up river beds and dusty tracks winding along terraces and through the folds of the mountains. Pastel colored houses with brown windows and red clay tiled roofs. The breaking ocean on the beach of black sand and rounded pebbles that I can hear every night from my boat.  

I have spent a little time reworking and reorganising the insides of my vessel. Building bookshelves and a dedicated locker for a grab bag in case of emergency evacuation at sea. It is a joy to work with wood in this climate as glues and varnishes dry super quickly and speed up the process. I've had a de clutter and chucked a few bagfulls of stuff, no doubt I will need those things in a week's time, is that not always the way? I've taken some boat berthing lessons with a swarthy and gruff man's man local skipper. It was an interesting approach to instruction. He berthed the boat, he let me have a go. I messed it up, he took over, he berthed the boat! To his credit, he was an absolute maestro and he could park Aisling on a sixpence and I was very grateful that he gave up his time for me. He has shown me that it is possible to achieve what I thought was an impossibility. In conditions of zero wind, I have managed to reverse into my berth on several occasions. Practicar, más practicar!!! I have had some nice neighbours in the marina, most of them from sweden, they are a chatty and sociable lot and akin with others I meet, seem to have a very strong sense of national identity which I guess is a pre requisite to small talk, but one that I find a little tiresome. I'm not English, you are not Swedish, we are just...people? I travelled to the centre of the earth with another intrepid adventurer. I learned that "Together we can" which came into a sharp focus as we tackled a route ascending a narrow and deep barranco that neither of us would have attempted alone. I received a glimpse one morning, that we are all connected, that there is nothing I need to do, to achieve happiness, because I am already there. It was one of those profound realisations that leave a slightly bitter taste when the filter slams back down firmly into place and the next day I spent feeling a little deflated and despondent. I plan to leave this place on Monday. This weekend I return to the mountain. Me and a friend will ascend the peak and stay up there the night. La Palma is a special island for seeing the stars and has a relatively low level of light pollution. Hopefully it will be clear. It's 4 degrees at night so we are going to wrap up warm. So, next week, I will leave. Another place that I have formed a little attachment to. This I fear, will be in the nature of my travels. I was going to go to Cabo Verde, a small group of islands about 900 miles south south west of here. But now I am casting my eye slightly to the east, to the African mainland, specifically The Gambia. A ribbon of land that lies along a river in the western section of Senegal. Maybe there will be less Swedish and German people there and my curiosity to stray from the well trodden track is peeking my interest. The beauty of this trip is that I have freedom to have this degree of flexibility in my schedule and a wanderlust in my heart that is ready to dive in.