The Ride Of Our Lives

I have never been so frightened and nervous as I was today.  I was far more scared today than the time we jumped off the top of a mountain, paragliding in Colombia. 

Stan loves to rent a car and drive in every country we can. He is a talented driver.  I trust him explicitly.  Yesterday we rode a public bus to the southernmost tip of Gran Canaria.  Las Palmas is on the coast on the far northeast side of the island.  The bus ride from there to our farthest point out yesterday was 1.5 hours.

Today we rented a car and drove to the near-dead center of the island, half the distance we rode yesterday but more than twice the driving time.  We had three destinations in mind.  First, we wanted to hike the trail in Barranco de Los Cernicalos.  We thought it would be good for us.  Then we wanted to see great stone formations in the mountains, Roque Nublo and Roque Bentayga.  Afterward, we wanted to have lunch in nearby Artenara.  Draw a big circle in the center of Gran Canaria and that’s where we’d be.

Not long after leaving the flatlands along the coast, we began an ascent.  The nice wide roads gave way to smaller, narrower roads, then we were on even more narrow and winding roads with hard, sharp turns.  Google Maps does not instruct honking the horn, but paper maps indicate turns where drivers are advised to honk to warn on-coming cars in tight turns.  The first time Stan did that, it made me jump out of my seat!  The scenery was breathtaking but hazy with farms eking out irrigated crops of lemons, corn, potatoes, and grapes and with houses carved into the mountainside but the ride was awful.  The tight turns made me queasy.

Houses are built into the mountains.  We think excavators carve out a tunnel for casas;  a façade and some rooms are built on the outside but rooms inside the mountain are a constant cool.

We finally arrived at a point where we could reach the hiking trail.  Sadly, the next part of the way was a dirt uphill road that our tiny rented car-car (that’s what I call the tiny cars here) would not be able to manage.

I’ve often been reminded, “God works in mysterious ways.”  That heat wave and heavy haze we had been warned about arrived today.  Had we been able to reach the trail, we would have been hiking in extreme heat.  No Bueno!

We had no choice.   Our trek on the harrowing, narrow, winding mountain roads began once more.  As we made treacherous turns on the mountain’s edge overlooking clusters of homes alongside and down below, we often asked each other, how do people in villages like these exist up here in the hills and valleys of the mountains???  How do people make their living?  Later we were told that many of the mountain casas are weekend and vacation homes for the rich.  Well, that explains that! 

At one point Stan pulled off the road so I could take a photo.  As I got out of the car my balance was funky.  I realized I was dizzy from all the curves, turns, and deep drop-offs just off the pavement to my right.

Up, up, up we went, round and round in some rugged, arid territory.  We could see both Roque Bentaygo and Roque Nublo in the distance.  We wound around and round to reach Roque Nublo.  Several times along the way, we thought, this cannot be the way.  We reset Google Maps and it confirmed over and over again, that we were on the right path.

At Roque Nublo, the hike to the top looked easy, just about 1.5 km each way.  We failed to take into consideration the path is all uphill on hard-packed dirt, loose stone, and rock and that the temp was 40 degrees Celsius; that’s 104 degrees as we know it. We drank three bottles of water but we made it.  The rock formations are ungodly, formed by wind erosion – just think, at one time in the earth’s history, earth and sea surrounded these great tall stone monuments that stand right here still today.

I’ve never been hotter or more winded.  At the top, we were a just over mile above sea level.  We thought the air might be cool there but no!  It felt like we were close to the sun; I could sense my fat frying.

We had to drive more winding roads to get to Artenara.  The town was quaint but we passed through towns on the way up the mountain that were more charming.  Few people were out.  The air was hot. The restaurants were open for business but empty.  We had an ok lunch and a beer in a restaurant whose tunnel-like interior like many of the houses we saw, had been carved into the mountain. The pleasant natural air conditioning was very soothing.

When we started our return trip to Las Palmas, there were plenty of hours left in the day so we opted for the slightly longer, more scenic route home.  We hoped to see the ocean from the northern coast.

I’m not going into great details because it is almost too much to recap.  I prefer to forget it.  But I will say this, we found ourselves on a narrow one-lane road (a numbered GC highway) that looked more like a homeowner’s long, narrow private driveway, or a paved mule-cart path.  It zigged and zagged and made tight U-turns along the mountain’s very edge our car-car could hardly manage.  The car’s air conditioning had to be shut off now and then so we could power up some hills.  Sometimes we drove up a steep hill with nothing but sky in front of us, never knowing if there was a road on the other side.  Again and again, we said, this cannot be the right way!  But it was.

Mario, uhm, Stan, got us down out of those mountains.  It was an hour or so of sheer terror.  It was more harrowing than driving the old road to Hana or the bus ride from Sorento to Positano.  When we finally hit a decent flat highway even Stan said the only reason he kept going forward was that there was no place to turn around.

I have no photos from the harrowing drive.  I just could not be distracted from the road and the question as to whether we’d make it around the next curve. 

Thank you, God, for looking after us every day even when we do crazy things.