Flowers in the rain!

Touchdown at Las Palmas airport and the passengers walk down the steps to the bus. The shock at the temperature is audible, and no-one is dressed for this! Cabo Verde wasn't paradise, but it was sunnier than this!

Greyrocks had booked a four night stay next to the city's main and glorious Las Canteras beach. An easy and cheap transfer by Global bus and city guagua took us to the hotel, where we saw on the reception desk several print-outs from the meteo website highlighted to show that the next two days (a weekend) had orange storm warnings:- wind, rain and rough sea conditions. The hotel room was comfortable and had fast internet (at last!). It had also been chosen for proximity to the promenade, a bath-tub, and a roof-top swimming pool area. Ruth tried the bath and discovered it was too soon in the recovery for her to sit down, and clearly sunbathing - let alone swimming - was out of the question; but at least our favourite restaurant was close by, so we ate there, paid too much for a bottle of wine from the local shop and had a quiet evening of TV!

Ready for Carnaval, or just our usual?

The owner of our hotel in CV lives in Las Palmas and told us that we would be catching the very beginning of the carnival. We set off on the Saturday morning to find out more and discovered that its main static location - Santa Catalina Park - was closed to buses, but that the theme was "Flower Power". That appealed to Greyrocks much more than our local upcoming one of "Science and Inventions"! We walked quite a way round the shopping area, made a purchase in the Lighting department of El Corte Ingles, and took the bus down to San Telmo (the other half of the city!). The sun came out and we enjoyed alcohol-free beers in the park, but it didn't last! By late afternoon it was grey and very cold. An attempt at a long walk down the prom was abandoned and we ate (pretty well) close to the hotel. As we did we saw that it was raining heavily, so it was dash back!

Sunday's weather was atrocious! From the windows of the high breakfast room the view of familiar landmarks was obscured and the sea looked treacherous. Our hotel has seen more glorious times and has a vast "Cafeteria" on the ground floor. After hours of lurking in our room we decided we would go there, but found it closed with only Scandies playing cards and a vending machine! So we girded loins and ran across the road to a humble bar. We were the only foreigners there, many of the rest being single older men tucking in to a very cheap "menu del dia". After one small beer we decided to join in, and declared this to be our Sunday dinner. (Hearty soup, paella  for one and ropa vieja for the other, coffee and and a glass of wine! Great value and shelter from the storm! Nothing more needed for the evening

Monday was somewhat better, so we took the No1 guagua again and wandered round Triana before coming back to Canteras for a tapas lunch beside the sea. "This is much more like it!".  We ate again at the favourite haunt, and flew home next day to hear tales of how Fuerte had suffered a storm over the weekend!