Day at the beach...

Tonight’s blog is going to be short because we just got home at 2 am and we have to get up for Spanish lessons at 8.

Ingolf picked us up this morning and drove us to Nautical Club Puerto Colon for a relaxing morning at the pool. Chris and Catherine worked out while Carla and I laid by the pool. The club was near a beach so after a quick nap and a couple of laps in the pool, we walked out near the beach. Catherine bargained with some of the local shop owners for beach towels and we took a stroll on the nice black sand beach.
After a shower, we met up with Bert who had been to coffee with Father David, a priest from Zimbabwe and the only married Catholic priest in Spain (short version of a long story: An Anglican pastor, he fled Zimbabwe with his wife after he was considered an enemy of the state and almost murdered. Then he went to find a new country to practice his religion in and became a Catholic priest who is married). We all headed over to the Hotel Gran Tinerfe where we met Rafael, the president-elect of the Tenerife Sur Club and directing manager of a few of the H10 hotels in this area. Rafeal treated us to a wonderful meal out on a nice boardwalk overlooking the ocean. We had paella (this time different with noodles instead of rice) and some kind of new coffee drink with liquor for dessert.
After lunch, we got a tour of the town hall area where our new friend Nelson, the youngest judge in all of Spain, showed us around his quarters. Nelson is a very humble guy but it very unique. He has written eight books that have been translated into many languages and is very knowledgeable in the history of the island. He walked us through some of the cases that he typically hears and showed us a few examples. The last thing that he did which impacted us all was walk us down to the jail area where over 96 immigrants were being held because they have washed up on shore over the past days. The news in the area has been talking about over 1000 people washing up on the shores of the islands over the past five days. These are immigrants who are washing up on shore in small rafts trying to gain entry into Europe for work from the African nation. These are people who come with no national papers and can not be identified. The law states that they must be arrested and prosecuted but with no identification documents, Nelson says that they must be held for forty days while the authorities try to identify which country they are from and try to extradite them…He says that most are set free after 40 days because either the countries don’t want them back or there is no way to identify them. Huge problem. As we all looked at these people, many starving, others sick from Malaria, AIDS and tropical measles, we all realized how lucky we were to be born in a great country like the US where we are afforded many things. The smell was terrible. It looked as if each person had been given clothes by the authorities with numbers written on their chest. There were interpreters there to help process the court paperwork. The whole atmosphere was a scary one and made most of us understand the importance of our nation. This experience really opened our eyes in a tremendous way.
After an experience that I will never forget, we were taken to the town of Adeje, one of the oldest towns in the islands. Nelson wrote one of his books about the history of this area and knew everything there was to know about this small agriculture center. We walked around the convent as we got our history lessons and ended up in the church where we got an all access tour of the place. Nelson then led us to the top of the hill where we saw a fortress that the largest landowner had built to protect from pirates in the olden days. The history lesson continued at the local restaurant where the conversation turned to politics. Catherine against the whole table was the theme of the evening and some very healthy conversation was had. No one won but since I am the editor of the blog, I guess I can say that I won the argument. After some dessert, that I plan to find and import to the US (a hollowed out orange filled with orange sherbet), we were returned to our host families.
Just when we thought the night was over, Catherine, Carla, Nelson, Ingolf and I decided to head back out for a drink…or two. We ended up in the bar Magic where we sat around the plush couches and discussed current events.
Around 2 am, we called it a night and headed in. Tomorrow (or I guess it is today) is moving day…