We Go to Vigo

Vigo, Spain, is a monumental city with a proud history.  I can say that because the city is full of monuments, and because they annually celebrate their victory over Napoleon with reinactments in the streets and parades.  They are so proud of being the first city to be liberated from Napoleon, that they have huge posters on the sides of buildings comparing the victory of their "football" team (with a losing record) over the French team.  The title says, "To Our Reconquest, Final Score 18-19."










Darrell took the included tour which went to a manor house with formal gardens and drove past several of the city's many monuments.

The gardens made a wonderful place to stroll and appreciate the flowers.  Not all the people spend time time enjoying the flowers.  Sports are a great attraction.  They built a new stadium with an unusual roof.









I saw Vigo from a Segway.  We traveled along the waterfront and up into the city center.  Later that day I walked part of the same route on foot to get some pictures.  I did not trust myself to take pictures while riding.  It was a much longer path on foot!




 






As you can see, our ship was right downtown, by the cruise terminal.  Travel is one of the city themes.  These statues represent businessmen traveling and families about to embark with friends saying good-bye.






Another theme is the sea and everything connected with it.  At one end of the waterfront, on Swimmer Street, a diver enters the water.  No, the statue did not fall over.  It is supposed to show him swimming. I did not walk to the other end of the street to see him getting out.





Fishing was one of the main occupations, so there is a monument to the fishermen.  Oyster farming also brings in so much money from the oyster farms that there is a whole street, appropriately named Oyster Street, where you can buy the freshest oysters and gobble them, raw, on the spot.

Oyster Street

Oyster farms in the bay.

Horses have some fascination, too.

Wild Horses

Note the horses on the roof.

Another statue high on a column in the heart of town is called "The Merman."  Some people objected to the cost, so the mayor gave them a less expensive statue, "The Vegosaur."  The people loved it, but also decided to have both statues.

The city is also famous for granite mining, especially pink granite.  Most of the buildings in the port area are made of granite.  As often happens in port cities, the area along the waterfront developed first.  Then, as the city grew, other areas became more popular, and the waterfront was abandoned to less savory activities.  Recently Vigo has had a drive to revive the waterfront with quite a bit of success, but there are still abandoned buildings waiting for the right business to come along and restore them.

There are two final connections with the sea.  Jules Verne mentions Vigo in "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea."  They made a statue of Jules Verne sitting on what loos to me to be an octopus.

When the Spanish were busy looting the New World, they sent the treasure back to Spain in fleets of treasure ships..  At same time Spain was having a little war with the English, the French and the Dutch.  Their navies were fighting up and down the coast of Spain. 

The "honorable"Admiral 

When one of the treasure fleets, the richest so far, was returning to Spain headed for Madrid, that harbor was under attack, so the diverted to Vigo.  The attackers learned of the new destination and blocked the fleet into the Vigo harbor.  There was no way out and doom seemed certain.  What to do?  The commander could surrender his ships, men and treasure and be treated as prisoners of war.  This would mean dishonor.  He is said to proclaim, "Better honor with no ships than ships with no honor," and promptly sank all the ships with the men and treasure aboard.  The treasure has never been found and lies in the bottom of Vigo harbor.

Casa-Blank-a

Casablanca was a blank.  We are skipping Casablanca, not because of any disturbance in the country, but because of a disturbance in the weather.  If we stopped in Casablanca on May 7 as planned, we would cross the Bay of Biscayne on May 8, just in time for a major storm.  By major, I mean 60 - 90 foot waves and wind over 80 mph.  Instead, we are going directly from the Canary Islands to Vigo, Spain, arriving on May 8 where we will spend a day before the crossing to Portsmouth, England, for a day there, and a day travel to London, arriving on May 10, as scheduled.

We hated to miss Morocco, but I would not like to tangle with the weather, and the Captain does not take chances with us and the ship.  We have not had much luck going to northern Africa.  On one trip, which we took specifically to go to Tunis and Algiers, both these cities were cancelled due to "unsafe political conditions."  Last year our itinerary included both Algeria and Tunisia, but we only went to
Algeria.  Again, Viking felt that it we would not go to Tunisia for the "safety of passengers and crew."

So, we travel on, with the added destination of Portsmouth.  We are delighted with that decision, not only because we do not like rough seas, but because we will be able to visit the Mary Rose Museum.  One of last year's speakers, Admiral John Lippiett, spoke highly of it.  He was the Director when the museum was built.  It took 437 years between the time the Mary Rose was sunk in Portsmouth harbor and it was finally rediscovered and raised.  Then it took 12 more years to "dry it out" and treat the wood to keep it from rotting away.

Bird Islands?

Nope.  The Canary Islands were not named after the birds.  In fact, some sources say that the yellow birds were named for the islands.  The most common story we have heard is that the islands, when first seen by the Romans, had a lot of wild dogs.  Since the Latin word for dog is canis,  the Romans called the island a name which, in English, translates to Canary Islands.  However, the other story says that a slang name for seals or sea lions in Latin translates to sea dogs.  It makes some sense, since a sea lion sounds more like a dog than a lion.

There are now eight islands in the Canary Islands group.  One more was recently added for some unknown reason.  There are only 50 people, no government, schools, banks, stores or much of anything else.

We landed on Tenerife, the largest island.  Incidentally, Grand Canary Island is the third largest.  Santa Cruz, the capital of this island was our starting point as we headed to explore the northern areas.  This eastern side is the dry side, but this area has lots of trees on the rugged mountains.  The roads heads up from sea level to about 4000 feet, climbing toward the rugged peaks.

The road started out as a freeway, but when we turned inland on our way to Taganana it narrowed considerably.  It was extremely winding and not wide enough in most places for a car and bus to pass.   Our big bus had to maneuver around the tight curves, even backing up to make several of the corners.  When we met a car, it took a lot of hand signals, backing and getting close to the mountain or the drop off to get by.  This is the anniversary of the first Portuguese landing on the island in the early 1400's and a national holiday, so there were a lot of cars and even some buses.

.  The valleys were steep and narrow with flat-roofed buildings squeezed into them.   Farmers had to build terraces to raise crops.  Many of the terraces have been abandoned as people found easier work than farming.  The rich volcanic soil is great for raising vegetables, even sugar cane.  There is a species of palm, the Canary Palm, which provides a sap which used as a sweetener.  They used to call it palm honey, but the EU is fussy about names, saying that only bees can make honey, so now they call it palm syrup.








In the little town we stopped to see a local church, but is only open on Sundays.  Then we went down to the coast to have a snack at a pub.  They served the local wine which was awful when I tasted it before we ate.  After a few bites of bread, goat cheese and green olives I tasted it again and it tasted much better.  The black sand beach in front of the hotel provided entertainment for a group of teens.  I am not sure of the purpose, but they were digging a deep hole.  This is not much of a swimming beach, rather one where surfers were trying to catch a ride on the waves.

The interior of the pub

On the front of the pub, a brief menu was in Spanish, French, German and Norwegian.

La Laguna and the (not seen) volcano in the background

Now it was time to go back up the windy roads into a "biosphere reserve."  This is is a forest with the type of trees which covered Europe thousands of years ago.  The ice age wiped out this type of vegetation on mainland Europe, but is still survives today on this island.  Hiking trails wind through the area making it a favorite for hikers and family outings.  There is a lookout where you should be able to see Spain's highest mountain in Spanish territory.  However, all we saw was clouds.







On our way back to Santa Cruz we drove by La Laguna, the second largest city and former capital.  Unfortunately, there was not time to go into the city and visit the church and other sights there.  Then back to the ship, passing the Opera House.

The Far West

The traffic coming into town (facing us)
is much worse on Mondays and Fridays.

We are about to leave the continent of Africa, at least for a while.  Senegal is as far west as you can go and still be in Africa.  Dakar, our port of entry, is one of the busiest ports in Africa.  Since it is the only African country which has not had a revolution or similar forced change of power since its independence, much of the shipping which would have gone through other ports closer to certain landlocked countries now goes through Dakar.  Our pier is in the industrial or cargo port, so we see the trucks lined up waiting to be loaded and container ships being loaded.  The cranes are not the same kind we have seen in other ports, but I guess they get the job done.

Rather than stay in a big city with massive traffic congestion we went out to a small village an hour and a half inland.  We passed by Lac Rosa, or Red Lake, on our way.  It did not look particularly red from the distance, but the microorganisms make the water appear red when you are close to it,  The water is several times saltier than the sea.  Salt is "mined" from small boats and piled on the bank for use as table salt and other uses such as road de-icing (not that that is much of a problem in this part of the world.)  During the 3 month rainy season the lake fills its borders.

We had to wait for the truck and the horse.

We drove through larger villages (or smaller towns) on our way to our destination.  The road was paved, but had lots of speed bumps, none of which were marked.  Thankfully our driver seemed to know where they were.  The road is shared by trucks of all sizes, buses, cars, horse or donkey drawn carts, motorcycles, cows, goats and people.  In the market areas stalls and shops line the streets with people wandering across the streets dodging the traffic.  Just about anything you can imagine is sold in these stores.

One of the larger market areas

The village Chief

The village chief greeted us when we got to his village.  "Chief" is an inherited job as is drummer and lion dancer (more later.)  Since a man may have up to 4 wives, he may also have many sons.  The next chief is not necessarily the eldest.  The village chooses the new chief from among his sons.  Thus began our journey through the village.  I could call it a trek, since the ground was several inches of very dry sand.

The village has electricity, but no running water, sanitary system, school or clinic.  The water table is fortunately quite high, so the village shares a 7 meter deep well.  It is covered, but all water is drawn up in a bucket, poured into containers and taken to the homes for drinking and cooking.  Once in a while they pour in some bleach.  

The kitchen

We saw a couple of family "compounds" where an extended family lived.  The first had a cement block family home, but the other buildings were more traditional.  There was an open sided shelter with a rug spread on the cement floor.  That was the dining room.

Exterior of the kitchen, showing typical construction

The family bath

The village laundromat

The interior of another house

This house had 2 sewing machines, but not much else.

The older children were at school and the men were working, either herding cattle or tending fields, so we only saw women and children except for the chief, the drummers and the lion dancer.

Next we were entertained by the women dancing for us to the beat of drums.  One woman would break out of the group and bounce around to the drums.  Then another would join her or replace her. One pulled up her traditional dress to reveal a pink beaded skirt.  I will say that these women, of all ages, sure knew how to move their bodies in ways that were designed to get them husbands.  They invited women from our group to join in the fun.

You may have wondered about the clothing of the women.  They are all Muslim, but do not wear the head scarf we are used to seeing.  Most women wore some kind of head covering, but not all of them.  Bright colors dominated, but some of the younger women or maybe teenagers had more Western looking dresses.  I saw no shorts or pants.

The lion dancer then made his appearance.  The lion dance, or "False lion dance," is a part of all ceremonies such as birth celebrations, weddings and funerals.  The young man in an elaborate lion costume dances, stalks, kicks and prowls around and among the guests.  Sometimes he paws or claws at the sand, raising clouds of dust.  He has exaggerated facial expressions aided by his makeup.

As we drove through the country we saw several baobab trees.  They are distinguished by the trunks which are fat at the bottom.  There are no leaves on these trees this time of year, but the leaves are edible.  They can live several hundred years.

We came back to the boat well before rush hour, but the traffic was heavy already.  People were standing by the median offering goods for sale.  They had water, cashews and a wide variety of household goods.  If anyone seemed even a little bit interested, they would keep pace with the car to try for a sale.  Some of them even walked between the lanes of cars to make sales.  Notice the motor scooters dodging between lanes.