HAPPY NEW WEEK!
I hope everyone has a joyful and peaceful week!
OG – Without the magnificent old buildings would tourists flock in such numbers? Even if they are restorations. I admired cities in Europe that had been WWII damaged and restored. I doubt I would look twice at modern glass & concrete boxes!
Summer won’t go away. Vineyards & stubble burnt in bushfire in Clare Valley today, no houses. Why was anyone doing a “controlled burn” today when it was hot and windy?
The To Do List looks much better, Heather. My OH helped with some of them! He's a good egg! He feels OK now, incidentally, after a couple of days with a queasy stomach. We hope to leave here on Thursday lunchtime, after golf, of course!! I'm sure G's husband is still in a state of shock, even though she had been ill for some months. They had been married since 1975, so a long time together. I would not be surprised if she had not given him a pep talk when she was ill, saying "Don't mope, when the time comes, get on with life", which would be typical of her. I miss her very much of course. 20 times a day I think "I must tell her about that......." Very sad about Notre Dame, it makes you wonder as there are now reports that some had predicted problems if there was any kind of fire, but nothing was done about the danger of it. At least some of the very special and old artefacts were saved.
AQ, enjoy your little holiday from Nanny duty, as has been said!
More holiday pics:
Doesn't look like much, but this is the Salt Museum on the East coast of the island: the salt has been reclaimed from the sea in a very old manner for many years. Of course, the modern desalination plant does a better job, which they use for the opposite purpose, to gain fresh water for use generally, but the salt was a precious commodity in the old days and is still collected now.
View of the large salt pans, which are always in various stages: the salt takes some days to dry out in the sun, then is collected with large shovels. The white building was a storage barn for the salt originally.
Next to the barn is a whale skeleton, similar to the one I posted a couple of years ago from another location. This one is huge! but we didn't walk all the way across to see it so don't know how big.
The modern exhibition building on the site: made from local volcanic stonework and inside, actual rooms showing how the people who worked the salt lived and what they wore, etc. Also some geological explanations.
The rope in the foreground is a barrier to our going too near. The rocks are dangerous, but the sea comes in with a flourish, and hurls itself at the land with determination. This is how they used to gather it in. In this picture and the one below you can see the channel made (to the right of the picture) for the water to flow naturally downwards and along to the salt plans shown earlier. No water wheel or other mechanism was needed, just the right kind of construction to let the water flow to where they wanted it.
I waited for several minutes, and even missed a couple of good waves, to get a good pic of the surf as it flew up: it then fills a small basin cut into the rock and flows away from the sea.
This is where it flows to. In the foreground on the wall, is a little "chipmunk" or ground squirrel which is also common in other parts of the island. He's running back and forth as a man is offering food.
Only caught a back view of him as he ran past....!
The cafe at the side of the main building, and the arty gardens.
Back at the entrance, some kind of art installation but there was no explanation of it to be found!
I reckon that's a Barbary Squirrel, Lindy. Cute little guys aren't they, always popping out of walls. Not sure if there are any other squirrel species on Fuerteventura.
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Tony
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