Tomorrow, Flying Fish sets sail for the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The excitement of an imminent departure has my body and mind vibrating with anticipation. One more ocean ahead.
Onboard for this passage is the inimitable Ginny Stones, mother, dog lover, lawyer, sailor, and my life partner. We haven’t seen a lot of each other in the four years that I have been sailing Flying Fish. I have sailed alone for much of this voyage. Along the way, Ginny has caught up with Flying Fish for visits in Panama and Papeete, New Zealand and Sardinia, but this will be our longest period of time together onboard. Change is good.
Our routing for this passage is Gran Canaria to Antigua, approximately 3,000 miles. Rather than follow a great circle route, we will first head south to the latitude of Dakar before turning west to find the northeast tradewinds. The weather will be erratic during our first week with a strong gale and building seas developing to the north and deep pockets of calm air settled in to the south. Once near the Cape Verde Islands, the forecasting changes to show the consistent east-to-west prevailing winds that will carry us to the Caribbean. If all goes well, the passage will take 18-21 days, and that should give Ginny and me plenty of time to become reacquainted.
There is also a space on that tracking page for passage notes, which I will post daily via satellite. Click the box, Legends and Blogs, for our thoughts and observations as we cross the ocean. Unfortunately, the low bandwidth of the satellite will not allow me to respond to your comments until we reconnect to WiFi again in Antigua.
Thank you for sharing this journey with us. Onward!
Sailing is not just about the wind and the sea; equally important are the places where Flying Fish carries me, and the flora, fauna, and people I encounter along the way.
Please click “Follow” at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update,- and please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish. I welcome your comments, andI will always respond when I have an Internet connection. I will never share your personal information.
You can follow the daily progress of Flying Fish, boat speed (or lack thereof), and current weather as I sail into the Atlantic by clicking this satellite uplink: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish. A Bonus: Click the “Legends and Blogs” box on the right side of the tracking pagefor passage notes while I am sailing offshore.
Memory is the product of physical sensation, and what we taste, smell, hear, touch, and see forms the record of our life. The island of Lanzarote, so unique in every aspect, triggers each of the five sensations and maps them onto our brain’s cortex. As I set sail from Lanzarote this morning, I need only close my eyes to relive the past month on this idiosyncratic island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Gustatory, the sense of taste–At Arrieta, the succulent flavor of a grilled fish, still simmering, is served on the sand next to the sea. Along the Ruta de Los Volcanes, a chicken roasts over the raw-earth heat of an open volcanic fissure.
Olfactory–Before the first drops of a young Malvasía Volcánica reach my tongue, the aromatic mineral notes of this brilliant La Geria wine fill my head. Even Shakespeare’s characters longed for a “cup of canary.”
Auditory–Sunday morning church bells ring in the Haría Artesanal announcing the opening of the artisans market.
Somatosensory–In a Guatiza garden, the sensuous touch of a single finger moving along the velvet-textured leaves of aloe and agave terminates in a skin-piercing spine. It’s the age-old seduction of pleasure and pain.
Visual–In the historic quarter of the Villa de Teguise, a pretty girl in a colorful dress seeks shade against a whitewashed wall.
Sailing is not just about the wind and the sea; equally important are the places where Flying Fish carries me, and the flora, fauna, and people I encounter along the way.
Please click “Follow” at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update,- and please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish. I welcome your comments, andI will always respond when I have an Internet connection. I will never share your personal information.
You can follow the daily progress of Flying Fish, boat speed (or lack thereof), and current weather as I sail into the Atlantic by clicking this satellite uplink: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish. A Bonus: Click the “Legends and Blogs” box on the right side of the tracking pagefor passage notes while I am sailing offshore.
An irony of Canary Island cacti is that, despite being a ubiquitous part of this island’s landscape, not a single variety of cactus originated here. Nearly all of them came from the Americas. They are travelers, like me. They want to be here. When the Spaniards brought the plants to the Canaries from the New World, it was as if the cacti said to this scorched earth, “Where have you been all of my life?” The climate is perfect for Cactaceae. It is arid and windy with hot sun and cool night air, and the black volcanic soil is an ideal medium for a cactus. In addition to grapevines and date palms, cacti are nearly the only other natural thing on the island of Lanzarote colored green. And the cacti are not just green; they also show hues of red, purple, pink, and yellow. Volcanoes turned much of this island into shades of burned toast. The cacti arrived in a rainbow of color.
Cacti are sustainable visitors. They don’t consume resources (irrigation). They literally squeeze water from stone and then hold it during long periods of drought with brilliant biology that includes a wax-like skin layer and water-retaining cell membrane. And what use is a cactus, you ask? Aside from being a beautiful plant (see below), their fruit–the prickly pear–is a delicious and important food source in the Canary Islands. (You haven’t lived until you have eaten a freshly grilled red snapper on the beach served with prickly pear salsa.) More importantly, the Opuntia variety of cacti produces a commodity to Lanzarote that was once equal to the value of gold and silver. Inconceivably, it originated in the form of a wingless female parasite called cochineal.[1]
“…one of the most precious products to come out of the West Indies is the cochineal, a commodity equal to gold and silver.”
–King Felipe III, 1620
Like an aphid or mealybug, the cochineal insect buries its proboscis into the fleshy leaves of the prickly pear cactus and satiates itself on the plant’s moisture and nutrients. As the parasite grows, it absorbs a red pigment that, when processed, becomes carmine. Carmine dye was used by Aztecs and Mayans as early as the second century BC. Cities conquered by Montezuma in the 15th century paid their yearly tributes in bags of cochineal dye.[2] After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, cochineal was exported to Spain, and by the 17th century, it was a commodity traded around the world. Cochineal dye became Mexico’s second-most valued export after silver.[3] Dye pigments produced from the cochineal insect gave the Catholic cardinals their vibrant robes and the English “Redcoats” their distinctive uniforms. The dried bugs parts were so highly prized that cochineal was regularly quoted on the London and Amsterdam Commodity Exchanges. Large-scale production of cochineal emerged, especially in Latin America and the Canary Islands.[4]
Today, dry cochineal powder is currently selling online for as much as $500 per kilo. It takes about 80,000 to 100,000 insects to make one kilogram of cochineal dye, and the Canary Islands produces some 20 tons per year.[5] The carmine dye from Lanzarote’s plants and elsewhere is primarily used as a colorant in cosmetics and food. The water-soluble form of cochineal is included in the ingredients of a wide variety of products, including processed meats, ketchup, alcoholic drinks, juice beverages, candies, and dairy products. There was a brouhaha 10 years ago when customers discovered that Starbucks was using cochineal insect dye to make their Strawberry and Creme Frappuccino. After the inevitable headlines, Starbucks reconsidered its recipe and announced it no longer colors its coffee drinks with bugs.
I had my first taste of cactus at Lanzarote’s stunningly beautiful Jardín de Cactus in the northeastern village of Guatiza. The café there specializes in green prickly pear burgers (from locally-grown cactus) served in a carmine-red sesame seed bun with a glass of freshly-squeezed cactus juice. Yum! The Lanzarote Cactus Garden is a botanical wonderland in an abandoned picon (volcanic soil) mine at the heart of the island’s prickly pear plantations. The garden has over 4,500 specimens of cactus and other succulents, including 450 different species originating from five continents. The creation of Jardín de Cactus was the final inspiration of Lanzarote’s favorite son, environmental artist César Manrique, who died shortly after the garden was inaugurated. The garden and its integration of artistic creativity into the environment was an essential part of Lanzarote being named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1993.
The images below were made from the Jardín de Cactus and other locations on Lanzarote. For you botanists in the crowd, several photos show Euphorbaicea instead of Cactaceae (can you pick them out?) because, like many things in nature, these plants are too beautiful to be ignored.
Click on any thumbnail photo below to be directed to a carousel of high-resolution, full-frame images that include data and camera settings.
Special thanks: Antonio Manuel Martín Santos, Lanzarote Jardín de Cactus, for help with plant identification
Sailing is not just about the wind and the sea; equally important are the places where Flying Fish carries me, and the flora, fauna, and people I encounter along the way.
Please click “Follow” at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish. I welcome your comments, andI will always respond when I have an Internet connection. I will never share your personal information.
You can follow the daily progress of Flying Fish, boat speed (or lack thereof), and current weather as I sail into the Atlantic by clicking this satellite uplink: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish. A Bonus: Click the “Legends and Blogs” box on the right side of the tracking pagefor passage notes while I am sailing offshore.
Charco de los Clicos, Lanzarote — If only I had been here 57 years ago… I might have seen Raquel Welch emerging from this green lagoon, her breasts spilling out of a fur bikini, only to be snatched from the beach by a carnivorous Pteranodon and flown to its nearby nest where the distraught “Loana the Fair One” was to be fed to the pterosaur’s offspring.
Ah, well, timing is everything.
Much of the 1966 cinematic fantasy, One Million Years B.C., was filmed in Lanzarote, including the epic green lagoon scene. The location director deserved an Oscar for choosing this island. If I blinked today and saw a 200-pound flying reptile swoop down out of the volcanic rocks to carry away a tourist climbing out of a tour bus, it would all seem perfectly normal. A million years and this place is still prehistoric.
The island of Lanzarote bubbled up from a hot spot in the ocean 15 million years ago as plate tectonics transformed the earth. It has been nearly three centuries since the last major volcanic eruption and much of the island is unchanged. A dry climate and lack of erosion–and the protection of the spectacular Timanfaya National Park–have left the landscape pristine (translation: burnt to a crisp). NASA used this otherworldly topography to train the Apollo 17 crew.
Despite the current and severe volcanic activity on the Canary Island of La Palma 200 miles to the west, Lanzarote is known as the “Island of Volcanoes.” There are over 100 volcanic craters on this island that measures only 37 miles north to south. During the eruptions here in the 1730s, which lasted six years, the island grew by several square miles. Flames were visible 130 miles away and smoke hung in the air while lava and ash covered large areas of the island. Lives were lost, homes destroyed, and residents were plunged into years of darkness.[1]
The Green Lagoon is one of the volcanic craters that formed during these powerful eruptions. The Atlantic Ocean eroded the western side of the cone flooding the crater with seawater. A berm of black volcanic rock and coarse sand now separates the lagoon from the ocean. Ancient lava tubes and underground fissures circulate the water. Charco de los Clicos was once home to a thriving colony of shellfish known locally as clicos (thus the name) until someone put a pair of turtles into the lagoon, and they devoured every last clico. Now the lagoon is inhabited by phytoplankton, microscopic marine algae, which gives the water its distinctive emerald green hue.
The Charco de los Clicos is a Natural Reserve bordering Timanfaya National Park. Regulations forbid swimming… unless, of course, you are Loana the Fair One and you come attired in a fur bikini.
Sailing is not just about the wind and the sea; equally important are the places where Flying Fish carries me.
Please click “Follow” at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish. I welcome your comments, andI will always respond when I have an Internet connection. I will never share your personal information.
You can follow the daily progress of Flying Fish, boat speed (or lack thereof), and current weather as I sail into the Atlantic by clicking this satellite uplink: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish. A Bonus: Click the “Legends and Blogs” box on the right side of the tracking pagefor passage notes while I am sailing offshore.
Aboard Flying Fish, I sense the Rock before I even see it. Gibraltar remains hidden by dense fog until Flying Fish is just a few hundred meters offshore. Then, the Rock appears like a specter off the starboard bow. Huge and close. I have frequently felt the presence of places I have visited on this voyage, but few affect me as powerfully as seeing this monolith emerging from the foggy Mediterranean Sea. A Gibraltar landfall is a rite of passage for many ocean sailors.
Neanderthals walked here, as did the Cro-Magnons. Arriving later were the Phoenicians, Goths, Moors, Romans, and centuries of European powers. Overlapping many of those civilizations, one group of survivors remained established on the Rock–Gibraltar’s Barbary Ape.
The “Ape” is an Old World monkey species, a Barbary macaque, originating in the Atlas and Rif Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, 20 kilometers across the Strait of Gibraltar. Some scientists speculate that the monkeys may also be related to macaques that migrated 5 million years ago across southern Europe. Regardless of their lineage, Gibraltar’s Barbary macaques are iconic to the Rock. Wrote historian Alonso Hernanández del Portillo of Gibraltar in the early 1600s: “There are monkeys, who may be called the true owners, with possession from time immemorial.”[1]
I cannot sail past the Rock of Gibraltar without reacquainting myself with this wild band of free-roaming monkeys I first met some 45 years ago. Much has changed, but the Barbary macaques are still the main attraction in Gibraltar.
A popular belief holds that as long as the macaques exist on Gibraltar, the territory will remain under British rule.[2] In 1942, after the macaque population dwindled to just seven monkeys, Winston Churchill ordered their numbers be replenished from North Africa (in the midst of World War II and Rommel’s Afrika Korps). The monkeys became so important to Gibraltar’s interests that until 1991 their care was entrusted to the British Army, and later, the Gibraltar Regiment. A “Keeper of the Apes” maintained up-to-date records for each macaque, listing births and names and supervising their diet. The War Office in 1944 gave the macaques a food budget of £4 a month for fruit, vegetables, and nuts. Each macaque was issued a serial number with its name. The Gibraltar Chronicle would announce births: “Rock Apes. Births: To Phyllis, wife of Tony, at the Upper Rock, on 30th June 1942— a child. Both doing well.” The names would often be associated with someone of stature in British society, like Elizabeth, named for the Queen, or Winston, for Churchill. If Elizabeth or Winston, or any ill or injured monkey needed surgery or medical attention they were taken to Royal Naval Hospital in Gibraltar, where they received the same treatment as an enlisted serviceman.[3] Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, along with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, met the Barbary Apes while visiting Gibraltar in 1954. A photograph shows the Queen and royal family happily feeding the macaques.
About 250 macaques remain on the Rock. Although the human population of Gibraltar numbers only 34,000 people, this tiny territory of 6.8 square kilometers recorded 11 million visitors in 2019 (pre-COVID). It is one of the highest tourist-to-resident ratios in the world, and many of those visitors come to co-mingle with the free-roaming Barbary Apes. These days if the Queen fed a macaque in Gibraltar, she (or anyone else) could be fined £4,000. That penalty, however, doesn’t stop tourists from acting badly.
Early one morning, I pack a bag of cameras and climb to the top of the Rock at Prince Philips Arch, where I hope to see a troop of Barbary macaques. When I arrive, there is already a gridlock of taxi vans disgorging a mob of tourists insistent on capturing selfies with a monkey. Prince Philips Arch is in the Gibraltar Upper Rock Nature Reserve, an official feeding station for the macaques, and it is stocked today with carrots, corn, and watermelon. The monkeys, however, are more focused on the bags of snack food, candy bars, and surreptitious peanuts in the possession of the tourists. There are squeals of delight every time a macaque jumps on somebody’s head or unzips a backpack. Two young men speaking Russian tease the macaques with a peanut butter sandwich. The men are shirtless and sunburned, and possibly drunk because one man slaps the open face of his sandwich onto the bare back of his buddy, and they howl with laughter as the macaques go berserk and chase them.
Tourism reached its peak in Gibraltar in 1985, when, after years of hostilities with Spain, the border finally reopened. A flood of visitors poured onto the Rock. Some 45,000 people entered Gibraltar within the first week, increasing to over 10,000 per day. Within six months, a million people had visited. By 1986, five million visitors a year were arriving in Gibraltar. Nearly everyone who came wanted to see the Barbary Apes. To make room for visitors’ cars on Gibraltar’s crowded roads, 1,000 old vehicles were rounded up in Gibraltar and pushed off the cliffs into the sea at Europa Point on the southern tip of the territory.[4] The number of macaques rapidly increased as a result of illegal feeding by tourists. It also led to an increase in aggressive behavior as the monkeys associated humans with junk food. The problem culminated in 2008 with the Government of Gibraltar ordering the culling of a rogue troop of monkeys that was breaking into hotel rooms and scavenging garbage cans. Researchers and animal rights activists protested the cull, but the Government justified it because overly aggressive monkeys would frighten tourists and damage the economy.[5]
More recently, the Government of Gibraltar says it is making efforts to crack down on human interactions with the macaques, including daily patrols and microchips in the monkeys. In addition to fines for feeding the macaques, a new law was passed last year, making it an offense to touch or interfere in any way with the monkeys. In the 20 hours over several days that I recently spent among the monkeys in Gibraltar’s Upper Rock Nature Reserve, I saw many tourists feeding, touching, and interfering with the macaques. Not once did I see any official presence or enforcement of the tourist misbehavior.
Later, I hike to an isolated promontory above Europa Point, between what the Athenian philosopher Plato called the “Two Pillars of Hercules”–the Atlas Mountains of Africa to the south and the Rock of Gibraltar to the north. I think of the prehistoric description of this piece of land by Gibraltar Museum evolutionary biologist Clive Finlayson: “While the rest of Europe was cooling, the area around Gibraltar back then resembled a European Serengeti. Leopards, hyenas, lynxes, wolves and bears lived among wild cattle, horses, deer, ibexes, oryxes and rhinos – all surrounded by olive trees and stone pines, with partridges and ducks overhead, tortoises in the underbrush and mussels, limpets and other shellfish in the waters.”
Gibraltar’s Barbary Apes are survivors in a rapidly changing world. Among the dense pines above Europa Point, I watch a troop of macaques interact, away from the melee of tourists. They forage naturally and groom each other, a sign of reduced stress. I watch a female macaque nurse an infant while a male moves close to gently participate in the parenting. This idyllic scene has me questioning whether my presence among the macaques also makes me part of the problem. I may not torment the monkeys with peanut butter, but I am, along with millions of other visitors, encroaching upon the space of a wild thing that was here first. I wonder: How can humans learn to interact with less impact and more equitably share this natural world?
In an 1887 satire by Jules Verne, the Spaniard Gil Braltar invades the Rock with a macaque troop after disguising himself as one of them. Drawn by George Roux. Credit: Public Domain
References:
[1] “Historia de la Muy Noble y Más Leal Ciudad de Gibraltar,” Alonso Hernanández del Portillo(1605-1610)
[2] “The Curious Caseof the Last ‘Wild’ Monkeys in Europe,” Atlas Obscura, Dan Nosowitz, 2019
[3] “Gib Monkeys,” Internet Archive, 2011, Wikipedia
[4] “Gibraltar: British or Spanish?” Peter Gold 2012, Wikipedia
[5] “Tourism Management: An Introduction,” Clare Inkson, Lynn Minnaert, 2012, Wikipedia
Sailing is not just about the wind and the sea; equally important are the places where Flying Fish carries me.
Please click Follow at the bottom of this page so that you don’t miss a new update, and please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy following the voyage of Flying Fish. I welcome your comments. I will always respond when I have an Internet connection. And I will never share your personal information.
You can follow the daily progress of Flying Fish, boat speed (or lack thereof), and current weather as I sail into the Mediterranean by clicking this satellite uplink: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish. Click the “Legends and Blogs” box on the right side of the tracking pagefor en route Passage Notes.
Flying Fish 