La Isla Bonita

June 7th-14th, 2005: Our recent vacation started off in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago of seven volcanic islands located off the northwest coast of Africa. Strangely enough, La Palma is less popular with the tourists, due in large part to its black sandy beaches, which can become scorchingly hot. Madonna, however, recognized the merits of "la isla bonita" when she wrote her 1987 song of the same name. We loved La Palma's relative quite and managed to sucessfully navigate its black sand beaches. We stayed at Aviva's Aunt and Uncle's apartment in Puerto Naos, which was a stone's throw away from the beach and provided us with a wonderful homebase during our stay.

We also spent many evenings and afternoons at their lovely house in El Paso where we ate wonderful smoked goat cheese, drank lots of champagne and wine, swam in the pool, played with their adorable dogs, two Spanish Podencos named Fina and Benny, and raided the garden for "caped gooseberries" and sour cherries.

Although I attempted to do a bit of suntanning, my SPF 50 prevented me from losing my ghostly glow. My new freckles, however, stand as testament to my time in the sun.

The flowers in Doris and Horst's garden were amazing, full of birds of paradise, palm trees, and tons of colourful flowers.

Fred, Rita, Aviva, Me, Doris, Fina, and Horst: the only one missing from this group shot is Benny. He prefers hunting lizards to posing for pictures.

Fina and Benny greeted us warmly every time we arrived. Such lovely affectionate dogs. Aviva and I became so enamored with the breed that we contemplated adopting a Podenco puppy from the local shelter. We thought that a dog breed for the tropics might not appreciate the Rochester winter, however.