Interiors, exteriors

We tried to go up into the heights yesterday but a chill fog built up as we drove up. It got darker, colder and mistier as we went. Stopping for a coffee in a small local caff along the way we scuttled inside to the warmth. Although it wasn't much past 10am, someone had just finished their breakfast of stewed goat. The walls were decorated with bits a pieces of an old donkey plough, and some stylish prints of what the peasants looked like in the 19th century. The men were ragged, and the women wearing variously arranged striped fabric evidently made in panels no more than two feet wide. The coffee - as everywhere - was delicious. We heard the other day that someone has opened a Starbucks on Tenerife - and you have to wonder why.  A too-big mug costs quite a few euros, whereas the delicious indigenous coffee in a small glass or cup is 1.50 at most, and probably only one euro. 
Further up we stopped and strolled around another village, wandered round a tat shop and chatted to a beefy British cyclist from Yorkshire. He said his wife liked reading books and sitting about so she spends her holidays by the pool 'down there' and he spends his holidays wearing Lycra and pushing up lto the top of Teide every day and then coasting back down again. The municipal building in the centro historico was a gem, with proud balcony out front and lovely wooden staircase within - not open to the public but the young man working inside let us wander round to look.   There are a lot of houses for sale, also shops, bars, even hotels.  At a garage a roar of motorbikes assembled, a gang of locals out for a jolly spree. They yelled at each other over the din of al their engines revving and snarling. They were having a very nice time.   It reminded me, Paul had told us, on the ferry to la Gomera, all the announcements are made in Spanish, then English, and then in the local whistling language which is how the Gomerans still communicate. This as much as anything else makes me long to get there, but for some reason or other it won't won't be on this trip. Boo hoo.
We are getting more familiar with the subtle changes of landscape in the various districts. We had wanted to get up to the eery moonscape of the crater, passing through the pine forests en route, but the weather changed our plans. Little villages and towns drew us in, and later we were enchanted with an area near Cruz de Tea where the relatively gentle slopes have been terraced for horticulture. You can see the old back-breaking narrow manual terraces made by slaves, all around the place, but here they have created small fields, and it is remarkable how one's mood changes  in this manicured district. It was like that at Tijoko Alto where we went to see the house for sale. 
We do like wandering into churches - all so different. The one at the top of Adeje has two naves and a stunning ceiling. Outside is a fine new plaza, and a beautiful new belfry like a watchful sculpture.  The one at Vilaflor has a stunning altar-wall of silver and gold, with attendant angels carrying candlelights, and a couple of the rather conical and almost comical madonnas which have evolved here.  On our first ever trip we visited the shrine of the so-called Black Madonna which was found by the first European priests to arrive in about 1490-something. The local people were worshipping a goddess who had come by sea, and she was re-instituted by the church as Mary Mother of God in a chapel on the beach. She survived there till the 1920s when the place burnt down.  No-one knows for sure but it's presumed she was a ships' figurehead which drifted in on the tide.  Her modern replacement at Candelaria is a very Spanish-looking stiff doll, draped in enormous Tudor skirts and with a massive onion-domed head-dress. The chapel at Adeje claims to have an exact and ancient replica of the original, but it's hard to know how exact it can be.    On the other hand, in the Adeje church, there is a modern statue of an altar-boy in a red and white surplice, holding a begging box and looking cute. The whole place is very beautiful and in the absence of any other place to put a small offering, we paid up and put money in his box. 
We came back down the mountain by a back road, another of those old agricultural lanes which (judging by their meandering) may once have been a goat track from the ancient days. We found our lunch at what turned out to be quite a big canteeny-resto, with about a hundred people eating, a uniformed team of waiters including ours who came from India, a blazing fire in the kitchen, a couple of strolling guitarists to entertain us, and goat stew on the menu. We refused a free liqueur at the end of the meal and were given a big bunch of bananas instead.