this trip's overview

(about the Islands)

SFO to LHR

stranded!

LHR to LHR

spending Iberia's money

baggage arrives

along the beachfront

visiting el Medico

Isaac's first haircut

R & R

Faro Maspalomas

cockroaches!

San Fernando

All over...

Puerto de Rico & Puerto de Mogán

el penultimo

on to London

Monday 20 January 2003

Sooner or later in any conversation about the Canary Islands, the topic of the great cockroach of the Canary Islands will be broached.

Well-travelled folk will know that the topic of bugs of all sorts, and cockroaches in particular, are compelling to Americans.

Here's a cockroach I saw this evening; scale shown by an American quarter-Dollar and a Euro coin I happened to have in my pocket.

I've been coming to the Canaries since the mid-seventies, in both summer and winter, and while I've seen the occasional cockroach, in my experience it's vastly overblown. I've heard that some summers they're quite numerous, but I've never seen or noticed it.

Rainer tells of grasshoppers (or locusts) which arrive en masse from Africa, 100 kilometers away. They're five or so inches long, red, and devour everything in sight. Luckily, they haven't yet developed a niche here because their eggs require a constant temperature over 35° C (95° F).

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