CAYUCO - a 100 word story

CAYUCO

A fishing boat spotted the ninth cayuco of the year wallowing in the trough between massive full-moon waves, its occupants’ faces grey with sickness and terror.

Tourists took photographs as people struggled up stone steps to policia and medicos, silver blankets and bottled water on the harbour wall. There were disbelieving gasps when another layer was revealed – second-class passengers under the feet of the first, their hair and clothing soaked in brine and vomit.

Just one woman remained, searching desperately through the filth until she found, wedged beneath the lowest seat, a bundle that had stopped crying hours before they sighted land.

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The above photograph, taken by Georgia Koch, is this week's prompt for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. When you've left a comment on my story (please!) you can read other writers' interpretations by following the Blue Frog link from her blog 

https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/

My story is based on fact. When we lived in Tenerife I witnessed similar scenes in  Las Galletas, the village where I shopped - these photos were taken at sea and on the beach there.

GUAGUA & GRAFFITI - A-Z Challenge

GUAGUA – pronounced wa-wa – is the colloquial Canarian word for a bus. In an old restaurant in Santa Cruz I found the explanation.

Apparently an English company called Washington, Walton and Company Incorporated set up the first bus services in Cuba, and the abbreviation Wa & Wa Inc which adorned the buses found it’s way back with Cuban immigrants to the Canaries. 

Or so they say.

GRAFFITI - As in the rest of the world, our graffiti ranges from the quick scrawl to the artistic. The animal liberation front couldn't quite fit their long word in before the little window on this old house, and these colourful pictures adorn a wall in Las Galletas carpark.

GORDO – Fatty – obviously has an admirer, and this one on the school wall is so romantic - assuming I've translated it correctly -

 – I love you Miuida because I was born to close my eyes beside you. Alba. 

FLOODS & FISH - A-Z Challenge 2015

We've had a FEW spots of rain over the past week but not nearly enough to cause FLOODS like we have had in the past.

They seem to happen when there is a particularly FULL MOON which pulls the tides high, and when this is combined with strong winds the sea throws huge waves over the inadequate sea defences.

When I went to shop in Las Galletas one morning the sea was actually roaring as I parked my car, and the waves must have rached six or seven metres in height.

Another time we couldn’t reach Las Galletas at all – rain on Mount Teide raced downhill and competely washed away the road behind the garage ...

... then flooded the rough ground before pouring across the coast road and the beach and out to sea in a brown waterfall.

This young man lost his shoes and I watched as he hopped from one rough stepping-stone rock to another to get back home  ...

... but this woman was determined to do her shopping. A small crowd watched her, and once she'd got safely through everyone removed their own FLIP-FLOPS and FOLLOWED her example!

It doesn't pay to ignore the power of water, though, and a FLASH FLOOD in the adjoining town took these vehicles by surprise.

The mother and baby in the white car were lucky that a bystander braved the torrent to rescue them.

FISH live in water, so here's a little FISHY POEM I wrote when my son was a boy.

BIGGS

John won a goldfish one day at the fair –

brought him home and christened him Biggs.                

the goldfish was free,

 but John’s Mum had to buy

him a bowl, and some gravel and things.

Biggs lived in John’s bedroom, but he didn’t like

the noise, and the smell of old socks,

so they dug him a pond,

 and used the spare soil

for a rockery with some big rocks.

In his pond Biggs began to feel lonely,

so Mum had to buy him some friends,

and fish-food and pond-weed –

 this free fish had started

expenditure that never ends!

That's all for today FOLKS!

Please leave a comment and thanks for visiting.

THE POWER OF "THE GAME"

LAS GALLETAS  seafront road is too narrow for the traffic that uses it. There isn't really room for the cars that park by the beach, and meeting a Titsa bus coming the other way can be nerve-wracking.

A couple of years ago the road was closed sporadically for months while the Cabildo installed vast pipes to take the local sewage out to sea. They even used gravel and stones from the beach to create a very dodgy-looking temporary pier on which the heavy diggers teetered dangerously.
When the pipes had gone beyond the harbour the beach was reformed, but Man cannot match Nature.

Last year's floods washed the beach back into the sea and destabilised the sea wall. They repaired it.

Then last week we had big seas, even inside the harbour, and the beach vanished again, along with some of the pavement and a bit of road. We had to drive the long way round or park in El Fraile and walk.

 This was the scene on Thursday morning - you can see El Fraile beyond the palm trees in the background of the second photograph. It looked to me as if workmen needed to drive pilings into the beach to shore the road up safely, which would mean months more work at Tenerife speed. 

But yesterday the traffic was flowing smoothly again and a neat patch of tarmac covered everything. This was unprecedented! What had happened? I came home and looked up Arona's calendar of events and the answer was staring me in the face. 

A football match - today at 6pm - in the Sports Centre in El Fraile. 

TENERIFE FLOODS

We don't have rivers in Tenerife - that brown flood you see is the run-off from the storm of 10th and 11th and 12th December, during which more rain fell than we have had in the last eight years combined!
While I was taking this photo I had to move to make way for a lorry tipping mud scraped from the twin road tunnels at Guaza.  http://www.islandconnections.eu/ showed the state of affairs there on Wednesday with this photo. That's the TF1 autopista on top of that wall beneath which are the twin tunnels. To exacerbate matters, half of the autopista was covered in landslides.

Tuesday and Wednesday we followed the advice to stay at home but by today - Thursday - we were stir-crazy, and the rain had stopped, so we set off to our local shopping village, Las Galletas.
The road was closed. So was the alternative route past the petrol station - and this is why.

Add caption

 Another run-off down another barranco that goes behind the banana plantations at Guaza had cut the back road to Silencio completely.
So I left the OH drinking coffee at the cafe and walked towards the village to find out why the road was closed. It wasn't difficult.

The raging river you see behind me in the previous photo had found the sea - via the seafront road, the promenade and the beach.

I'll leave you with a few more images of the power of water - and we in the south of Tenerife came off lightly compared with some.

This young man, having leapt from one mini-island to another, obviously decided that discretion was the better part of valour and legged it back home.

Show and Tell 2

We stopped this morning on our way to buy food in Las Galletas to take photographs because the cunims were spectacular.

Then we looked right and just outside the harbour mouth we saw this . . . 

. . . man walking on water!