Jean Batten, a star burning herself out on the island of Tenerife

     They searched for her everywhere. They searched for her across Europe. They searched as far as the Canary Island of Tenerife. Nobody knew where she was. Very few people seemed to care, and yet the lady was the great Jean Batten, one of the British Empire’s greatest aviators.

     People had grown accustomed to her disappearing for years at a time. There was no one to miss her until after she had died.

     She died on 22^nd November, 1982, just five weeks after leaving London for the last time. She had booked herself in to a cheap hotel in Mallorca. She was like any other anonymous, lonely guest. An infection developed in a leg after she had been bitten by a dog. She had refused to see a doctor. She refused to see anyone, in fact, except the little lady who ran the cheap hotel. She died, as she had lived for so many years, alone.

     Jean Batten spent sixteen of those absent years in the Canary island of Tenerife, having arrived there with her ageing mother in 1966. They took an apartment in the coastal village of San Marcos. Not long after that, Jean's mother died.

     After the death of her mother, Jean bought a tiny flat in the thriving tourist resort of Puerto de la Cruz in order to be closer to her mother, who was buried in the town's English Cemetery. Jean lived in virtual seclusion. She only surfaced from time to time, by invitation, when she thought stories of her past might rekindle some sort of glory. 

The entrance to the English Cemetery in Puerto de la Cruz

A plaque on a cemetery niche, Ellen Batten's final resting place

     Many of those who met Jean Batten would criticise her aloof nature. Perhaps most people never got close enough to Jean to understand the reasons behind her distant, peculiar ways. Few British residents in Tenerife managed to get remotely close to Jean. When they did, they realised she rarely opened up any windows for people to peep inside. 

     One of those people was Annette Reid. During an interview for a New Zealand Television documentary, Annette Reid, the wife of the last British Honorary Vice Consul in the town of Puerto de la Cruz, said she didn't think Jean Batten had any close friends. A generous and observant lady, Annette could not have put it better, when asked to describe the aviator.

     “She seemed to be like a wonderful star that shot across the firmament and then burnt itself out like a comet, until there was nothing left”.

Annette Reid M.B.E.

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/jean-batten-the-garbo-of-the-skies-1988

     Things could have been so very different for Jean Batten. Born in New Zealand in 1909, her interest in flying began as a child when she would watch the old flying boats land and take off at a local flying school. The pattern of her life began to take shape when her mother, Ellen, arranged for Australian flying hero, Charles Kingswood Smith, to take her for a spin. Jean knew immediately what she wanted in life but her father, Frederick, was bitterly opposed to her ambitions. He had dreamed of his girl becoming a concert pianist. 

     Ellen took Jean to England, supposedly to study music at the Royal College of Music. Mother and daughter had other plans. Within days of arriving in the United Kingdom in 1930 Jean Batten was learning to fly at a Harrow aerodrome.  

     When news of the mother-daughter conspiracy reached Frederick Batten in New Zealand, he promptly cut off her allowance and that of her mother’s. The two women were left stranded and penniless. Her father and mother, a failed actress, had been separated for a number of years. It was believed he had numerous girlfriends. They were not precisely the best of friends. 

     In spite of a disconcerting nature and her rapid decline in years to come, Jean Batten was without doubt a remarkable individual. With just twenty hours of flying hours noted in her log book Jean announced she was going to attempt to fly solo to Australia. She wanted to beat the record set by the great Amy Johnson. 

Amy Johnson, of Gypsy Moth fame, flew for the Air Transport Ministry during WW2.

She lost her life after parachuting into the Thames Estuary in bad weather.

     Jean Batten was attractive and sometimes charming when she needed to be. On one voyage to New Zealand, she met Flying Officer Fred Truman. At the time, he was serving in the RAF in India. She persuaded him to lend her five hundred pounds. It was all he had, and it was quite a sum in those days. Truman was one of the many men to fall for Jean's charms. With his money she was able to negotiate sponsorships for her flight and promptly lost interest in the poor man. A number of years later Fred Truman wrote and asked if she would pay him back. She told him to join the queue. He had been one of her stepping-stones.

     Back in New Zealand, Jean Batten made some inroads into restoring her relationship with her father, who also gave funds for her new adventures.

     On her return to England, Jean was provided with a second hand De Havilland Gipsy Moth by another hopeful courtier. She made her first attempt to fly solo to Australia in April 1933. She was lucky to survive a horrifying experience when caught up in a vicious sandstorm over the Syrian Desert. The little biplane got into a spin which she just managed to control within feet of the ground. A few hours later she made two forced landings, near Bagdad and then close to Karachi when her engine blew up and the Gipsy Moth ended up in pieces. Miss Batten stepped out unscathed. Any ordinary mortal may have given in, but she was not ordinary. 

     Her incredible determination attracted more money. On her returned to England Jean immediately received the sponsorship she was hoping for, this time from Lord Wakefield and Castrol Oil. She had become potential publicity material.

     Only one year after nearly losing her life on that first attempt to fly solo to Australia, Jean set off again. The second flight also ended in disaster due mainly to her familiar, stubborn refusal to accept sound advice. Not heeding warnings from the French authorities, Jean Batten crossed the Mediterranean against a strong headwind. The aircraft ran out of fuel close to Rome and crashed. What a fool I have been, she later noted. Again, she was extremely lucky and escaped with just a cut lip and a black eye.

Jean Batten was ruthlessly tenacious

     The whole world realised now that Jean was ruthlessly tenacious and she attracted huge admiration. On her third attempt to fly to Australia she made it. Her record-breaking flight took 22 hours and 30 minutes. It was an astonishing achievement, especially as she had flown through the wall of death, a ferocious monsoon over Burma. 

     Pilots flying larger aeroplanes were later to describe similar experiences as penetrating a dense, black wall of water. Soon after arriving in Australia, Jean Batten sent a cable to the only person to ever have a hold on her, a very strong hold indeed. It was to her mother. 

     Darling, we have done it, the aeroplane, you and me. 

     The welcome Miss Batten received in Australia was overwhelming. Mission accomplished. She had obtained the fame which she and her mother had yearned for. Her extraordinary determination also helped them become economically independent.

     Jean very quickly learned to behave like a heroic celebrity. She also forgot how to behave like an ordinary woman, if she ever was an ordinary woman. That failing was perhaps to become her worst enemy in future years.

Batten, no ordinary woman (Courtesy Penguin Books New Zealand)

     As researchers discovered, very few people were ever able to break through Jean's glamorous exterior. She became totally self-interested. After a while, she began to bore people. Many could not understand what appeared to be an obsession for pleasing her mother. After flying back to England, so becoming the first woman to make a return flight, she crossed the South Atlantic to Brazil in a Percival Gull monoplane in 1935.

Jean Batten and her Percival Gull (Courtesy Mary Evans Picture Library)

     Charles Lindberg, the great American aviator, was fascinated by her. Jean was only 26, with the world at her feet and the promise of a wonderful life ahead. He invited Jean to tour the USA with him. Her mother said don’t accept, so she didn’t accept the invitation. Nobody could ever find the reason for such a compulsively possessive relationship.

     Jean and Ellen Batten retreated to the English countryside, and Ellen would rarely allow anyone to even speak to her daughter, the outstanding young lady aviator. Jean was also distancing herself from people. She was on a pedestal and didn’t know how, or was unwilling to get down off it. Her manner also began to betray an extraordinary and sad insecurity. If only she could have been free again, in the sky or simply untied to her beloved mother.

     Jean Batten caught a fleeting glimpse of freedom, of happiness or of emotional independence after another record-breaking flight from England to New Zealand in 1936. She was the heroine once again. She also met Beverly Shepherd, an airline pilot in Australia. He asked her to marry him and she accepted, but kept their engagement quiet until she could speak to Mummy. Soon after their secret engagement, a small passenger plane disappeared during a flight between Brisbane and Sidney. The co-pilot was among those killed. It was Beverly Shepperd.

     Although she tried to recover from this tragedy in 1937, by flying solo back to England again in just five days and eighteen hours, Jean Batten now clung on even more to her mother. Her days of fame fast began to cloud over. Described as the Empire’s Queen of the Skies, this beautiful girl with dark black hair and ivory skin, she hung up her white flying suit for the last time in 1939. The news was all about war. Jean became a thing of the past.

     She tried and failed to enlist as a woman ferry pilot. She was desperate, as all loyal citizens were, to do her bit. She made a few speeches to raise money for the war effort. There was a brief glimmer of hope. She fell in love again, this time with a bomber pilot. Unfortunately he was killed on a mission. She fell deeper into her mother's life. She would only ever be absolutely happy when flying high in the sky, tempting destiny with her achievements.

     The two ladies lived in Jamaica for a while, where they might have mingled with other celebrities like Noel Coward or Ian Fleming who was inventing James Bond, but they kept themselves to themselves. Dr. Jacobs, a famous psychologist in Jamaica said Jean Batten came across as a celebrity waiting for applause. It was a similar tale wherever she went. They left Jamaica almost secretly and lived out of a suitcase, travelling through Europe for the next seven years. They then bought an apartment in a small village near Malaga called Los Boliches. In English this means the marbles. 

     Nobody was ever given an address and before long they moved to Tenerife, taking an apartment in the beautiful coastal village of San Marcos. 

San Marcos, as it was before modernisation works interfered with the natural flow of the water and most of the sand disappeared

     San Marcos was considered the gem of the north. Fishermen still hauled their boats up onto the sand, and sold some of their catch to the popular old fish restaurants on the sand. To the locals Jean was just an anonymous foreigner, a slightly odd señora with an old mother who died.

     Without her mother, Jean Batten’s growing eccentricity became more acute. She tried a comeback and flew to England where she died her hair jet black, bought a mini skirt and had a couple of face-lifts. She attracted temporary public interest and died her hair blonde. She was sixty. The world no longer knew who she was and really wasn’t concerned.

     So our record-breaking heroine aged alone in Tenerife. One day she must have understood that her star was indeed burning out because she suddenly sold her flat in Puerto de la Cruz and flew to London where she began to leave her possessions and memorabilia at strategic places like the RAF Museum in London. After that, she disappeared for good. 

     The truth about her death, registered in Palma on 22^nd November 1982, was not discovered until 1987. The local authorities had sent notice of Miss Batten’s death to the New Zealand Embassy in Madrid. But there had never been a New Zealand Embassy in Madrid. Nobody claimed to know the lonely old foreigner. She was buried in common grave with fifty other angels. At least she would not be alone any more.

     In honour Jean Batten a small aircraft rally took place in 1989 from Britain to Tenerife and a plaque was unveiled in Puerto de la Cruz. It seems to have been removed but visitors today who walk along the pier from their cruise ships in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife will see a reference to her in the avenue of illustrious visitors.

     

Jean Batten, recognised as one of Tenerife's most illustrious visitors

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories in Spanish.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

 

A lady artist in Tenerife

 

     Very much a Victorian lady, Marianne North was almost certainly one of the best- known British painters, scientists, and explorers who fell for the once unspoilt charms of Spain's Canary Island of Tenerife during the 19^th century. 

     A vast number of her paintings of island scenery and plants hang alongside other works of art from exotic and faraway lands inside her own pavilion at Kew Gardens, the Marianne North Gallery, and they are a testament to her love of Tenerife.

Inside the Marianne North Gallery at Kew.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     She was born in Hastings in 1830, the eldest daughter of a prosperous and distinguished family. Her father, Frederick North, was a Justice of the Peace and Liberal M.P. for Hastings, her mother the daughter of Sir John Marjoribanks, 1st Baronet of Lees in the County of Berwick. 

     After originally studying music, specifically as a singer with a fine voice, Marianne turned to painting after her voice failed. She was artistic by nature and lucky enough to be surrounded by several influential friends. 

     Charles Darwin was a principal source of advice and encouragement during her frequent travels overseas. Always interested in plants, she also established an early relationship with Kew Gardens, for whom she collected unusual samples with her father.

Her fearless travels have been a source of inspiration to many writers and illustrators.

     Marianne North began travelling with her father Frederick when she was still very young, and in 1848 accompanied him as far as Vienna, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. But it was only after he died that she truly became a member of that very determined British group of lady travellers and adventurers, visiting Asia, Africa, Australia and America. 

     In Africa she carried out valuable botanical work studying and painting plants and animals. In North America she painted the Niagara Falls and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In the south she captured some of the most fascinating varieties of exotic plants and animals.

Mount Teide, floating on a nebulous horizon, has always been an inspiring sight.

     It is exactly one hundred and fifty years ago, in 1875, that Marianne North visited Tenerife. Like so many other travellers before her, she may well have been tempted to explore the island by the sight of Mount Teide from out in the Atlantic, or influenced by so many other travellers before her. 

     She headed straight for the Orotava Valley after hearing so much about its stunning beauty. However, she was disappointed to find that so many of the trees and flowers described by naturalists like Baron Friedrich Alexander von Humboldt, in 1799, had been replaced by a Central American cacti variety over the years for the sake of the Canary Island cochineal dye industry. 

Marianne North hard at work.

(Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London)

     Nevertheless, there was enough to enchant and interest her, and she spent three months painting intensely, illustrating the great variety of colour in the island, often with Mount Teide in the background and palms, cacti, dragon trees and aloes abound in her landscapes.

She captures the north of Tenerife perfectly. 

With a snow-capped Teide Volcano in the distance, euphorbias, cacti and agaves adorn the Tacoronte clifftops.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     She became a guest at Sitio Litre, the house of Mr and Mrs Charles Smith at the time, and many of her paintings capture the amazing variety of flora in the gardens, which are famous and open to the public today. Of roses in these gardens Marianne North is known to have said “I have never smelt roses so sweet as those”. 

One of the most beautiful dragon trees (Dracaena draco) possibly painted at Sitio Litre. Notice the beautiful pumpkins, a common sight in rural areas of Tenerife.

(Courtesy Kew Gardens)

     Marianne North was also a writer, evidencing that her interest in different corners of the globe, and consequently in the island of Tenerife, was not only artistic but also of an anthropological nature. She became charmed by local customs, and by the gentle nature of the inhabitants. 

The two original volumes of "Recollections of a Happy Life".

     Indeed, in her autobiography, “Recollections of a Happy Life”, she emphasises her fondness of Tenerife and its people. She remarked “These people are so friendly and their gardens are marvellous. The ladies flirt with their fans and have flowers in their hair. They behave in a very ladylike manner although they possess no more education than that received in some convent”.

     At heart she was most interested in the preservation of nature, of course, so I do wonder what she would think if she were to spend a holiday in the Canary Islands today. Perhaps, if Marianne North were still alive, some politicians might consider her a radical ecologist! 

     We might presume that as long ago as the 1870s the natural treasures of Tenerife would still have been relatively undisturbed by human progress. Nevertheless, Marianne North lamented, even then, “It is sad to see how civilised people can destroy natural treasures in such a short period of time, when neither animal nor savage has ever done any harm in centuries”.  

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

#artist #travel #art #history

CARNIVAL

The first carnival parade in Puerto de la Cruz

          There were six magnificent chariots, invented with exquisite imagination. There were groups playing percussion instruments and singing Canary Island folk songs. There were ladies and gentlemen dressed like seventeenth century aristocrats, mounted on a brigade of horses. They all sailed passively along the dusty lanes and into the cobbled streets of the old port. It was the beginnings of what was to become a tradition and it happened just over a century ago.

 

          It was February 1910, in fact, and almost every inhabitant in what was then a busy trading port watched in amazement and delight as a brilliant spectacle of two thousand participants from all over the Orotava valley took part in what was the first ever carnival parade to be held in Puerto de la Cruz. It was the birth of what has become a famous, colourful, noisy, joyous, popular, carnival festival.

 

          Most of those who led the parade were members of wealthy families in the Orotava Valley.  A good number were from the British and other foreign communities. The initiative came from the recently constituted Tourism Committee and the owner of a local newspaper called Arautápala, a well-travelled gentleman who had witnessed a similar event at Nice on the French Riviera.

          The six chariots, one of which was designed by local artist and photographer, Marcos Baeza, comprised one of Columbus’s ships, a Viking longboat manned by members of the British community, a Zeppelin airship with an elegant crew of German residents, a Swiss country scene, a tray of fruit and vegetables and another one depicting a colourful basket of island flowers.

  The Viking longboat manned by British residents in 1910

(note the Martianez cliffs behind)

          The chariots representing ships almost certainly stemmed from original Roman traditions. Whether modern carnival revellers wish to believe it or not, the word carnival may not only have its origins in the Latin carnem levare, the abandoning of meat for Lent. 

          Instead, carnivals may owe their origins much more to the satirical parades in ancient Rome when Bacchus, the God of Wine, permitted disguises to hide immoral public exhibition, when the God’s personal priest led the parade on a ship mounted upon wheels. His vessel was called the carrus navalis, the naval chariot. 

          Others suggest the word carnival actually derives from another Roman festival, navigium isidis to honour Goddess Isis, navigium being th Latin for ship. 

The Navigium Isidis procession in Rome

(by American orientalist artist Frederick Arthus Bridgman in 1902)

          Of course the devotion of man to wearing disguises possibly originates in ancient Egypt, Greece or even Japan. But it was the flamboyant and inventive Venetian Italians who introduced masks to hide faces, not just as a source of amusement but also to avoid recognition and punishment whilst committing a vengeful crime, participating in a conspiracy or being carnally unfaithful.  

 

          The parade in 1910 took the British Vikings, the German Zeppelin, the Spanish caravel and the rest of the magnificent procession along the Calle Valois, up the hill as far as the magnificent Taoro Hotel and then down again to the main square in the heart of the town. 

The Grand Taoro Hotel with the snow-capped Mt Teide behind

          Not one of these foreign residents and friends could possibly have imagined that just four years later they would be cruelly battling against one another from other kinds of grey, armoured vessels in a bloody war. Yet, it was there at the Plaza del Charco square where a great battle took place as participants and onlookers had the most tremendous fun bombarding each other with flowers and petals. This too became a tradition. The party didn’t end there. 

          Although the Spanish Civil War and its hungry aftermath dampened such celebrations, and carnivals were virtually forbidden during the earlier years of the Franco dictatorship, the splendid ball at the Taoro Hotel on the eve of the carnival parade became a yearly event. This dance actually took over from private functions because, prior to that first carnival parade of 1910, wealthy families in Tenerife, as they would do in Spain and France, had traditionally celebrated fancy dress dances in their own grand houses. 

          It was only after the Orotava Valley began to attract the first foreign, and especially British travellers, towards the end of the 19^th century, that businessmen realised an annual public carnival would help bring a new form of lucrative tourism to Puerto de la Cruz. Indeed it did, and if we can learn from history and the elegance of the old ways, perhaps Puerto’s carnival could once more help the town revive its once booming tourism industry.

 

By John Reid Young, author and Canary Island tour guide.

Books by John include:

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales, a collection of short stories.

A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

El Hombre de La Guancha y Otras Historias, a collection of short stories.

The Journalist, a novel.

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

 

 

On the way to the cemetery

When I was a boy, just the other day, life in the Canary Islands was still comparatively primitive.

While Puerto de la Cruz, on the island of Tenerife, was beginning to take shape as a package holiday resort at the end of the 1950s, there were still two main classes of inhabitant, the rich and the poor, the landowner and the peasant. In between, there were the sharecroppers and the fishermen.

 

The banana plantations between the old Martiánez Hotel and the beach had been cleared 

There was vast private wealth in land, and in many rural areas inhabitants lived a very simple kind of life, serving the sometimes feudal landowner and sharing the crops the land produced. They were the poor. This was until General Franco’s regime began implementing the Limited Rent Housing Law of 1954 and the Urban Leases Law of 1964, a social housing plan which saw the building of over four million affordable houses for the poorer classes throughout Spain, including the Canary Islands. Most owners managed to pay them off within ten years. As a result, many of the peasants’ traditional stone cottages dotted around the landscape were abandoned for the comfortable state-built housing estates. It also saw many peasants abandon thousands of agricultural terraces for more prosperous wages in town.

 

Some of those abandoned terraces, like these in the El Río gorge, are being recovered

I grew up in the 1960s and my father once owned a finca in the hills above Tacoronte. I still have vivid memories of half-naked children hanging onto the skirts of bare-footed mothers who peeped out of the wooden doorways of stone cottages beside the lanes that led to the farm. They would stare and wave at us as my father drove the Land Rover up the muddy tracks to our farm. The kids learnt to beg for half a peseta, or to barter in exchange for a handful of plums, chestnuts or blackberries. 

My father employed mostly women on the farm, and it was always a joy to hear their singing and laughter as they worked. He built the farm manager a proper house, while he prefered us to sleep in a rather dodgy wooden hut which was erected on a concrete base under the pines and above the plum orchard.

 

Grandmothers often came to give good advice or to keep an eye on the children

Country folk rarely travelled far, and many were born and died without ever visiting the nearest town, like one or two centenarians I have met in remoter hamlets of the Anaga mountains. They were and remain extremely generous and helpful to each other as communities. The farming chores, like gathering in the wheat and threshing it on the eras, filling the sacks with grain and carrying them on their backs or on mule to the Tacoronte market, were happily shared. 

This very old era, or threshing ground, can be found near Teno Alto

When somebody died, however, the world came to a halt. Neighbours would gather outside the family cottage to pay their respects, and to accompany them during the ritual wake. They would often take food for the grieving family because a cooking fire was not lit for a day or two in respect for the departed. Then, when the priest sent a signal, men would sway in solemn procession down the lanes to the nearest church or cemetery. By law, the dead would need to be buried within forty eight hours after death.

In Lanzarote there is a little village called Soo. It nestles between the Colorado Peak, the highest point of one particular volcanic cone, and what was often referred to as the Soo desert, a grain of sand compared to the neighbouring Sahara.

 

The pretty village of Soo, as it is today

Not so long ago, when a member of the family passed away, grieving women in Soo would lock themselves into the dead person’s home for eight days. The custom, which only disappeared in the middle of the 20^th century, was so that the neighbours could care for and feed the grieving family during those days of mourning. The men, I understand, were excused. They would be required to attend to the animals and the crops. Many years ago, it used to be the custom in all the islands that women never went to funerals. They would only be expected to attend a memorial mass on the third day after a death.

Unlike today, when visiting doctors are often seen in remote villages checking up on the elderly, there were still no doctors or caretakers to cater for peasants well into the 20^th century. Country folk either never became ill or, if they did, cared for each other with ancient herbal remedies. If sickness or old age ended in death, men carried their own dead on their shoulders to the cemetery. They would not be taken in a coffin but laid on a simple stretcher made with sticks. It actually made sense because it was a much lighter mode of transportation, and they would often be required to walk considerable distances to a final resting place in holy ground.

 

A doctor visits elderly people in their Chinamada cave dwellings once a week

More than one story has been handed down from generation to generation telling of porters suddenly being given the fright of their lives on their way down from the hills to the cemetery. Pancho, who owned a pottery kiln above Arico, a village on the south eastern slopes of Tenerife, was a recognised tile maker. He died just before the Spanish Civil War, after apparently collapsing during an argument at the village inn.

His body was lovingly bathed and proudly dressed in his best clothes. But, on the way to the cemetery, transported by men in solemn procession, his rigid body suddenly sat bolt upright on the stretcher and it shouted out, “Hey, what the Devil is going on?”

The stretcher bearers immediately dropped their dead baggage with a hard bump on the ground. They, and the body's relatives and neighbours, scattered, terrified in all directions. Well, with no proper doctor at hand to certify a death, a corpse might at times only have given the impression of being a corpse. Pancho survived to have another argument at the village inn.

 

A street in the old town centre of Arico

They were definitely more civilized on the island of Lanzarote. They often used camels to rock the dead to the cemetery. Nevertheless, the road to the burial site could be long and hot, with hardly a drop of water to be found. So, if the procession happened to pass close to a village where there was a fiesta going on, the mourners wouldn't hesitate. They would simply join in the festivities, refresh themselves with some good wine to accompany a bowl of goat meat stew and then continue solemnly to the cemetery.

In the village of Teno, situated in the mountain range to the extreme west of Tenerife, the small number of inhabitants who dedicated their lives to sheep, goat and arable farming, were believed to use a specially prepared stretcher for carrying their dead. In fact, unlike the disposable stretchers made with sticks, it was a long box, like the crude wooden ones seen in cowboy films. It had wooden poles attached to each end and was designed to be transported by just two men. The narrow, rocky path down the mountainside was too narrow and dangerous for more than a single file of men to walk down. Then, when the procession reached the Bujame or Negro gorges, the dead person would be transferred into a proper coffin for the rest of the journey to the cemetery which was situated at the coastal town of Buenavista. This mode of transport was still in use as recently as the 1970s because, until then, there was no road to Teno. Like the village of Masca, the hamlet was pretty well isolated from the rest of the world.

 

Negotiating the mountain tracks into the Bujame gorge could be tricky

As at almost every funeral, processions on the way to the cemetery attracted quite a crowd. Every adult male member of a village would take part. Milking the goats, preparing the terraces or digging the potatoes could wait until tomorrow. The respect paid to the dead and to the grieving family was sacred. It was, and still is, in the nature of these wonderful islanders, and one can still feel the strength of unity today in those rural communities.   

By John Reid Young

Author of:

The Skipping Verger and other Tales (a collection of short stories)

A Shark in the Bath and other Stories (a collection of short stories)

The Journalist (a novel)

For more information, or if you would like to read any of my books, please click on the images to the right of this page.

Please sign up for an occasional newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

Norwegians, Ripped Mountain and Potatoes on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

     If you were to sail in to the city port of Santa Cruz, in Spain's Canary Island of Tenerife today, you would undoubtedly find a place packed with cruise ships, tour buses, eager taxis cabs awaiting on the quay, and inter-island ferries speeding in and out of the harbour. You might also be lucky enough to spot the La Palma, a floating museum. The beautiful old boat was built by W. Harkness and Son, Ltd. in Middlesbrough in 1912. It had been ordered by the British firm, Elder Dempster and Co., Ltd., who intended to improve transport between the Canary Islands.

The La Palma, a lady with fine old-fashioned lines

     If you had sailed into the same port in 1926, you might be joined on the south mole by one of the Blue Funnel or Union Castle Line ships from London. You might also have spotted a Norwegian Navy training ship parked against the south mole.

The Union Castle boats stopped regularly in Tenerife

     Tenerife was perhaps the furthest south the Norwegian Navy had ventured since Viking explorers had braved the waves. Apart from enjoying an interesting training adventure in warmer climes, the idea was for a group of young cadets to investigate if there was any connection between the pre-Hispanic Guanche people on the islands and ancient navigators from Norway. Today historians believe most of the Guanche people may have been brought to the island from North Africa by Phoenicians or Romans, perhaps in search of different dyes. Others suggest there were earlier nomadic people who drifted to the Canary Islands much earlier, possibly on rafts built with reeds from the Nile.

A Norwegian gunboat of the kind used as a training ship

     The Norwegian training ship was to remain in Santa Cruz for at least ten days before calling in at Casablanca in Morocco. A young Lieutenant, known for his keen interest in ancient Viking exploration, six cadets and two ordinary seamen were issued with three tents, backpacks and rations for five days. Their mission was to look for a cave, which was supposed to be located in the volcanic landscapes at the base of Mount Teide, and where local anthropologists had discovered a Guanche burial chamber. 

      It was a beautiful early morning when they set off on the winding, dusty road towards the colourful town of La Orotava. From there they took one of the mule tracks which were so often used by European geologists, astronomers and anthropologists to explore the great Las Cañadas calderas. They spent their first night under a spring in the Aguamansa pine forest. 

One of the tracks in the beautiful Aguamansa forest

      After finding their way through the forests and then through a desolate landscape of volcanic rocks and shrubs, they climbed up towards Mount Teide from the base of one of the sedimentary plains at the edge of the eastern caldera. The young officer and his companions then set up their camp inside a sunken dip on the pumice plains which were overlooked by an ugly and dramatic example of eruptive force known as Ripped Mountain, Montaña Rajada.

The pumice fields, a Martian landscape under Montaña Rajada

     The heat of the midday sun and the dryness in the air hit them hard to begin with. However, the climate can be deceptive at the base of Mount Teide. In fact, it wasn’t long before fierce gusts of wind had them scrambling to collect loose volcanic stones to build a barrier around their camp. Sudden chills in the air made them feel quite unsure of themselves. They had not been warned that weather conditions in the bleak, high altitude, Martian landscapes on the island of Tenerife, can become treacherous very quickly in winter. Nevertheless, those same gusts of wind calmed as suddenly as they had appeared and the young men went to sleep early. They were exhausted after the day’s trek, and looked forward to hunting for Guanche remains on the following day.

     Then, at the crack of dawn, they were all shaken awake by a strong gust of wind. Within minutes the young men were wrapping up in as many layers of clothes as they could find. It was now icy cold. In fact, it had begun to snow. More than snow, they were in the midst of a blizzard as blinding as those on Gaustadtoppen, Norway’s highest mountain. The fierce storm, with the wind making the volcanic rocks produce anguishing screams, had them huddled in their tents for most of the morning. When it ceased, allowing them to peep out, timidly pushing drifts of snow away from their tents, they were engulfed by a dense fog.

 It can snow heavily on Teide volcano and the high mountains of Tenerife 

     In spite of being hardy Norwegians, accustomed to Arctic conditions, nobody had prepared them for this kind of weather on an island so close to the western extremes of the Sahara Desert. The Lieutenant, anxious as he was to pursue their amateur anthropological investigations, told his companions they would probably abandon their expedition. He would not have known that, if they could only keep themselves warm for a day or two, the weather front would pass. Brilliant sunshine and the warm volcanic soil beneath them would soon melt the snow away.

     For the time being, however, fearing they would never find their way in the fog, the officer sensibly decided that they would stick it out for one more night. They would use their small paraffin lamps to heat up their rations, as well as their tents if necessary. That decision could have been fatal.

     The inhalation of paraffin fumes began to sting their eyes and make them nauseous. One of the seamen began to feel so unwell and drowsy that he rolled over and knocked a lamp over with his elbow. Paraffin spilled all over his legs and caught fire. He was screaming in agony and terror as is companions dragged him out of the tent and into the fog. They managed to put out the flames by rolling him in the snow, but he was badly burned. Meanwhile, the tent became a roaring bonfire. Nothing could be saved. It was a disaster.

A plaque pays tribute to José Bethencourt outside the house he lived in 

     If only they had hired a local guide, José Bethencourt, the guide from La Orotava. Without him, unfamiliar to the terrain and the surroundings, especially at night, the Lieutenant had to make a decision. Should he send two of his team off into the night in search of help, with only a compass to guide them?

     He probably made the correct choice. He was not going to risk losing two men in this strange, inhospitable landscape in freezing conditions. No, they would all huddle up in the two remaining tents until daybreak. The injured cadette was not in grave danger, in spite of the pain. He had nasty burns on his legs, but he would survive. Evidently they would need to get the young fellow back to their ship and their expedition would have to be abandoned, but that was just too bad.

      Except for the one with the horribly burned legs, the young seamen slept on and off. When they opened the tents to stretch and make coffee in the morning, the fog had cleared. There was not a breath of wind. It was quite extraordinary. 

Shrubs, like Teide broom, and jagged volcanic rocks protrude through the snow

     Not a cloud in the sky. In fact, the snow and ice very soon began to glisten with the rising sun which began to toast their faces. It was going to be a magnificent Tenerife day. How they wished they could continue with their adventure. After a good breakfast, more coffee and a short stroll to inspect their snow-covered goat track, they packed their tents away, ensured there was no rubbish left in their enclosure, and made their way down to the sedimentary plain again before heading back towards the Orotava Valley.

     It was slow-going. They took it in turns to help the injured cadette down the rocky tracks. The path was covered with snow to start with, but soon turned muddy as they descended from their campsite at nearly 7,000ft above sea level into the dense Canary pine forests. They reached the first stone and thatched cottages in Aguamansa by late afternoon.

Traditional thatched cottages adorned the agricultural hillsides

     A group of women filling brown sacks with pine needles greeted them with waves and amused cackles before running towards them when they realised the young men needed assistance. The same women invited the Norwegians to follow them down between neat agricultural terraces, and then under majestic chestnut trees to what appeared to be a small hamlet. Plumes of scented smoke filtered through thatches and the aroma of delicious goatmeat stew made the young seamen’s stomachs ache with hunger.

One of the favourite meals in Tenerife is succulent goatmeat stew

     The young adventurers were never going to make it to the comforts of La Orotava before dark so these village people offered them all they had in the way of shelter, food, water and wine. It was the year 1926, and most islanders lived from the land. There was no such thing as money in these upper hillside regions, which are known locally as las medianías. However, the inhabitants were blessed with happiness, with the routine of existing, and with the kindest hearts and warmest humour to be found anywhere on Earth. And, for just one night, these country folk belonged to the young, intrepid foreigners, especially to the one with the nasty burns on his legs.

     A rather plump lady with glorious, reddened cheeks and hands like a man's was summoned to take a look at the burned legs. Her name was Feliciana. She was the curandera, a kind of herbal doctor so often used by mountain folk. She was not a trained doctor, of course, but her cheery attitude and beaming smiles persuaded the young Lieutenant to allow her to help the unfortunate cadette. Once again, he was correct in his decision.

     Nobody had any black olives, whose juice she swore would soothe the burns. But there were plenty of recently dug-up potatoes which Feliciana proceeded to peel with a gigantic knife, dropping the peel in a heap onto the hard-trodden earth floor of the cottage they were sheltering in. She then used the same knife to cut the potatoes into fine slices. These she placed, very gently and neatly, onto the cadette’s burns, attaching them to his legs with slithers of green plant shoots. Feliciana then covered these with a warm, moistened cloth. The seventeen year old lad had already felt some relief by just watching the woman and by listening to her humming, but he felt the throbbing pain of his burns ease away when the potato dressing on his legs began to take effect. Apparently, the juice from potatoes had been used for generations as a natural reliever of pain and healer of certain kinds of wounds.

Men digging up potatoes like those used to soothe those burns

     On the following morning, just before the expedition retreated from the hills, with help from the Civil Guard in La Orotava, Feliciana came to bid them farewell. She also brought  a small earthenware vessel containing an oily ointment which she had prepared. It was a mix of what looked and smelled like lard, crushed thyme and rosemary. After carefully removing the potato slices, which were now dry, she very gently used two large fingers to spread the home-made cream over the burned legs. She also gave instructions to the Lieutenant to make sure the cadette used the ointment every day until the sores were better. And so he did. In fact, the Norwegian ship's Medical Officer was so impressed by the effect of Feliciana's ointment on the cadette's skin that he tried, in vain, to produce a similar kind of paste before opting for the more conventional methods of modern medicine. 

BY JOHN REID YOUNG

Author of:

The Journalist (a novel) 

The Skipping Verger and Other Tales ( a collecgion of short stories)

A Shark in the Bath and other Stories (a collecgion of short stories) 

El hombre de La Guancha y otras historias (a collection of short stories in Spanish) 

(For more information, please click on the images to the right of this page).

If you would like to receive news about my next publications please sign up for my newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/249fadd56fdd/author-john-reid-young

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theskippingverger

Twitter: @reidten

Instagram: authorjohnreidyoung

John Reid is also owner at TENERIFE PRIVATE TOURS

 http://tenerifeprivatetours.com/