Today I helped daddy tidy up our yard. I helped wash some old strips of metal and then stacked them neatly in the wood store. I like using the hose.
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Making Rice Krispy Cakes
I wanted to make some cupcakes but we didn’t have any eggs. Mummy suggested we could make Rice Krispy cakes instead.
It turns out we didn’t have any Rice Crispies either, so we improvised and adapted the recipe to use a mix of Cheerios and All Bran.
Ingredients:
100g chocolate broken into pieces
100g butter
4 tbsp golden syrup
100g cereals
Method:
- Put the chocolate, butter & syrup into a microwaveable bowl. Gently melt in 10 second bursts in the microwave stirring in between.
- When completely smooth, stir in the cereal and mix until they are completely covered.
- Divide the mixture between nine paper muffin cases, Press down with your finger
- Leave in the fridge for an hour to set.
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Captivated by Collared Doves
On this holiday we saw a lot of collared doves. At first I thought they were pigeons but mummy and daddy explained the visual differences and we listened to the ‘koo-Coo-koo’ sound that doves make.
Doves are smaller and much more slender than pigeons. They are also a more sandy grey colour. The black band that goes most of the way around their neck is what identifies them as Collared Doves.
We saw them at our hotel, in cafes, on the street and at the beach. In fact you could pretty much always see one.
We even watched two take a bath and sunbathe in the crocodiles pool at Rancho Texas! Those birds were very lucky not to have been eaten up.
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Lava Tubes and Jameos
On our last day we hired a car and drove to the north of the island to visit Cueva de los Verdes (Verdes Caves). Verdes is the Spanish word for green, however they are called Verdes Caves after the family that owned the land, not because they are green.
This tied in nicely with some things I learnt at Rancho Texas about Lava Tubes and Jameos. Today I actually walked inside a Lava Tube and a Jameo.
The cave was created around 3,000 years ago when Monte Corona volcano erupted. The hot lava flowed over the land and as it cooled a hard crust was formed. The lava inside the tube drains away and leaves a lava tube. Sometimes the roof of the tube/cave collapses and forms a big hollow cavern which is also called Jameo.
There are lots of Jameos inside the Cueva de los Verdes. One is so big they use it for musical performances (concerts).
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Waterpark at Rancho Texas, Lanzarote
We visited the Rancho Texas Park twice and on both days we spent the mornings watching the educational shows (see blog post) and looking at the animals, and we spent the afternoons in the waterpark.
There were lots of slides, some that you went down just normally, others I went in a big rubber ring with mummy.
We swam in the heated pools and swam underneath a couple of waterfalls.
We didn’t do the super fast or steep slides as neither of us were brave enough.
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Harbour Life
Harbours are busy places and there is always something to see and learn.
We stopped to watch a fishing boat having it’s underneath cleaned. It had been winched out of the water in a giant cradle and was now perched on the ground.
You could clearly see the rudder (for steering) and the propellor (for propulsion or movement).
A man was using a steam cleaner, which was very noisy, to remove all the barnacles and grime from the bottom of the boat. This enables the boat to move faster through the water.
There was lots of fish in the harbour, and there was an egret hunting them. We watched it spear some smaller fish. We also saw some Muscovy ducks that were living under the walk ways.
There were some Ruddy Turnstones on the rocks. It was not surprising to find them here as, like their name suggests, they find their food by turning over rocks. They are small birds that fly really low to the water. They flap their wings very fast when they fly.
We also spotted an Atlantic Lizard on the wall behind. It was a male as it had the distinctive blue spots on it’s sides. There are lots of stray cats on the islands and the locals clearly love them as you often see bowls of food and water put out for the cats. The lizard was making the most of them too.
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First time Karting
Whilst on holiday in Lanzarote, I had my very first go in a Go Kart. I went in a dual kart with daddy. He said they didn’t go very fast, in fact, he didn’t even need to wear a helmet. I thought it was really good fun but sadly I was too young to be allowed to drive on one my own.
Daddy owns several go karts and used to race senior KTM karts before he moved to Wales.
We cycled from our hotel to the kart track and I have learnt to change gears on the mountain bike that we hired for me. This means I can now go much faster.
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Parrots, Palm trees and Arborists
Today I learnt quite a bit about palm trees.
Firstly, I learnt that Ring Neck Parakeets like to build nests in them. Mummy and I watched a pair chewing and nesting inside the tree. We could see the big long green tail of one bird, whilst capturing glimpses of another bird inside through a hole they had made in the base of the nest. As we watched we could see bits of tree and bark falling through the nest to the ground below.
The next morning we watched a man climb up some other palm trees wearing special metal shoe straps which were attached to rings that went around the trunk of the tree. This allowed him to climb up the tree like spider man. When he was at the top he got a big sword like tool from his belt and used it to cut the dead branches. He dropped these to the ground below where another man collected them into a wheel barrow.
After he had removed the dead branches, he pulled off all the lose bark and dropped that to the ground as well.
The palm trees all looked very neat when he had finished them all. People that maintain trees are called Arborists or Tree Surgeons.
Over the week we noticed how neglected the palm trees that lived on no man’s land looked.
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Aloe Vera & Cactus Plants
One morning daddy and I went into an Aloe Vera shop and the lady was very keen to tell us all about Aloe Vera.
It is a green succulent plant that grows readily across the Canary Islands and other tropical places. The plant it 99%–99.5% water.
The skin, the sap and the inner gel are all used to make different skin products. Aloe Vera creams are really good at relieving sunburn and other skin irritations.
Despite it’s appearance, it’s not classed as a cactus, but it actually belongs to the lily family of plants.
There are lots of different varieties of cactus that do grow on Lanzarote though. We observed tall ones and rounds ones. Most have very sharp spikes but some do not. Some even have pretty flowers
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Whales & Dolphins
During our cycle ride to Arrecife, we came across a whale skeleton which is on display in the old town.
Sadly, this is a real skeleton from a female whale that got stranded on a beach in Tenerife in 1995.
We were all surprised to see what looked like a hand bone, it had 4 fingers. The next day, we visited Rancho Texas (see blog post) and during the educational dolphin talk they explained that dolphins (and whales) have fingers inside their pectoral fins. These are the fins lower down on each side of the body near the front.
Other things learnt about dolphins:
- they use echo location (like bats) to calculate the distance of objects from them.
- they weigh between 150-300kg
- they are between 2.5m – 2.7m long
- mums give birth to one baby at a time
- a bab dolphin is known as a calf (like a cow)
- dolphins can identify each other from their unique sounds, just like humans.
During the dolphin show the trainers get the dolphins to make all their different noises, they make several different sounds, some are like clicks and some are like squeaks.
The show also demonstrated how high and acrobatic these creatures are. It was really incredible to watch and they can swim really fast too.
Next to the dolphin arena is an educational and interactive walk through display. Here I learnt more about dolphins and other sea creatures.
They had boards with lots of sea creatures and mummy was impressed at how many I knew, including:
- swordfish
- hammerhead shark
- octopus
I didn’t know what this fish was (picture below) but I do now, it’s a cuttlefish. I remembered finding cuttlefish on the beach with Popsie last summer (read blog post).
It also teaches you more about the history of Lanzarote and it’s volcanos and lava tubes. There is a separate post for this here.
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