5.1  HAPPY DAYS IN GRAN CANARIA

Why we decided to go to the Canary Islands I don't really remember, but it was for Ninette an important transition stage. We were no longer displaced boat people. We were no longer educated human creatures lost in Samsara. We were not just traveling, but became more free from society and yet more involved with a serious liberated way of life. On Gran Canary Island we moved forward together with a life-deciding step which we would never retrace.

We encountered a happiness that was not demanding.

We had met a young man on the boat with his blue van and he told us that Playa del Inglés (Englishman's Beach) was the place to go. We rode there and met him and found at that moment a dozen or so people with their vans and wagons were already installed there and had been since May. We installed ourselves in our pup tent well along the rocky side of the beach and set about making ourselves at home.

These people may have been considered as Hippies, but really they were "Free Wanderers", with their own particular philosophies and ways of life. Yet together they were rather like a small nomadic set. We met every night around a fire and there were those that played guitars while others just sat around chatting.

We made friends with local octopus fishermen and they taught me how it worked. I went into the rocks each morning with them and with an octopus rod searched for these wonderful creatures. Often successful, Ninette cooked and then marinated them. We ate well with tomatoes given to us by friendly tomato farmers way up on the hills overlooking the beach.

Sometimes our breakfast was simpler with tomatoes and sausage bought from a supermarket. I collected beautiful shells from the beach with the idea to use them some way later and stored them in a dozen old watch boxes we had found.

Ninette made the most beautiful fine macrame necklaces I have ever seen with small pearls and I painted watercolors and sold them to a store on the next beach. It was a little beach Eden for the next ten months, when Eden was breached.

One morning I heard sirens way above in the hills. I was suspicious and told Ninette to run with me leaving everything behind, tent, clothes and the precious bicycles. Over the rocks we fled into the next cove.

From a distance we saw the Civil Guard racing onto the beach with their vehicles and surrounded everyone. Within half an hour all had been questioned, their passports taken and ordered to leave immediately. By nightfall the beach was empty except for our bicycles, cloths and tent, which remained when we came back to the beach before dark.

In the morning all our Wanderers had gone. Eden had been destroyed except for seven stray dogs which had been befriended by the Wanderers.

At about noon another vehicle came onto the beach with two Guardia Civil and drove over to us. They had come without sirens. They stopped, asked for our passports and then sat down with us for coffee. Their task had been completed the day before: Clear the beach for Mainland Easter Travelers.

Today they had no instructions, so we were safe for another year.

When the Easter people came with their large tents and caravans we became very popular. They didn't trust each other, but they trusted us to watch their tents when they went into the towns to purchase food. We were rewarded with delicacies and our meager fare was elevated in quality.

We kept our seven dogs from hunger until we left and Ninette adored them.

When they left we were alone on the beach. That year the Guardia Civil permitted no Wandering people to come to the Islands and only one young Spanish couple came by foot and installed themselves at the opposite end of the beach.

It was strange in reflection that we were free of any ponderous thoughts during that time and made no plans. We swam, talked, walked, gathered for food and slept peacefully. Like the Lilies in the fields. We neither worked nor spun and yet we were clothed in a natural being, more splendid than any kings.

I suppose it is difficult for those that have never experienced a physical and mental freedom to imagine it. It was almost as if we had magically been transported to a virgin island, silent and serene, with glorious days and magical nights.

Mankind has no idea what it has lost.

Yet we left in December for Madrid. Why?

Perhaps we envisioned Playa del Inglés in the future, with its hotels and restaurants; the tomatoe fields with little cement boxes called homes perched like sores violating the rich earth and our precious beach of shifting sands where our dogs, like us, ran free, covered with hundreds of cancerous red beach chairs.

Perhaps we had grown our roots too strong, for after all we were Wanderers too. It was a difficult choice, but we abandoned our seven dogs. We walked the beach in one last "presence" and collected a different precious shell for each one, which are still kept in memory of them in a tin box.