On Sunday, we woke up early enough to catch the sunrise on camera and it was gorgeous. Our flight back to Madrid, luckily not affected by the volcano cloud, wasn't scheduled until eight p.m. so we decided to check out early and head back to the airport to rent a car and drive around the island. The interior of the island can reach heights of over 6,000 feet and we decided it would be a great idea to ride around through the mountain roads. We first headed south to the touristy Playa del Inglés and found that we felt like we'd stepped into Myrtle Beach and Pensacola Florida. It was awful and kitschy and full of English and German tourists and aggressive people grabbing your arm and trying to put bracelets on them so they can force you to give them money. We headed out quickly and went north towards the town of San Bartolomé. We drove up and down and found all kinds of amazing vistas and the mountains and valleys formed by the volcanoes that had formed these islands millions of years ago. From San Bartolomé, we headed on north towards Tejeda, the city at the very center of the island. As we went higher, the temperature got colder and colder but the views were more amazing. We found two great rock formations called Roque Nubo and Roque Noble that are natural formations on the islands. The cliffs and valleys are everywhere and show an great stratification of rocks as the years have ticked away. Alas, we found our way to Tejeda and could see it from the road and when we wound our way around to it, we discovered the road was closed and under construction. We turned around and took another mountain road towards a town called San Mateo and we ended up riding through a heavily forested part of the island used as a camping ground. Everywhere there were tons of tourists and families having picnics and lounging around and enjoying the clear beautiful day. The strangest thing was right after we passed this clear beautiful day and people camping and picnicking we turned a corner and started descending a mountainside in which the fog was so thick we couldn't see anything other than the road we were driving on. We finally arrived to our destination of San Mateo, where we had lunch, a not so good showing of fish and pork chops. Afterwards, we made our way back towards the airport but since we still had three hours to kill, we headed south again to an area recommended to us called Maspalomas. The area is really upscale and nice and has a few golf courses around to play on. The light house was set on a beach that instead of sand had large pebble stones that made a really relaxing noise whenever the water washed away. After a short walk down the boardwalk there, we headed back to the car and headed home. The car had an interesting day itself as we picked it up with a full tank of gas and as we drove all day through mountains, up and down steep angles, the gas gauge never moved off of being full and after about five hours of this, we started to become convinced that the gauge was broken and thus the guy at the place probably didn't know how much gas was in the car at all. Finally, after heading down from the mountain and towards Maspalomas, the gauge ticked off one notch, which we happily refilled relieved that the gauge worked and wasn't going to leave us stranded. the overall weekend was a success minus leaving an iPod on the airplane after arriving back in Madrid.
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