9
On the following day we had a meeting with two people who had been
employed to help us, and whose contracts were even more precarious than
ours. One was Miguel Zalote, a mathematician and meteorologist, who had
been discharged from military service after (quite rightly) calling an air force
general a fool; the other was Ignacio Izeta, a young chemist, who hankered
after a job at the oil refinery, the only industry on the island and the Mecca of
all Canarian chemistry graduates. Having cut our family ties and left our
homeland behind, we needed the friendship of our new companions more
than we realized. They were an essential support to help us survive in our new
world. We talked a lot, asking many questions, and they told us a great deal,
but all in such a negative and defeatist tone as to put a damper on all our
hopes. We concluded that the least of our worries would be the appalling living conditions in Izaña and the lack of equipment to carry out our tasks;
much worse were the non-existent observing programme and the abandonment by those who were meant to supervise us. The coolness of the welcome
came as a shock to us. Undaunted, however, we put the best face we could on
matters and cheerfully concluded that these tidings were merely the exaggerated claims of people lacking in motivation.
After Epiphany, accompanied by Izeta, we were taken in the Chancellor’s
car up to the Izaña Meteorological Observatory. We inched our way along the
dorsal road, crossing the mountains of Esperanza, bristling with slender
Canarian pines and laurel forests of a thousand hues of green. The trees began
to thin out, gradually giving way to retama brush and shrubs, and in the distance the volcano began to assume prominence with its blackish, ochre, and
brown lava deposits resting on multicoloured lapilli strata. On reaching the
rim of the Orotava Valley we penetrated the cloud layer and, once above the
layer, we saw it! There was Father Teide, its snowy peak sitting in state on a
throne of lava! It was far more impressive, majestic, and beautiful than we
could have imagined.
We approached the tormented landscape of Las Cañadas del Teide, entering a barren volcanic wasteland that seemed to have been ploughed by a
Cyclops with huge piles of reddish-brown basaltic boulders, like caramelcoated almonds, and peppered with obsidian bombs of jet-black brilliance. In
spite of their centuries of calm, dry petrified rivers of lava seemed still to flow
from the summit to form agitated seas on reaching the Cañadas caldera. Close
by we could see monstrous agglomerations of solid lava surrounding the
Teide, with its ancient overlapping layers. We were overwhelmed, intoxicated,
enraptured, incapable of absorbing such a wealth of beauty all at once. The
impact of that first view remains with me even today in spite of having
1 Perhaps It All Began with an Eclipse (1959–1961)
On the following day we had a meeting with two people who had been
employed to help us, and whose contracts were even more precarious than
ours. One was Miguel Zalote, a mathematician and meteorologist, who had
been discharged from military service after (quite rightly) calling an air force
general a fool; the other was Ignacio Izeta, a young chemist, who hankered
after a job at the oil refinery, the only industry on the island and the Mecca of
all Canarian chemistry graduates. Having cut our family ties and left our
homeland behind, we needed the friendship of our new companions more
than we realized. They were an essential support to help us survive in our new
world. We talked a lot, asking many questions, and they told us a great deal,
but all in such a negative and defeatist tone as to put a damper on all our
hopes. We concluded that the least of our worries would be the appalling living conditions in Izaña and the lack of equipment to carry out our tasks;
much worse were the non-existent observing programme and the abandonment by those who were meant to supervise us. The coolness of the welcome
came as a shock to us. Undaunted, however, we put the best face we could on
matters and cheerfully concluded that these tidings were merely the exaggerated claims of people lacking in motivation.
After Epiphany, accompanied by Izeta, we were taken in the Chancellor’s
car up to the Izaña Meteorological Observatory. We inched our way along the
dorsal road, crossing the mountains of Esperanza, bristling with slender
Canarian pines and laurel forests of a thousand hues of green. The trees began
to thin out, gradually giving way to retama brush and shrubs, and in the distance the volcano began to assume prominence with its blackish, ochre, and
brown lava deposits resting on multicoloured lapilli strata. On reaching the
rim of the Orotava Valley we penetrated the cloud layer and, once above the
layer, we saw it! There was Father Teide, its snowy peak sitting in state on a
throne of lava! It was far more impressive, majestic, and beautiful than we
could have imagined.
We approached the tormented landscape of Las Cañadas del Teide, entering a barren volcanic wasteland that seemed to have been ploughed by a
Cyclops with huge piles of reddish-brown basaltic boulders, like caramelcoated almonds, and peppered with obsidian bombs of jet-black brilliance. In
spite of their centuries of calm, dry petrified rivers of lava seemed still to flow
from the summit to form agitated seas on reaching the Cañadas caldera. Close
by we could see monstrous agglomerations of solid lava surrounding the
Teide, with its ancient overlapping layers. We were overwhelmed, intoxicated,
enraptured, incapable of absorbing such a wealth of beauty all at once. The
impact of that first view remains with me even today in spite of having
1 Perhaps It All Began with an Eclipse (1959–1961)