The tour of "TEROR"!!!

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It's a little known fact that the only way to repulse an attack by the Maori Warrior King Ben is to display tomatoes. It's like holy water to a vampire. Look at him cower in fear ...

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So we tried to attract the lizards by throwing a tomato down the hill, but they never came. So I threw a piece of pie down the hill - they still never came, but Ben jumped down from a height of 20 feet, devoured the pie, hissed like a cobra, did a quick Maori Haka dance, scratched himself in an inappropriate place, then scurried off into the bushes.

q2

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A description of the lizards that supposedly eat tomatoes.

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The cathedral of Arucas.

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Cool sculpture in Arucas' municipal park.

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This sculpture reminds me of Mary's infamous "Tilting your head back like this makes you swallow" line (see Euro 2007 blog entitled "Mary offered me a lap dance!"

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Bird of paradise - I remember it as being probably the most photographed flower in all of Hawaii.

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Pascual makes the some of the best juice I've ever had. I think it's because they've magically found a way to add the sweetness of Spanish women to every juice box! I actually asked for the Canarian blend but they gave me the Mediterranean one.

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The sandwiches here in the Canaries have a lot more variety of ingredients and are much tastier than the ones from the peninsula. I had one with chicken, fried egg, cheese, fried peppers and onions, ham, and aioli. It needed a bit more salt but was otherwise very tasty.

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Ben's sandwich. Fries and aioli in the middle. Aioli-icious.

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The dessert options were all pre-made ice creams. I had the Crema Canaria Bienmesabe - it was ice cream with a layer of bienmesabe (a Canarian specialty, its name literally meaning "tastes good to me"), which was marzipan-like. Nothing special. Ben had a chocolate/coconut ice cream - not too bad. It had a funny name - Mulatto Gelato. I thought that Mulatto was only used to describe someone of mixed Caucasian and African descent - not ice cream!

x3

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You can't really see it from just a photo, but look closely at my left leg - it hurts so much that I can't even bend it at the knee. I'm sure it was a pretty funny sight to see me limping all over the Canaries.

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This van has authentic sausage of TEROR!!! Must be some scary stuff! They also have morcilla, which I think is blood sausage. Blood sausage ... yech ... now THAT's some scary stuff! Especially when it's from TEROR!!!

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Hee hee ... some graffiti asking the cops not to abuse their power.

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Our car - we just popped it up onto the sidewalk and said "Screw you Cicar, it's your problem now!"

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I started with what was basically a soup-ified version of paella - a sweet broth with shrimps, rice, mussels, calamari, and fish. The shrimps were pretty mushy.

zp

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And finally - pulpo Gallego - Galician octopus! I missed out on it the other day but was dying to have it now. It was the first time I've had it since over two years ago in Santiago de Compostela! Ahh ... memories of eating octopus while watching the Simpsons in Spanish, not understanding a word, but knowing exactly what was happening because I had seen the episode a dozen times before ... The octopus was good, but I got sick of eating it. I then remembered that I also got sick of eating it in Santiago, and vaguely remember thinking that I should never order it in the entrée size again, only in the starter size. Too bad I couldn't remember that when I ordered ... I needed to eat a lot of the crappy bread to offset how sick of the octopus I was getting.

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Ha ordered some huge, sweet mussels - the natural flavour of the mussels was incredible, but unfortunately it was only steamed with some salt. The quality was top-notch but the taste was lacking. We all remarked that she should've gotten the marinara mussels instead and agreed that it would've been incredible.

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Ben's steak Diane was the best of everybody's meals - sweet, tender beef with huge oyster mushroom chunks (we all thought they were chunks of fat, at first). The mushrooms were awesome - juicy and flavourful. The fries on the side were also good. The sauce was lacking a bit of flavour, but everything else was pretty tasty.

zs

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The dessert options were all pre-made ice creams. I had the Crema Canaria Bienmesabe - it was ice cream with a layer of bienmesabe (a Canarian specialty, its name literally meaning "tastes good to me"), which was marzipan-like. Nothing special. Ben had a chocolate/coconut ice cream - not too bad. It had a funny name - Mulatto Gelato. I thought that Mulatto was only used to describe someone of mixed Caucasian and African descent - not ice cream!

zt

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A little tipsy on beer and honey rum ...