Waking up on my second day in the Canary Islands, we grabbed a rental car and headed into the hills towards the remote village of Charmorga.

After bussing to the airport, picking up the rental, driving on a crazy mountain road and arriving in a remote village; we parked and went downhill towards the beginning of the trail.

Except, following yesterday, we decided against going through with an even more strenuous hike today.

I've regretted this since and still regret it today, but you know how action talks and bullshit walks.

There was some consolation in that the road to Charmorga was so crazy that it itself was remarkable. It was such a dense jungle with thick and lush vegetation, that our rental car's daytime running lights came on as we weaved along. Meanwhile the temperature dropped from the mid-80s down to 45 degrees.

I planned to take a picture of the thick vegetation on the way back from Charmorga but after being upset about skipping the lighthouse hike, Google StreetView will have to do.

In the above photo, you can see a sign to turn on your headlights.

We also now had time for the Punta Del Hildalgo Lighthouse. This wasn't the remote Anaga Lighthouse, but this was an interesting, modern lighthouse nonetheless.

A lot of lighthouses built in the last 40 years are utilitarian and somewhat boring, but this was cool enough that it was worthwhile to drive out here. Isy even agreed and I was happy she thought Punta Del Hildalgo was so great.

The Punta del Hildalgo Lighthouse was only built in 1992, constructed to satisfy the desire to fill the navigational gap between the Anaga Lighthouse and the beacon at Punta de Teno.

I was personally pleased with getting a lighthouse in a 7th country (Spain/Canary Islands), just one week after getting a new lighthouse country in Morocco & just a month after a lighthouse in my 5th country of Mexico.

But y'know, such is the life of an international playboy like myself.

The town of Punta del Hidalgo was pleasant, and where I like supporting lighthouse towns to show businesses and government that these structures draw tourists, we decided to have lunch here.

Lunch was a big mistake. The restaurant was sort of fun and old school inside, but it took god damn forever. There was only one other customer and we ordered something simple and it still took close on, if not more than 2 hours. It was hard not to sit and think about how we spent this money and exerted this effort just to sit in a windowless room in the Canary Islands.

Of late I've become really against sit down lunch while travelling and this is one of the main experiences behind that stance.

Following lunch, there were still a few hours before sunset and we had something that needed to be done regardless of the hour.

Going into this trip, Tenerife was another place where I checked out local or travelling BMX videos featuring the location. Advantageously and hilariously enough, a new Devon Smillie/Courage Adams Tenerife video came out right around this time and I was glued to the spots.

One location stood out in particular, as my friend Christian loves curved wallrides and I wish I had nickel for every time he's grown sentimental, telling me he needs to see me "hit a sweet curved wallride." For some reason, either when someone doubts me or when someone really wants to see a certain bike trick, I become really focused on getting it done. One time Donnie gave me a hard time about never doing a wheelchair hop, and so I stuck my neck out and am pretty proud of hoping the rail at the medical clinic in La Scie. There's another example of this with The Fondeler too, but I'm saving it for a hopeful new section at some point in the future.

So when I saw Courage Adams hop into a perfect curved wallride, I knew I had to find it.

First, I thought that these riders would be in the bigger cities, especially as the video portrays them riding around and hitting similar spots. I went through a quick round trip of the island and noted the 3 or 4 biggest cities. Scanning the aerial photos and dropping into StreetView, there kept being promising blocks of buildings, but not the exact one. I spent about an hour in a Santa Cruz de Tenerife area that looked just like Courage Adams' riding area, but it wasn't it.

Going back to the video, there had to be more clues. I watched a few other Tenerife videos and saw the same curved wallride spot - so this clearly wasn't some hard-to-reach or secret spot. One of these other videos showed the background behind the wall better, and looking back at the Courage Adams video, I suddenly noticed a business across the street that looked like a computer business except I couldn't make out the name. I tried computer and Tenerife. Dropping into StreetView outside computer shops for about an hour, this didn't work either.

I went back to scouring cities and even started into the towns. Unfortunately this is where I was looking at a random south coast town and found the incredible blue rail spot. This told me that they weren't just in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and vicinity.

Then there was another breakthrough, one which I couldn't believe I didn't notice and which would solve this all. There was a drinking establishment opposite the curved wallride! I set about freezing frames and trying to catch the frame where Courage Adams was moving slow enough for the writing to be clear.

"Bar Aperitivo."

I slowed down here because the search was over. All I had to do was Google this bar.

Nope. Using quotations, I kept getting results in Madrid and Seville. It would appear this was simply Spanish for "snack bar." I zoomed into Tenerife areas and tried typing in the name knowing Google searches nearby places, but still, nothing.

By this point, I was seven hours in and facing the struggle of swallowing my pride and simply asking for directions - or even worse coordinates - in the YouTube comments. I couldn't be that cornball though, for every single time when some herb asks for the song of a section, I slap my forehead when the song is listed right there below the YouTube video. With a permanent bruise above my eyebrows, I couldn't also be that useless herb.

So I went back to it, fixated on how it couldn't be that hard to break down the areas of apartment blocks of this height for an island only about 80% of the size of Rhode Island. There was a promising area in San Cristobal de La Laguna, but the aerial imagery was low resolution and a few minor laneways were missing Google Streetview.

One area looked just so much like the apartment blocks though. It's then that I rounded a now familiar corner in StreetView, coming around the promising front of this apartment block. And lo and behold, there it was, I'd found it after 9 hours of Googling.

This is all anti-climatic since I wouldn't get the curved wallride after all that work. It might help if I rode another curved wall since Donnie, C & I rode that one at The Ohio State University in 2004.

(I also rode a really gentle one out of a quarter at the Incline Club in New Jersey about 5 years ago, but that doesn't really count.)

The funny thing is that the spot was so good that I don't even blink an eye at slaving over Google for 9 hours. There's also the fact that I sort of like internet sleuthing.

About a year ago I spent 6 hours finding the one picture on the internet of a lazy susan Canadian meat department spinner for my friend Walter. And another day I spent about 5 hours finding out the history of a leather tannery for my friend Arntz. I like it to the point that I often ponder if I should go into social media monitoring/investigation or a city code enforcer who studies StreetView. I also think about creating an Instagram account and charging kids $3 for the answers to all their "what park iz this?" and "song?" inquiries (but I don't imagine those who ask those questions have $3 in dispensable income or could figure out how to use PayPal).

The only negative of the Tenerife Googling was finding so many golden spots that made me want to ride a whole lot more than I had planned.

I failed to bring you that cool lighthouse hike, I failed to bring you a curved wallride, I was just failing all around this day, haha.

In real life, this spot and that lighthouse actually made this a decent day. How am I really going to be that upset after getting to ride in board shorts in February?

Following the curved wallride, I took my bike back apart and we drove on the main highway circling the island to get over to the arid east side.

It's there that we had a room at some type of weird commune that looked strange online and you had to e-mail for vacancy queries; but dinner tonight (and the rest of the stay) was totally fine.

Continue to Part 3...