Las Palmas 12/12/1936
and now we are finally sitting in Las Palmas on the Gran Canaries in 17 degrees, bananas are 7 stalks for 20 ore. We arrived last night at 4 o’clock after a sailing trip that was a lot longer than we had planned. Luckily this is quiet and peaceful but a certain number of police guards and business transactions are held up on account of money difficulties. Flour and sugar are very expensive but fruits and vegetables they have plenty of. Letters can be sent to Danish Consul Padre Cueto 2 Puerto de Ia Luz, Gran Canaria, but only letters without special values. So, Valdemar can save on his jokes. Furthermore, the letters should go via England. So that’s it.
Today it’s the 12th of December, so 12 days to Christmas, so we say merry Christmas. It is difficult, we are not at all in Christmas mood but still wish you merry X- mas for both of you and we all 4 + Mekki. L A P E
We had wonderful days in Safi, the only trouble with that harbor they demanded harbor toll from us and a lot of it 58 francs on the other hand we got into the X – mas mood because of a couple of Norwegian and Danish steamers who offered us X-mas gifts a big box of fine pralines (filled chocolates) and 200 cigarettes and several pounds of tobacco for Peter’s pipe plus lots of food the captain on the Danish steamer was visiting us and when he left I sent Peter to town to buy butter when the captain said you can get that from us and Peter came back with butter, black bread and canned milk and other things and when we later said thank you he asked what else do you need where upon we got another supply. Only too bad that one cannot demand too much which I have at least a little bit of. You’re asking about the turtle. Didn’t I tell you that it had a sad end? An ugly rat ate its 4 flippers so we had to drown it.