We're Here!

Robert Q dropped us at the airport almost five hours before our scheduled departure. Taking a later bus would have left us too little margin for error, they said. The upside: at that hour of the day, no queue to drop our bags at the Air Transat counter, and virtually none at security.

With so much time to kill, we decided to splurge on two hours in a lounge ($60). Unlimited food from a buffet – not bad tasting, but after-effects not so great – and unlimited bar, plus quiet surroundings with nice view of runways. Assume food problem a one-of, so would do it again in similar circumstances.

Good flight to Gatwick. Karen and I had a row of two seats near the back. Only occasional brief wafts of sewage smell from loos. (Shelley would have been gagging – but when would Shelley ever be at the back of a plane?) Didn’t bother with onboard entertainment system. We watched video we’d downloaded to our tablets: Dr. Thorne, a new mini-series from Amazon Prime, based on the Anthony Trollope novel, adapted and introduced by Julian (Downton Abbey) Fellowes. Very good, not quite as rose-coloured a view of aristocracy as Downton. Food: inedible – but then we weren’t hungry.

It was cold in London, colder than home. We caught a shuttle bus (£3 each) to our hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott. It wasn’t even 11 a.m. when we arrived but they found us a room that was ready. (I had called and asked for early check-in after we booked through Hotwire, but I’d said we wouldn’t be there until 11.)

We napped for a couple of hours, then got up and read and fiddled with electronics. Caitlin had sent us the proofs of her book, which we read with great pride and enjoyment. That girl can write. We went for a walk around the hotel halls – too cold for outside. Finally went down about six for dinner in the hotel restaurant: not great and horrendously expensive. Tried to watch TV after dinner to keep awake, but British TV a wasteland so turned it off, and ourselves soon after – I don’t even think we made it till 9 o’clock. Took a whole Gravol and slept through until 8.

We had lots of time in the morning, so had a leisurely full English breakfast in the hotel, and read depressing news of Trump in the local papers – what other kind is there? Caught the shuttle back to the airport and had another lo-o-ong time to kill, as our flight was an hour delayed, which we only discovered when we got there. Camped out in the departures lounge and read.

Flight good: three hours 45 minutes. We had a spare seat between us. No free food or drink, so bought sandwiches and beer and wine. It took us an hour or more to collect baggage and take delivery of rental car in Arrecife. We found the nearby Mercadona I’d scouted out ahead, albeit with the inevitable wrong turns and backtrackings – it was only five minutes from the airport, but took us almost 30 to reach it. We did a fairly big shop as fast as possible.

I had emailed, Sandra our landlord’s onsite representative, to say we would be later than we originally said. She had asked that we text her when we were leaving the airport. I tried to text her when we were leaving the Mercadona, but discovered that my phone does not work here for some reason. Still have to troubleshoot that problem. (Later: user error - failed to enter international access code, needed because this is a French phone, left over from two years ago, calling a Spanish number. Duh!)

So we just drove, using wonky Google map directions. Roads here are very dark at night. We found the place, by luck and the kindness of strangers as much as good navigation. Google maps had directed us to a similar, but wrong, address. The woman there, luckily, knew of Daniel, our landlord – she said others had knocked on her door looking for his place – and was kind enough to call Daniel (wherever he is - not here) and used her minimal English to point us to where we needed to go, about a half a kilometer further along.

I parked where she had suggested and wandered down into the villa complex where our place evidently was. Sandra, by great good fortune, lives next door and was up watching TV. She saw me through her window stumbling around in the dark and came out. Why hadn’t I texted? I tried to explain, but was basically brain dead at this point.

The place is fine: right on the sea with black volcanic rock beach. We were prepared for disappointment, but it’s fine – not quite as great as it looks in the Internet ads, of course, and the kitchen is poorly equipped. But it’s decent enough. And the Wi-Fi works - most of the time. We unpacked, had drinks and finally collapsed into bed about 1 a.m., the sound of the sea soothing us to sleep. Stayed under until almost 9 this morning.

Our villa in Punta Mujeres

Biggest problem discovered so far: you cannot put paper down the toilet. Huh!? That’s right. You have to put your TP in a bag and take it to the public garbage bins up in the village. I don’t understand why. Sandra tried to explain, but her English is only so-so, and my Spanish seems to have entirely fled. “This is a problem,” she asked a couple of times? Ah, yeah! But we will have to live with it, I guess.

The sun is in and out, and very hot when out – we will need sunblock. It’s up to about 66F now, headed for 68F. We will go exploring soon.

Writing the next day… In the late morning, we went for a long-ish walk through the village – “a tight cluster of dwellings,” as the author of our Lanzarote walking guide dismisses it. It’s a pretty little place with several rock pools for swimming and a few tiny beaches of black sand and volcanic stones. The biggest, the so-called Playa Grande, is barely about 20 meters across.

Punta Mujeres

When you get to the northern edge of the village, there is a walking path heading off north towards Jameos del Agua and Orzola at the far end of the island - which we intend to explore. The surrounding landscape is strangely attractive: a knobbly mix of volcanic boulders left by the early 18th century eruptions and cacti and succulents that thrive in the rich laval soil.

On the way back, we met Sandra in town. She asked if we liked the rock pools. Of course, we said, but it’s a little cool for swimming. No, no, she said, it makes you feel alive. We later saw her in bathing suit, toweling off after a dip. Karen and I disagree about how old Sandra might be. I think she’s mid- to late 40s, Karen thinks younger. I think Sandra’s daughter, husband and two little girls have just moved into the unit beside ours. The little girls have Sandra’s frizzy hair and one of them has her honey blonde colouring – and they follow her everywhere.

After lunch, we drove to one of the island’s biggest tourist attractions, the Mirador del Rio at the north end of the island. It is lovely, with views across to Graciosa, the tiny island just to the north, and the last in the Canarian archipelago. The stone-built chalet at the mirador was restored and renovated by the island’s famous artist-architect son, Cesar Manrique. It features sculptures and mobiles by him. We thought the 4.50€ entry fee was maybe a bit steep, but it was the only way to see the best views.

Mirador del Rio

We walked down the road a way from the mirador, climbed a drystone wall and walked out to look at the fabulous light effects, with the late sun shining through cloud and haze, spangling the water with gold. Directly below us was a long, crescent-shaped sandy beach with exactly three people walking on it – or they might have been ants – and no villas or houses in sight. Very isolated. And so home to dinner.

Today (yesterday), we made a concerted effort and got out of the house a little after 9:30 in the morning. This was after getting up at 8, so not bad. Our plan was to drive to Teguise via Haria, both within 20 kilometers of Punta Mujeres.

We drove first to Haria in the interior, an old town in the “valley of a thousand palms.” It reminded me a bit of Palm Springs driving into it. The palms are very lush looking. There is nothing like 1,000 of them, though. This is apparently because pirates – who plagued these islands for centuries – had burned many of them in the 19th century. Why?! We parked near the inevitable Plaza de la constitucion, the city hall square. A fabulous red (I said crimson, Karen says fuschia) bougainvillea vine over archways in the park, nicely restored white-washed buildings all around.

Haria: Plaza de Constitucion - City Hall

A couple of blocks away is the other major attraction, the Plaza Leon y Castillo, a long square with some nicely restored buildings, cafes, lovely old trees and a church at the end. Not many people around.

Haria: Plaza Leon y Castillo

Some interesting-sounding flute and lute music drew us further up the street, but it turned out to be recorded music – not live as I had initially hoped. It was coming from a little jewelry shop. The elderly proprietor I glimpsed through the door must have been stone deaf – you could hear her music all over the town centre.

Haria: near City Hall

Back at the city hall square, we spotted some interesting-looking bright-coloured “sculptures” sticking up above the rooftops a few blocks away. I wondered if might have something to do with the Fondacion Cesar Manrique, which is here (but not on our itinerary today – we’ll come back to it). So we went to investigate. It turned out to be a private walled garden. The sculptures appeared to be wood, some of them dead trees, that someone had carved and painted. Karen thinks it must be the home of an artist.

We headed out of town on the LZ 10, which switch-backs up to the top of El Risco de Famara, a high ridge between the interior valleys and the island’s west coast. (We're on the east coast.) We stopped first at Mirador del Risco de Famara with its fabulous views back down the valley to Haria and over to the east coast.

Mirador del Risco de Famara: east to Arrieta and Punta Mujeres

Mirador del Risco da Fama: south to Haria

We had seen a few cyclists peddling furiously up the hill. One of them came huffing up to the look-out point while I was standing there taking pictures. He wasn’t huffing – or sweating – that hard, though, so maybe he hadn’t come uphill from Haria. He stopped for about 30 second to take in the view - ho-hum - then hopped back on his bike. The restaurant and shop here rented bikes – presumably for those who didn’t want the work of getting up the hill, but did want the thrill of gliding down.

A little further along the LZ 10, we pulled off to Ermita de las Nieves – Hermitage of the Snows, a church in the middle of nowhere. It gets its name from Our Lady of the Snows, one of the many names by which the Virgin Mary is known in the Catholic Church. There is no snow on the Risco de Famara. Other sources translate the name as Hermitage of the Clouds, which makes sense, given its altitude. But this appears to be incorrect. The church, in any case, was locked up tight as a drum.

Ermita de las Nieves is right by another fabulous mirador looking out from atop the Risco de la Famara to the west coast – the Playa de Famara and the little fishing village of La Caleta. Wonderful.

Views from Ermita de las Nieves

Next stop was Teguise, once the island’s capital, and a “royal” city, because the founding governor lived here in the 15th century with the daughter of the king of the Guanches, the native African population that was later exterminated.

At the edge of town is a winding road up to the Castillo Santa Barbara, a fortress originally built in the 16th century to defend against pirate raids, which were constant from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Today, you pay 3€ to go up on the ramparts and look down to Teguise and Arrecife beyond. There is also a somewhat lame museum about piracy. It’s all painted placards with explanatory text – in English and Spanish, thank goodness – and hokey videos. I think the intended audience is 12-year-old boys. I’m quite sure the history of piracy in the Canaries is fascinating, but the museum failed to make it so.

Castillo Santa Barbara

Teguise itself is a very attractive town with lots of restored whitewashed buildings, a handsome cathedral and what appears to be a thriving artisanal scene. Most of the galleries and studios were closed, however, either because it was lunch time or because it was Monday. The town was all but deserted, except for a few shopkeepers and restaurateurs and a handful of other tourists, mostly German.

Teguise cathedral

We wandered about, admiring the little squares and shuttered residential streetscapes, then wended our way back to Loris, a tapas place in a square not far from the cathedral. We had passed it earlier and I thought it looked like a good deal: 15.95€ for a tapas plate for two. It was a good deal.

The plate included Canary-style potatoes (boiled in heavily salted water until wrinkled and crisp on the outside), meatballs, tortilla (Spanish), jamon, salad, a soupy bean dish, bread spread with what tasted like a version of baba ganoush, and an unidentified vegetable we think was African-style yam (also called sweet potato here, but really nothing like our sweet potato – white, not as sweet and with a starchy texture.) There was just the right amount of food for the two of us – we left practically nothing, but felt quite replete. Total: 21.65€ with a glass of wine and a small beer.

We were amused by the waiter - and apparently, the owner - a handsome 50-ish Spaniard with a pony tail held back with a bandanna and a straw panama clapped on top. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a patterned waiter's apron that clashed with the shirt. His image is in the restaurant's logo, which you can see in the picture below. 

That was it for sightseeing. The last stop of the day was at a Mercadona in Arrecife where we did another big-ish shop. Then home to write in our journals and review the day’s pictures. Sandra and her grand daughters were around, but not as excited and noisy as yesterday. They had just arrived then, and Dad was chasing them up and down the walk in front of our place, roaring like a bear.