Birhday Girl

This is a catch-up post, and doesn’t even completely catch me up. I’m writing the last of it on Monday, February 20th. It covers the period from February 13th to 17th.

Caitlin’s second full day on Lanzarote, Monday, was a lazy one. It started with a freakish, unforecast rain shower in the morning, but cleared before noon and stayed mostly sunny and mild the rest of the way. The breeze was still quite brisk, though, a remnant of the weather we’d had the last couple of days.

In the late morning, Caitlin lay on the terrace and read. We lazed around until after lunch, then finally roused ourselves and went for a walk into Arrieta to show her the beach and do a little shopping at the supermercado. The sun shone, we had to shed layers of clothing. Caitlin was pleased with the views over the sea and the boats – and the sun.

Playa Garita at Arrieta will do nicely as a place she and Bob can walk to and not have to worry about drinking and driving. The beach is sandy, not big, but quite pleasant. It’s a little rough, as we saw while we were there. Waves were breaking right near the shore. Two northern European women were standing in shallow water with their backs to the sea. A big wave came in and knocked them flat. Another pale-skinned fellow was trying to boogie board but missed the wave and was pummeled by it instead.

There is a very popular restaurant right on the beach, and a couple of little snack bars. There are also quite a few restaurants along Calle Garita, the town’s main drag, which leads to the beach. One of them is the top-rated establishment in town, El Amanecer, where we thought we’d probably take Caitlin for dinner for her birthday.

We noticed again the oddly-designed, vaguely alpine-looking two-storey house on the edge of town. It’s completely out of keeping with the rest of the architecture on the island, yet it’s pictured in our Eyewitness guide to the Canary Islands. What I hadn’t noticed before, because I hadn’t walked right down to it, is the little triangle of yellow sand beach in front of the house. There’s a rock wall out in the water, so it’s like a little pool with a sandy beach. One fellow was swimming, another couple sun bathing.

We walked back to our casita and Caitlin worked until dinner time, another great meal by Karen. And so ended the day.

Caitlin had another lazy morning on her birthday, Tuesday, rising late, lounging on the terrace in the sun. There was still a little work stuff to distract her – blips in the final stages of pushing the exhibition catalogue through the publishing process.

In the early afternoon, we drove to Teguise to visit the Palacio Spinola, which we understood was a kind of stately home, furnished as it would have been in its heyday in the 18th century. Caitlin was naturally interested.

There was some confusion, however, because Palacio Spinola was also listed as the site of the Timple Museum, a museum devoted to Canarian folk music and, specifically, the timple (TIM-play), a five-string ukulele-size guitar that is the national instrument. The confusion was explained when we got there. The museum had changed four years ago, the attendant explained, when they took out the 18th century furnishings and moved in the Timple displays. This was disappointing, but it was still an 18th century mansion, and it only cost 3€ each to enter, so in we went.

It’s a very atmospheric building, with high cathedral ceilings, white plaster walls with weathered wood framing showing through. There’s an interesting chapel nook, with carved wood decorations, and a surprisingly small and plain, but tranquil, inner courtyard. The music displays were mildly interesting, a few rooms with glass cases, usually with one instrument per case. Most were timples, quite a few of them made in Teguise. The town was apparently a centre for instrument making, which is why the museum is here. On an earlier visit to the city, Karen and I had stumbled on a workshop with a guy making instruments. There were also examples of guitar-like instruments from other parts of the world: ukuleles, balalaikas and so on.

We probably only spent 30 minutes in the place. I was disappointed there was no opportunity to have hands on with a Timple, or hear it played. There is a small performance space in the museum, but nothing was scheduled while we were there. A video was playing with a band featuring a Timple player, and we had heard a little trio playing in the market in Playa Blanca the week before. It appears the instrument often takes a lead role, with the player picking the strings rather than strumming.

The museum also includes a timple-making workshop, with half-built instruments lying on tables, and printed panels showing the process of making them. But nobody was working when we visited – and perhaps nobody ever does. All in all, it was a bit of a dead loss, although the building interior was interesting.

It was a lovely day and we wandered around the streets, poking into shops. Many were closed for lunch and siesta but some were still open. We popped into the Cabra Cabra Galeria de Arte, the atelier of a British artist, Dominic Murray, who lives in Lanzarote. He specializes in photo-realistic portraits of goats, usually with bright pastel backgrounds. They’re amusing. Each goat is named and looks quite distinct and full of personality. They eat goats here, so I can’t imagine what the locals must think of his anthropomorphizing their livestock.

Caitlin’s other birthday request was a drink at a seaside bar. We took her to Costa Teguise, the nearest of the planned resort towns to Punta Mujeres. Even she, who has a higher tolerance for this kind of place than we do, was almost immediately turning up her nose and saying, “This really isn’t our kind of place, is it?” It’s all big hotels and tacky shops and bars catering to tourists. We passed one little snack bar with a sandwich board out front, festooned with a union jack, advertising “bangers and mash” and Cornish pasties. We turned around almost immediately, got back in the car and drove to Arrieta, where we sat in the very Spanish restaurant at the beach. The ladies sipped cava.

We drove back to the bungalow afterwards. It was past five by this time. We had a brief rest and then set out down the road on foot, to El Lago, the big restaurant on the sea road in the next little community. It’s less than a kilometer away. El Lago is highly rated by Trip Advisor, but it’s not really a special-night-out restaurant. The food was fine and the portions surprisingly generous, and we didn’t have to drive anywhere. We had a bottle of the El Grifo Malvasía Seco, a crisp, fruity wine grown here on the island. (We would would visit the vineyard a couple of days later.)

And so ended Caitlin’s thirty-second birthday.

                     

The next day was national BOB BAINES Day in Lanzarote. (He told me to say that.) Bob was arriving just before noon to spend six days with us. So the early morning was given over to primping (i.e. Caitlin.) We set out about 10:15. The day was partly cloudy and cooler. It did not promise well for Bob’s first day on the island – a repeat of the inhospitable welcome Caitlin had received.

We did a shop at the Mercadona near the airport on the way and were at the terminal in plenty of time to meet Bob. He appeared, looking surprisingly chipper for a guy who’d had to get up at 4 o’clock to make his flight. He’d flown Ryanair from Stansted, near London, after spending a few days in Essex with his little boys over their spring school break.

In the afternoon, Karen and I went off on our own in the car to do a walk on Monte Corona, the ancient volcano that dominates this end of the island and created the vast badlands just north of us. We didn’t end up doing the walk. We couldn’t find the start point for it. It had turned cooler in any case and was threatening rain. So we drove a meandering route that took us eventually up to Guinate where there is a terrific mirador with views out over the west coast to the southern end of Isla Graciosa.

We noodled around on small roads at the north end of the island, around Ye and up to the Mirador del Rio, then decided to drive back to Haria and sit in a bar with a drink to finish the afternoon. Which we did. We sat at the bar at the end of Plaza León y Castillo. It had started spitting rain by this time, but they had big umbrellas up that covered the tables.

When we first sat down, a couple of English tourists were asking the waiter where they could get a taxi. He pointed to where the cabs usually parked across the street and told them – in Spanish, which I don’t think they understood very well – that he didn’t know when another cab might come, but maybe not for a half an hour. Why didn’t they sit down and have a drink while they waited? They looked annoyed but did sit. Karen and I sat and read our devices, but it was hard to concentrate. A local man was pacing around the edge of the outdoor seating area, talking in a loud braying voice to the waiter, who mostly ignored him.

We stopped on the way home to take pictures in the beautiful afternoon light after the rain showers. Too many pictures undoubtedly. 

And then when we got back to the bungalow, there was more great light on the water.

Karen made a very nice dinner that evening and we whiled away the first evening with Bob, nattering and drinking wine.

The plan the next day was for Karen and I to go off and leave the two lovebirds to have a day on their own to decompress and enjoy the sun and warmth, which were forecast to return (and did), and the sea. We would drive to the south end of the island, to Playa Blanca, and catch the ferry to Fuerteventura, the next island to the south of us. Our Lanzarote: Car Tours and Walks book includes a chapter on a day trip to Fuerteventura with driving and walking routes.

But as Robby Burns said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” And ours did.

We still don’t know where Miss Tom-Tom, our GPS system, was taking us, but it wasn’t directly to the ferry terminal in Playa Blanca. There was panic and confusion in the car when she told us to ignore the turn for Playa Blanca and continue towards Yaiza. First, we decided – I decided – to ignore her and drive to Playa Blanca anyway, which we started to do. Karen, uncharacteristically, thought we should follow Miss Tom-Tom, arguing that if I was wrong – I think she meant to imply it was more than likely I was wrong – we would miss the 11 o’clock ferry, about the latest we could take and still fit in our agenda. So we turned around and went back to the Tom-Tom route. We eventually got back to it, after a couple of wrong turns, but it became clear it was nonsensical, taking us away from the seacoast. It was now too late to have any chance of making the 11 o’clock sailing, so we gave up the plan.

As a footnote, later research showed I was not wrong. The ferry terminal is in the harbour in Playa Blanca, not far from where we went the week before for the market at the marina. Exactly where I thought it was.

We decided instead to do a walk along the coast from Playa Quemada, just north of Playa Blanca, to Playa del Carmen, the other huge resort town in the south end of the island. We drove to the start point and found the path along the top of the cliffs. A stiff breeze was blowing off the water, which was probably a good thing as the sky was cloudless and the sun intense. We were both slathered with sun block.

The views out over the water to Fuerteventura and back to the hills above the Rubicón Plain were wonderful. At one point I saw a herd of cows straggling across the lower slopes of one of the mountains, ant-like in the distance.

There were lots of other people out walking, which is not surprising. The path is reasonably well groomed, there isn’t much in the way of ups and downs, and this part of the island is heavily populated with northern European tourists who like to walk.

About 45 minutes out from Playa Quemada, we came to Playa Calero, an attractive little resort town. There’s a marina with a promenade beside it and hotels and houses on the streets above. The promenade is lined with nice-looking restaurants and bars. There is none of the tackiness or overcrowding of Playa Blanca or Costa Teguise. The first hotel we came to had its own tiny private beach, and what appeared to be its own water desalinization system. Karen had read that many hotels and farms here have desalinization plants.

We found a supermercado and bought rolls, cheese, ham and drinks and sat on a park bench in the shade on the promenade to eat our picnic. It reminded me of picnics Karen and I used to have when we were first travelling in Europe in the 1970s. I have a photo of Karen, looking impossibly young - my child bride, except she's in her late 20s here – sitting on a park bench somewhere in Greece (Rhodes? Crete?), with an open bottle of wine sitting beside her. The dress is one, I believe, that she made herself.

After lunch, we walked on to Playa del Carmen, climbing up out of Playa Calero and back to the cliff. This part of the walk is not as wild as the first, and there were more people on the path. We several times encountered a garrulous, overweight German man of about our age, wearing no shirt. He was a writer apparently – this much we gleaned from a bit of overheard conversation – and seemed to be accosting single women along the path to converse intensely about poetry and philosophy, but in a very jovial way. When he separated from one of his new friends, he came striding along past where we were sitting and said loudly to us, “Wonderful day!” An interesting fellow, but the no-shirt thing was a very bad idea.

We didn’t actually go into Playa del Carmen because it would have meant climbing a steep staircase in the rocks, and Karen’s knees were in delicate condition by this time. I went up the steps to see if I could see around the next point and down into the town, but there was another rocky promontory after that one, blocking the view. So I turned back to where Karen was waiting and we retraced our steps.

Just past Puerto Calero, we split up again. Karen stuck to the lower path along the edge of the cliff, while I walked up to a track further back from the coast to see if I could get some good shots of the mountains off to the west of us. There were some nice views but never quite the unobstructed vista I wanted.

It was a little before four when we got back to the car, so we decided to go driving over to the other side of the island. We headed for a little town called El Golfo, which we didn’t know much about, except that it was where a walk along the coastline of the Timanfaya National Park started. It was a walk we’d considered doing earlier when Fuerteventura fell through, but our book was adamant it required stout shoes and Karen only had sandals with her.

El Golfo has that end-of-the-road-coastal-town feel to it, like Tofino on Vancouver Island or Provincetown in Cape Cod – kind of sleepy and peaceful, with holiday makers but not enough of them to make if feel overrun or hectic. The landscapes are incredible – jagged, twisted black lava rock right down to the water, almost unrelieved by vegetation, with waves dashing up on them. And in the other direction, dead volcano cones.

We drove back to Punta Mujeres by the LZ 2. As we pulled on to our road, we noticed Caitlin and Bob walking off – with the only house key – to have a drink in Arrieta. In fairness, we had told them we would probably get the ferry from Fuerteventura at 6 p.m. which would have got us back to Punta Mujeres after seven. And it wasn’t even six at this point.

                                        

They came back a little after seven. We walked up into the village to see if we could find a likely looking restaurant open, but found none. So we went back to El Lago, where Bob and Caitlin treated us to a very nice meal, complete with the same El Grifo Malvasía Seco wine and the lovely warm bread with creamy red and green mojo sauces. Huge portions again, much wasted food.