Prickly

So far, we love Lanzarote. But we are starting to hate the place we’re staying.

It’s a great location, right on the sea, with surf pounding on the rocks outside our door, nice terrace, shops nearby. It’s an adequate space. The beds are decent, the furniture, though cheap and/or old, is fine. But from there, it goes rapidly downhill.

The kitchen is very poorly equipped. Some of the pans look to be about 20 years old, their no-stick surfaces all gone. There are barely enough utensils for four people, few of them matching. The cutting knives are old and/or dull. There are exactly four wine glasses, two white wine, two red – but about 150 coffee mugs, and 37 juice glasses. The microwave is an antique that lives on top of the refrigerator. It works fine, but blows the fuse most times we use it. (The only place to plug it in is on the same circuit as the stove - brilliant.)

But the worst of it is that there are some fairly serious problems – hot water sometimes disappears; the Internet goes in and out constantly, and for periods is out more than in; the shower drain was blocked when we got here – and there has been no response from our hosts to any of our reports of these problems. Total radio silence. Sandra, who was staying next door when we arrived, has vanished. I’m starting to get pissed off.

The latest is, we woke up this morning covered in mosquito bites. This is partly – arguably mostly – our fault. Sandra did warn us about the mozzies, about keeping the doors and windows shut in the evening, but we haven’t been really careful about it. Last night, we left a window open in the bathroom, and were swarmed while sleeping. My hands and wrists and forehead – the parts sticking out from under the bedding – are covered. When we went to investigate, we discovered the bedroom walls and ceiling covered in the things. We found insecticide in the kitchen cupboard and sprayed the hell out of the bastards. We’ll just hope they’re not the malarial kind. Wouldn't it make sense in a place with this level of insect problem to use screens on the windows and doors?

But enough ranting.

We are otherwise enjoying our time here. It has been a relaxed time. Yesterday, I ran in the morning, but otherwise, we didn’t budge from the house until 2:30 in the afternoon, when we drove down the LZ 1 a few kilometers to the Cactus Garden at Guatiza.

This was another project of César Manrique, the artist-architect who renovated the Mirador del Río centre, the spectacular look-out point we visited our first full day here. The garden was built in a shallow quarry dug to source minerals needed for growing prickly pears. The cacti are used to host cochineal insects, which are cultivated to make red dye. The garden is surrounded by one of the biggest cactus plantations on the island. (Cacti are also farmed here for aloe.)

                                

It includes approximately 4,500 specimens of 450 different species of 13 families of cacti from five continents – or so says at the website. The garden is beautifully designed and maintained. Manrique was involved in every aspect of design. Even the graphics denoting male and female at the entrances to the washrooms are in his trademark style – and leave no doubt about which gender goes where.

Karen and I spent a couple of hours wandering about the place – and it’s not that large – marvelling at the variety and weirdness of the forms. Many of them we had seen before, some in the wild in Arizona, but many were new and bizarre. Cacti are great photo subjects, studies in pattern and repetition. I took a gazillion pictures, some of which I’ll post here, some on Facebook, perhaps. Karen took quite a few too, looking for images to transform into embroidery projects. It was the picture taking as much as the looking that kept us there so long.

Compared to other places we’ve been on the island, there were lots of tourists: Germans, Brits, French, Spanish. At least one bus tour pulled in while we were there. But the place didn’t seem that crowded. This is a great time of year to be in the Canaries. I’m not sure when high season is here – I would have thought right about now, but everywhere we’ve gone, it has been very uncrowded. Of course, we haven’t been down the south end of the island yet, where all the beach resorts are.

After the cactus garden we drove to Orzola, the tiny port town at the northern tip of the island, from which the ferry to Graciosa leaves. The purpose of the drive was more to find a way into the wild volcanic landscape in the Malpaís de la Corona – the badlands of Corona, the wasteland of piled laval boulders, cacti and succulents between Orzola and Jameos del Agua in the south (which is just north of us.) I’m desperate to photograph it. It was formed by centuries-old eruptions of Monte Corona, just to the west. We were unsuccessful. A tiny road shown on our otherwise ecellent map has disappeared, or was never there. We have a new strategy for finding a way in today. We’ll see.