Soofer durds!

Nope, it’s not a typo, just a Shelly-Roweism for surfer dude. I’ll explain.

We had another slow start yesterday. In the morning, we had to deal with a shower problem: it floods. Or did flood. The drain had been partially blocked from the start, but yesterday morning, Karen couldn’t get more than a couple of minutes under the water before it started to spill out of the stupidly designed stall. The shower area is at a higher level than the bathroom floor, with no lip to prevent water flowing out. It slopes back only very gently to the drain, so it doesn’t take much of a back-up to create un inundación.

I emailed Daniel, our landlord, and Sandra, his on-island representative: no response. So I wandered next door to the unit where Sandra lives – or where I thought she lived. Another young couple was there. They said, no, Sandra wasn’t there, and didn’t live there. She lives somewhere else on the island apparently. They were friends with Sandra, but just renting for the week. I’m speculating now that Sandra was staying temporarily in one of the unused rental units she manages so she could be near her grandchildren whose family was renting the unit on the other side of us for a weekend break. The little frizzy-haired girls and their parents have now left, replaced in the unit to the south by a young French couple. 

Our new neighbours to the north very kindly took it upon themselves to help us. He doesn’t speak much English and seemed suspicious at first. She – his girl friend, I think – is from Madrid and speaks quite good English. They soon warmed up. They came and looked. He decided the first thing to try was some drain cleaning acid. They would also ask the maintenance man, who was supposedly coming that afternoon for a problem with one of the other units, to look in on our place.

They went away and came back 30 minutes later with a bottle of acid, which he poured, very gingerly, down the drain. It was incredibly strong stuff, bubbling and smoking and smelling awfully. They also showed us how to get the lavadora, the washing machine, working, which had stymied Karen. Nice people. They were just vacationing themselves, so we felt badly. We waited, chatting, while the acid did its work, then went back and tried putting water down the drain. It seemed to have cleared some. He said we now needed to let it dry so we could put more acid down it later in the day.

In the afternoon, we drove to La Caleta de Famara, the little “fishing village” we had seen from El Risco de Famara at the Ermita de las Nieves. The fishing village turned out to be more a surfer hangout. The Playa de Famara is one of the top surf beaches on the island, and one of the longest beaches as well at about six kilometers.

The main drag of La Caleta is lined with cafes and surf and skateboard shops. There were a few young soofer durds hanging about. (Shelly Rowe couldn’t say ‘surfer dude’ when we were in Costa Rica together years ago – it always came out soofer durd.) But it was clear this was off-season. 

Graciosa and El Risco de Famara from La Caleta

We parked at the end of the village and walked back to the beach. It was very wild, and almost deserted. There were more middle-aged and elderly winter vacationers out walking than young surfers in the water. There were a few, though. None seemed to have much clue how to do it properly. If they got up on their boards, the almost immediately fell off again. We saw a couple of instructors training newbies. It was definitely amateur hour for surfing.

Karen and I walked almost to the end of the beach. It’s sand most of the way, at least right down by the water. Sometimes we had to scuttle up into the rocks to escape the incoming tide. The cliffs of El Risco loom over it, and Graciosa, the last inhabited island in the archipelago is in view just down the coast.

We went as far as the Urbana Famara, a beach bungalow community completely separate from La Caleta. We had been puzzled by it looking down from the cliffs above because most of the houses are crescent shaped. Were they beach houses, we wondered, or part of some desalination plant? We knew there was one somewhere around here. The former as it turns out. The property is bounded by plexiglas walls – to protect against the onshore breezes, I'm guessing. They were constant this day and, I suspect, most of the time. The Urbana looked abandoned.

We went a little further, then turned and walked back, enjoying the late sun shining through clouds and haze.

On the way home, we stopped again in Teguise. It was after five by now, so we thought we’d check out some of the little shops and galleries that had been closed when we were there the other day. Certainly more were open, and we went into a few, but some were still closed, suggesting they might only be open during the high season. The town, again, seemed empty except for a few lonely tourists rattling about.

One of the shops we went into was operated by the Fundación César Manrique, which is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the island’s most famous son, an architect, artist and conservation activist who died in a traffic accident in 1992. I had thought he was mainly an architect who dabbled in sculpture – like the mobiles at the Mirador del Rio that we saw earlier in the week. But he was also a very accomplished and distinctive graphic artist. They had prints and t-shirts in the shop with some of his images. I’ve decided he’s my new favourite artist. Cool stuff. I might have to buy a t-shirt.

We decided this was definitely a place to bring Caitlin. We also learned today that she will be spending a whole week with us. Yahoo! She and Bob had bought air tickets to come and see us the weekend of her birthday, then realized he couldn’t come that weekend, so bought tickets for the following weekend. (They're rich apparently.) Their original plan was to just abandon the first set of tickets. But now Caitlin is going to use the outbound portion of the first set, and the return portion of the second. And Bob will join us for a long weekend at the end. Should be great.

Teguise: timple (Lanzarote-style ukulele) maker

Our muy amable neighbour dashed in as we were cooking dinner and dumped some more acid down the shower drain for us. He said he thought it was clear now, smiled and left almost as quickly. I had a long-overdue shower this morning and it drained perfectly. However, the problems with the place continue. For most of the first part of the morning, we had no Internet. And at one point, we couldn’t get any hot water. All is well right now, however. (Touching wood.)