Arrecife 2 and around Lanzarote

The pocket FM radio didn't work any more. Things were falling apart. Inanimate objects were trying to tell me something. Go home, probably.


I stayed in bed until 0900, but there was still time to kill. I bought some groceries from Hiperdino, and discovered an Internet cafe where I caught up with my email and news for an hour. I noticed a Chinese restaurant offering menu del dia for €7.25 and since I was a bit homesick for Asian food I took that for lunch.


Collecting the car, a Matiz, was straightforward. I paid cash and got the keys. The agency owner was quite trusting; he didn't bother to record my passport details. Of course there was no way I could untraceably take the car off the island, but what if I damaged the car and dumped it at the airport just like that?

Lanzarote isn't a big island, about 60 km north-south and 25 km east-west. Many world cities are larger than the whole island. So I drove leisurely to the resort town of Costa Teguise. There wasn't much there that was authentic, it was just a resort town, but I sauntered inside the Hotel Meliá Salinas to see the beautiful atrium designed by César Manrique. (You will see more of his work in following posts.)

I wandered to the hotel beach for a stroll and took this picture...

and this picture, before moving on.

From Teguise, I headed inland to Castillo de Santa Bárbara, which is almost at the geographical centre of the island and which provides a vantage point for the coast.

There was a museum of Canarian Emmigration there which was said to be informative about the migrations of Canarians to the New World but I couldn't summon enough interest to enter.


To get out of the afternoon heat, I drove to the Deiland Shopping Centre at Playa Honda. I watched James Bond in Die Another Day on a demo TV in a shop for a while. I smiled at the romantic depiction of Cuba in it; cigars, old American cars, etc. At the supermarket I purchased a few bottles of water, and they rattled in the trunk as I tootled along.

In the evening I drove down to Puerto del Carmen. This was the full-blown mass tourism nightmare, signboards and menus in half a dozen languages, ad nauseum. I saw a restaurant called Malaysia, but it seemed to have folded.

However along the coast there were some areas of serenity like this beach plaza.


As expected, Arrecife was an annoyance to drive around, but I finally found a municipal car park which appeared to be free. I hoped I wouldn't find a parking ticket on the car the next morning.