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.

Arrecife 1

Lanzarote is the most northeasterly of the Canary Islands and catches little rain due to the low elevation, which makes the landscape stark but beautiful. It is volcanically active and a large part of the island was covered in volcanic debris in a recent eruption from 1730 to 1736.

It was a bit chilly when the ferry moored. A private taxi offered to take me into town. I thought the fare was a bit pricy at €7 but I didn't have much choice as the port was a couple of km outside town, a bit far to walk with a backpack. I resolved to rent a car to explore the island as bus services were infrequent.

Arrecife was a rather bare capital and port city. With only about 50,000 population, it was a far cry from the bustle of Las Palmas. Even when the skies were overcast there was a luminous quality to the light due to the lack of moisture.

The map in the guide was poor and I got lost in the winding streets of the old city. Eventually I found the hotel I wanted. There weren't many lodgers. I was not even sure that there was hot water in the showers. The best thing about it was that it was relatively cheap at €12 per day. The second best thing was a plump resident cat.

After a nap, I went into the city to look for car rental companies. There were only a few, and rates were around €30 per day. With the cheap accommodation this was within my means, but I wondered where I could park the car at night.The place with the best rates for a small car told me to check again the next day. If I visited Fuerteventura the next day, then I could drive around the island in the remaining 4 days until the flight back.

I discovered an Italian restaurant that served an excellent pasta for lunch. I was to return here a few times in the coming days. They also sold takeaway gelato. In their window was this tongue-in-cheek poster depicting how commercial ice cream cones are purportedly made.

In the evening I went for a walk in the area around the city beach. There was a large paved space and a gazebo overlooking it.

I found the bus stand where I had to be the next morning to catch the Fred Olson service to connect to the ferry for a day trip to Corralejo on Fuerteventura, the adjacent island.

The beach was quiet in the evening.

The city had a forlorn mood. Of course, most of the visitors were in the resorts, rather than in the city. I felt like I had sent myself into exile at the edge of the world.