The lodgers in the neighbouring room yakked into the night again, but I got even in the morning. I put on my earplugs before going to bed, set the alarm for half an hour before I really wanted to arise and then ignored its beeps. Not very charitable but satisfying.
It was Sunday so I didn't have to get up early. I reached the markets in Teguise at about 1100. It was full of clothes, craft and toy vendors. It seemed like half of Lanzarote was there. But it was also a tourist attraction. There were quite a few British and German food stalls.
I tasted a few morsels of the local cheese and decided that I liked the mature variety so that was what I would look for the next day in the supermarket.
Then I drove down LZ30, the spine of the island, to Yaiza in the municipality of the same name, and thence to Playa Blanca which I had only glanced at on my way to Corralejo. This was also a touristy place swarming with British and German tourists with more development in the wings.
I spotted these African Grey parrots at one of the harbourside shops. They are very intelligent birds. I've heard a track of one improvising with whistles and clicks to a playback of Egberto Gismonti's composition Loro, which coincidentally, or perhaps not, is Spanish for parrot. I hoped these specimens were well-entertained. They will pluck out their own feathers if bored.
I had a filling set lunch at a Chinese restaurant there, but it was not as good as the one I had on Thursday. I drove up to the high ground at Femés and down again. It was a hot cloudless day and I could see the hot air distorting the distant views. Only the breeze kept me comfortable.
I took a side trip to Puerto Calero. which is more of a marina than a resort, via the coastal road. The development here was of a higher quality than that at Puerto del Carmen, next up the coast. It was probably fortunate that there was not enough space for developers to do horrid things.
Incidentally this picture reminds me that there is cochineal farming in the Canary Islands to produce the dye.
In the evening, I walked through Arrecife looking for a place to satisfy my craving for a hot chocolate but was disappointed not to find one. I repacked my belongings. It really was time to leave the Canary Islands. I had devoted a day or two too many to Lanzarote in my fear of not making the ferry connection.
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.
