After a sleepless night we made two major mistakes at the end of our first day in Lanza. The first amazed us - please keep in mind we're city dwellers - and the second was so embarrassingly stupid I hardly dare recall it.
The first: after the Mirador del Rio we tried to get into Arrecife, the island's capital, to get a bit to eat. The distances on the island are negligible so we could get from the northernmost part to the capital in less than an hour and have our first food after we had got off the plane.
Not.
Arrecife is surrounded by partly built (and highly EU-subsidised) highways (ending in a dump, or on gravel, or petering out into a rather dire part of the city) and has an incomprehensible inner city. Even with a map of the town at our disposal.
When we finally found a parking lot we couldn't find the pedestrian area and we ended up on the wrong end of the sea side: new Marina, office blocks, not a charming little restaurant studded with locals in sight. No Supermercado either, so a bit grumpy we decided to get back to our apartment, and go to the local (tourist) Spar market.
No way. We simply couldn't get onto the highway we saw in front of, and above!, us that would take us via the airport to our holiday park. I don't know how we managed - clammy, hungry, groggy with sleep - without having a major relation fall-out. But we did. And we had freshly baked bread, still warm, a lump of good old Spanish goat cheese and a nice bottle of Malvesia wine as a reward, half an hour later.
The apartment appeared to be really good: spacious, walk-in shower, a good kitchen and a private porch where we spent most of our time when not driving around.
So breakfast outside, a bit of sunbathing, reading, doing nothing and then deciding where to go.
After our journey into Arrecife we decided to forget city life and head back to the country side.
Ah. Our second mistake.
Yes.
Let's state clearly: we know how to sleep in the Tropics. You take every precaution possible and with a bit of luck your night is bug-free.
But here we weren't in the Tropics, right? This was - still - Europe, right? Nice and warm for November, ok, but nowhere near the trials and tribulations of a tropical night. So we decided against the fan (sooo unnatural), threw open the windows and fell asleep.
Not for long. In the middle of the night we were raiding everything that had flown into our bedroom and zoomed noisily around our heads.
Followed the Lanzarote Massacre. Ashamed to slash the island's insect life - and even more ashamed of this no.1 mistake newbies in the Tropics invariably make.
(ps: a couple of days later we found mesh and velcro, and made our own mosquito screen. Have a quiet snigger and please don't mention it again).
Some pics of our apartment and the park. The park btw. is inhabited by 1) Germans (elderly couples) and 2) English, mainly young couples from the North and 3) a couple of Dutch. The staff is fluent in German and English, no need to know a word of Spanish!
The first: after the Mirador del Rio we tried to get into Arrecife, the island's capital, to get a bit to eat. The distances on the island are negligible so we could get from the northernmost part to the capital in less than an hour and have our first food after we had got off the plane.
Not.
Arrecife is surrounded by partly built (and highly EU-subsidised) highways (ending in a dump, or on gravel, or petering out into a rather dire part of the city) and has an incomprehensible inner city. Even with a map of the town at our disposal.
When we finally found a parking lot we couldn't find the pedestrian area and we ended up on the wrong end of the sea side: new Marina, office blocks, not a charming little restaurant studded with locals in sight. No Supermercado either, so a bit grumpy we decided to get back to our apartment, and go to the local (tourist) Spar market.
No way. We simply couldn't get onto the highway we saw in front of, and above!, us that would take us via the airport to our holiday park. I don't know how we managed - clammy, hungry, groggy with sleep - without having a major relation fall-out. But we did. And we had freshly baked bread, still warm, a lump of good old Spanish goat cheese and a nice bottle of Malvesia wine as a reward, half an hour later.
The apartment appeared to be really good: spacious, walk-in shower, a good kitchen and a private porch where we spent most of our time when not driving around.
So breakfast outside, a bit of sunbathing, reading, doing nothing and then deciding where to go.
After our journey into Arrecife we decided to forget city life and head back to the country side.
Ah. Our second mistake.
Yes.
Let's state clearly: we know how to sleep in the Tropics. You take every precaution possible and with a bit of luck your night is bug-free.
But here we weren't in the Tropics, right? This was - still - Europe, right? Nice and warm for November, ok, but nowhere near the trials and tribulations of a tropical night. So we decided against the fan (sooo unnatural), threw open the windows and fell asleep.
Not for long. In the middle of the night we were raiding everything that had flown into our bedroom and zoomed noisily around our heads.
Followed the Lanzarote Massacre. Ashamed to slash the island's insect life - and even more ashamed of this no.1 mistake newbies in the Tropics invariably make.
(ps: a couple of days later we found mesh and velcro, and made our own mosquito screen. Have a quiet snigger and please don't mention it again).
Some pics of our apartment and the park. The park btw. is inhabited by 1) Germans (elderly couples) and 2) English, mainly young couples from the North and 3) a couple of Dutch. The staff is fluent in German and English, no need to know a word of Spanish!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.