CharlotteCooper.net - Travel

Suspending one's travelling snobbery
Lanzarote is a tourist hell hole populated by a never-ending stream of idiotic, ugly, bad-tempered, scowling, sunburnt British people demanding cheap fags and booze with which to wash down their roast dinners. True, all true. But it's also a place that is sunny in the middle of winter, and it's cheap to get to if you buy a package tour, and that was good enough for Kay and me. I was a bit embarrassed when I told people where I was going though. Kay is not a snob and told me to stop being so stupid. And then there was a badly written article about it in the Guardian, and I picked up a leaflet offering holidays on Lanzarote inspired by the Tate gallery so those little bits of bourgie endorsement made it okay (ech, how can I even admit that that's true?), and so off we went.

Brits abroad
Because it's a package tour we have weird non-ticket voucher type things stapled together in an information booklet. The booklet makes me howl with its advice for travellers: foreign swimming pools are not the same as those at home, be careful when diving in; people drive differently in Foreign Land, look both ways when crossing the road. There's information about how to pack your bags and what happens when you check-in at the airport, plus there's a whole page devoted to disorderly travellers. Jeez, the tour operators must have to deal with people who get unstuck with this stuff all the time.

The inflight magazine has a map of the world that's divided into countries where you can and can't buy duty free goods, and there's a hard sell on duty free by the cabin staff. Aah, I say to myself, this is the real reason why people go abroad. Also on the map: the resorts are listed, cities are not, hence New York is described as a "place of interest" as opposed to Orlando, which is a proper destination.

Volcano
It's a volcanic island, innit. I thought there might be one or two volcanoes. There are tons of them. Proper conical ones with craters. And then there is the rest of the landscape - it's rocky, man. There are more rocks here than you could ever imagine. Vast plains of sharp volcanic rubble, impossible to walk over, or covered in green lichen, big rocks, little rocks, all kinds of rocks. Sometimes the rock is so ubiquitous that it looks as though it's alive and encroaching on the road, about to eat it up. As the sun moves over the mountains the colours change from black and brown to grey, purple, red. The vegetation is amazing, insane cacti, little areas where the land is cultivated, grape vines sheltered in hollowed-out dips across the mountainside. The island is small but as we drive around the landscape shifts constantly from one state to another. Whilst we are away, there's a lot of media fuss about landing craft on the surface of Mars, but I feel as though we are already there. The film 'One Million Years BC' was made here, which says it all.

Manrique is the man
The artist, architect and all round guy César Manrique had a lot of power on the island. Even though he died a decade ago, his spirit lives on in the amazing buildings and kinetic sculptures he made that dot the island. The Manrique style includes: buildings that merge into the volcanic landscape, lots of white-painted cement, rooms made from subterranean lava bubbles that are open to the outside, awesome freeform swimming pools, conversation pits, outsized cacti, mobiles, things made of rugged metal.

My ideal Manrique day would go like this: sleep late, rock a 1970s Liz Taylor style kaftan, turban, shades, diamonds and nude lipstick look, hang out at César's place with his artistic/peasant set, maybe do a little mambo and eat something grilled on a volcanic barbeque, throw interesting body shapes out on the lava flow garden for a Vogue cover shoot, have a dip in the pool (still wearing turban, shades and diamonds), play with lizards.

Brits abroad part two
In the supermarket I heard an English woman get flustered and upset when she couldn't make herself understood to the assistant. She kept saying: "Do you have any corned beef? Corned...beef? Corned?"

Los Jameos del Agua
As well as building his own amazing house, Manrique developed Lanzarote's tourist attractions. Los Jameos del Agua is a series of caves and lava bubbles that he "improved." Normally I groan inwardly when people try to improve on nature for the benefit of tourists, but Los Jameos are an exception. They feature a café, a restaurant, a dancefloor, a little stage with room enough for one singer, a large pool of glassy water with thousands of tiny albino crabs that are unique to that one pool. That's right - albino crabs! Up the steps there's the most beautiful pool I have ever seen, and a concert hall that's beyond belief. Terry Riley played there, an event I feel sick to have missed. I can't describe the excellent excessiveness of this place, suffice to say that just being there makes your heart burst with pleasure. You'll just have to look at some pictures of it, or, better still, go there yourself so that we can rave about it together.

Swimming with the fishies
You wade into the turquoise lagoon, hidden amidst the black volcanic rock, and the sand is sharp under your feet. You put on your snorkel and mask and lower yourself into the water. You're scared of a crab attaching itself to your big toe, or a stonefish killing you, or a shark eating you, but it's okay. Instead you see a couple of silvery fish swimming around, they're about a handspan long. Then you see some more, and then you see hundreds of them, all around you, moving with you then swimming away when you make a sharp movement. When you try and look for them you can't see them, but now and again they come back to see you, and you feel so blessed by their presence that you shout "I love you little fish!" into your snorkel.

Rocky crescents
They have a name but I've forgotten it. These are secret dens, windbreaks that have been built by...who knows? There are a few of them along the beach, you can just claim one to sit in, nobody minds. Inside it's warm and sheltered. Little lizards come out to see you. You're scared that they might run over you and get tangled in your hair, but they're fine, they don't bother you. Their little hearts beat under their skin, and they look at you with black eyes.

Being warm
Everyone I talk to back home wants to know what the weather is like to the extent that it becomes a fetishised question. The answer is that it's like a hot English summer's day. Often it is cloudy, but the cloud usually burns away. Kay and I keep saying to ourselves: "It's January!" I never understood the appeal of winter sun before, but now I do. Being warm makes you feel good and that's all there is to it.

The self-loving man
As we walked past, we saw a man jerking off inside one of the crescents. Maybe he thought it was more private than it actually was, or maybe he was giving the passers by a show. He was very tanned, he wore a baseball hat and had his pants around his ankles. And there he was. It was funny and tawdry, and odd and weirdly sexy too. We sniggered a lot and tried to peep. He left soon afterwards, we didn't see him go, but Kay went back to inspect his crescent for evidence. I took a photo of her in a self-loving-man pose.

More Manrique madness
The Cactus Garden and the Mirador del Rio are two more Manrique monuments on our itinerary. They are beautiful, complete worlds that make us feel light and happy. Continuing the 'we're on another planet' analogy, the Cactus Garden looks like a set from a dodgy 1960s sci-fi series. The cacti are so endearing and characterful, I feel as though I should address them as people.

Volcano part two
Further into the mountains is the Timanfaya national park. We take the official tourbus round the island's most recent active volcanoes and see blobby tar-like rock, great big craters, rippling lava fields, the Valley of Tranquillity, mountainsides covered with scrabbling high-climbing shrubs, and a big load of eye-watering scenery. We also see tourists lining up to take a picture out of the coach window when the driver pulls over for a photo stop. I sneer inwardly at the dads with their over-accessorised cameras. Then Kay gets up to join the queue. "You twat" I say, when she gets back.

El Papaguyo
A beautiful beach. Some tourists. Some litter. An open sewer on the path down. A used tampon. A dirty nappy left there. A car that tries to run over Kay and me for fun.

Things you see on the roads
Local people hitch hiking, exotic roadkill, scary driving, Manrique's kinetic sculptures, many many cyslists. Lanzarote in January is the place where all the obsessive cyclists of northern Europe congregate to train.

El Golfo
I like saying this out loud, it's very satisfying. El Golfo is also a strange green volcanic lagoon set back on a beach of black sand. It's also the place where I see a kid take a shit in a rock pool. The kids parents are a hippy man with swollen legs who gets helped around by his girlfriend.

Famara
It's late in the day and we're tired, but we stop to watch two people scoot about this epic beach on one of those surfboard/parachute combos. I hate extreme sports and everything they signify, but wow I am jealous of these people. They fly and cut across the waves like they're part of the scenery. The cliff overlooking the beach is massive and, I keep saying epic but that's the only way I can describe it. Huge, domineering, enormous. The sea is bright blue and the waves come in.

The walk
I find a dirt track on the map which leads to a footpath that runs along the coastal border of the Timanfaya national park. It's the only place where you can be out and about in the park on foot by yourselves. I'm scared that we'll miss our turning, so I keep my finger on the map all the way there as Kay drives us down the bumpy road. We stop at one point and it's so quiet that we can hear the blood rushing around our bodies. Miraculously we find the path, which is little more than a slight break in the rocks. We walk along the coast for an hour or so, the water pounding at the lava cliffs below us, spray flying up to soak me unexpectedly, twisted black volcanic rock, foam, massive massive waves. Wild nature is there, just yards away. We stand and look and marvel at it.

Going back
I had no idea that Lanzarote would be such a brilliant place. The tourist hell hole part is real, but it's avoidable if you want to avoid it, its funny if you want to laugh at it, and its an interesting thing if you want to think about how it contributes to the island's survival. I want to go back, there are lots more things that I'd like to see and do there. Wanna come with? You could, you know.