Geography Geeks and Secret Scientists

Blog 3 of Holiday
6th/7th May 2012

Another failed breakfast. I made myself a pact not to eat the bacon today and decided upon cornflakes and raisins. So of course when I get there, there's no raisins. The one bloody day they don't have bloody raisins. Argh! So, I had just cornflakes. (I would like to ask for the record, how this cereal ever became popular??? It tastes of nothing!)

Anyhoo, I skillfully avoided bacon by opting for toast and jam, little did I know that the toaster took 20 minutes to warm the bread, let alone toast it and the strawberry jam tasted like strawberry flavoured sugar. Can you say sweeteners??? Can you say E numbers???? Yum! The bread was also the palest brown bread ever seen, it was definitely unsure of it's identity.


Enough moaning about breakfast. We had an early start today as we were off to the village of Teguise to the weekly Sunday market. We arrived just as the market was opening (9.20......starting to seem much more like a usual A and H holiday) and it was bloody freezing. Thankfully I'd put in 2 jumpers, just in case.
Apparently the town is empty usually but the whole place comes alive for the market and it most certainly does. It was massive. There was folk music going on as well as some really tacky pan pipe music and of course Lanzarote's very own Sly G performing covers sat out of a window (CHHHHEEEEEEEEESSSSYYYY!)

Then after a fairy successful market jaunt I read about a castle above the village and wanted to go. Plus it housed a Pirate museum, though not the fairytale kind, more of a history of Piracy. Still cool though. Well it would have been if there was any bloody signposts to it. Half the road were closed due to the market and there were no actual signs to the castle despite it clearly being a tourist destination. Eventually we stumbled across the road, as the castle itself was perched a top a hill (well it's actually a volcano but you don't realise until you get up higher). The road had a distinctly high risk of death, as it was steep, had no barriers. And at one point it swerved to the left and we almost plunged into the crater of the volcano. It was a pulling in space but there were no indications and it was coming from a blind bend. Well, you can't say it's not interesting............

The castle was great and the tickets had pirates on. He he. You entered on a small drawbridge and there were loads of nooks and crannies to explore. Totally worth a look, if you can find it and if you can manage not to drive off the road.

We'd been out for hours but A was determined to do one more thing before we returned to the hotel. We found a crazy little town called Nazaret, which renamed itself LagOmar and visited the once home of Omar Sharif. If you've visited the lovely welsh landmark of Port Merion then I would say it's sort of like that but with sunshine! It was incredible though. Little walkways and tunnels in the actual mountain. Fountains, pools, stepping stones and seating areas worked into the natural curve of the stone. Incredible, though it would only work in a place like this where there's hardly ever rain.

I fell asleep in the car on the way back but managed to perk myself up enough to do 2 and a half hours of writing before having a read out by the pool. (Currently 550 pages into the first Game of Thrones book. Loving it!) Randomly I caught the sun on my forehead and my nose, but otherwise I've done really well. I think the factor 50 may have had something to do with it.

We strolled along to Playa Dorada and saw a magnificent sunset whilst sipping on a Mojito. Nice! Interesting covers CD being played. Most of the covers were better than the originals, for instance Duffy, Rhianna. And yet some were terrible.e.g Mariah, Beyonce, Leanne Rhimes. What was even funnier was the fact that none of the songs surpassed about 80bpm (beats per minute......they were slow) and were pretty heartfelt ballads. (Mimics throwing up!) Not what you want when you're sipping cocktails and looking out over volcanoes. Besides Katie Melua came on and I despise her with all my might, so it was definitely time to go! (Thankfully it wasn't Bicycles in Beijing otherwise things may have been thrown.)

Anyhoo, the music was driving us mad so we stole away to our other cocktail haunt (the night of two ridiculously strong drinks that got us really drunk.....eek!). And there they were playing another covers CD but luckily this one was the 100-120 bpm CD so things were more upbeat. A got a new app on his phone called the night sky and we figured out what loads of the stars were. The brightest one that I was convinced was one of the planets, was Venus! Woo hoo. My kids would be well chuffed when I told them I'd seen Venus.

Luckily this cocktail wasn't half as strong as the last time we went there and so we were actually able to manage the walk home quite effectively.

Today was the day of the Volcanoes. We drove to Timanfaya national park to visit the mountains of fire. Wow! For the inner geography geek or the secret scientist inside of you it is just like a dream come true. Being surrounded by dormant volcanoes and layers and layers of volcanic rock and lava. Amazing!

So, you pay your 8 euro and you drive up the 2km road to meet your coach. (Along the way we found a car that had half come off the road and about 7 elderly people managed to get out without injury. Silly sausages. They'd turned down the wrong road. Anyhoo, they were rescued as they ended up on our coach.) And that's when the extreme driving commences.

Oh my word. The road is only just wide enough for the coach and so you feel like you're on a roller coaster. But you would feel safer on a roller coaster, even that make shift one they have at the winter wonderland. This must be where coach drivers come when they want to challenge themselves.

Take your coach driving to the extreme with the Timanfaya driving school. Literally hang off the precipice of life. Hold the lives of others in your hands. If you feel this is for you contact us at NO FEAR DRIVING SCHOOL, TIMANFAYA, LANZAROTE.

Hilariously, the commentary as you were going round was actually on a tape and it kept skipping. He he. Vintage! There was one particular stop we made that had me reeling away from the window. We were on the lip of a crater and as I was sat in the window seat, it was a sheer drop. Eek. I did make a squeal of some sort.

After an early afternoon of writing we took a trip to El Golfo to see the famous green lake. But actually much more impressive was the black lava sand beach. It was very course and really stuck to your toes and when it mixed with seaweed it went all spongy. Weird feeling on the old feet. You had to take a really steep gravel track down and then you were surrounded by layers and layers of volcanic rock. The green lake actually paled into insignificance next to the rest of the surroundings, but a very welcome stop off.

I love the trustfulness of the Islanders. They left out bits of crystal formations for tourists to buy. But they were literally out on a table with a price written next to them and a box left in the middle of the table for you to put the money in. I love it. what I love most is that fact that it can be done. In Britain, the table would have gone and everything, probably melted down for the metal in it's legs.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at Los Haveridos which we actually had no idea what it was because we'd left the guide at the room. Turns out it was another good stop off. There was little caves and tunnels and things. It was awesome apart from the fact that someone had used one of the caves as a toilet. Lovely.

Had a doss about in the pool before tea and then realised that there isn't a great deal to do at night, especially as we are well too sceptical to ever even consider the entertainment provided by the hotel. So we shimmied on down to the marina, got a gelato and stumbled upon on a mini-firework display. Not exactly wild but definitely in keeping with our relaxing holiday parameters.

Only one more holiday blog to go. I'm already back in London. Sadly I didn't get chance to do all the blogging I wanted to Lanzarote but I will hopefully post the final installment tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.