Can't stop, I'm doing the Canary Islands'
perpetual motion cultural desert tour
Restless Jeremy Atiyah turned his back
on lazy Lanzarote's stationary beach bums and scurried round four islands in a
single day
Jeremy Atiyah
Sunday, 9 November 1997
The stationary version of the Canary
Islands holiday involves flying for four hours from Britain to
islands with funny names but no identifiable location on the weather map.
The temperature is 25 degrees C, the
cuisine is strangely familiar, the local people might be described as
international types. Welcome to a country without a context. Why not call it
Holidayland?
But is there anything remotely exciting
in Holidayland? Not much, unless you are eighteen and single. Otherwise, you'll
need the motion version of the Canary Islands
holiday.
And the motion version requires
context. You need to know for example that the Canaries comprise seven main
islands, starting just 50 miles off the southern coast of Morocco
and spanning 300 miles from east to west.
You also need to understand that the
islands closest to Africa
(Lanzarote and Fuerteventura)
are virtually extensions of the Sahara Desert,
while the islands furthest away (La
Palma and Hierro) are relatively green and
wet.
On the cultural front, it might help to
know that the islands have been ruled by the Spanish since the fifteenth
century, with the archipelago's original inhabitants (the Guanches) having
disappeared virtually without trace.
Nothing too onerous there then. I chose
a motion holiday taking in the main holiday centres. To make it really
exciting, I would do it all in a single day: a round trip from Tenerife,
via Lanzarote, Fuerteventura
and Gran Canaria - with no stopping allowed.
Breakfast: Funny how the north coast of
Tenerife is green and hilly like the
Dordogne. Funny because the rest of
the island comprises barren volcanic rock that looks as if it has been worked
over by a cosmic bulldozer.
Anyway, the 8am flight to Arrecife on
Lanzarote takes 45 minutes (another 15 minutes in the same direction and we
would be hitting Morocco).
From Lanzarote airport, stationary
tourists head for Playa del Carmen; motion tourists jump into taxis and head
south. "We like English tourists," explains my taxi driver. "But
it is strange that you eat only English food and drink English beer. Are you
not interested in our country?"
What country? Actually, the landscape
here is just how England
would look if no rain fell for about 50 years. There are brown, bald hills and
relics of ancient agriculture; old walled plantations where tomatoes and
water-melons once ripened, interspersed by white villages. On the right a
colossal black larva plain ripples away into the horizon.
Twenty minutes later, and I'm done with
this place. At Playa Blanca, on the southern tip of Lanzarote, I await the
ferry to Fuerteventura.
Here on the edge of the desert lies a small resort village of whitewashed
cottages, Marrakesh-style hexagonal towers and palm trees. The waters are clean
and a dessicating wind blows in from the shores of Africa.
Lunch: The boat journey to Fuerteventura
takes just 35 minutes. I vaguely expect to find the boat full of Canarian
commuters in suits, until I remember that this is a Sunday. Hence the day
trippers decked out in trilbies.
My first view of Fuerteventura is
of a sandy plain, a heat haze and air thick with dust. A colossal ziggurat
seems to rise like a monument from old Babylon;
this turns out to be a tourist hotel.
Fuerteventura is
almost pure desert. And Corralejo, the small resort on the northern tip of the
island, is a two-horse, shutter-banging-in- the-wind,
vulture-wheeling-in-the-sky kind of resort. The main drag is bleak and hot, and
restaurants have names like Willy's Pizzeria. "Drink two-and-a-quarter
pints in 25 seconds and get it free", announces a sign in one pub.
Opposite the small town beach rises the Isla de los Lobos, a black slag heap in
the middle of the bay.
The serious beaches though are outside
town. I see a sign pointing south to the "Grandes Playas". I tell
myself that Saudi Arabia
probably has some great beaches too. Catching a bus south from Corralejo, I
pass the ziggurat, and giant sand vistas begin filling my horizon. The buttocks
of tiny nude tourists can be glimpsed scuttling up and down the dunes like
crabs.
Puerto de Rosario, the capital city of Fuerteventura,
is a half-hour drive to the south. It's another dead little place, containing a
blinding white church and a hot square where the entire populace gathers under
a shady bandstand to drink beer on Sunday afternoons. I am in far too much of a
hurry to join them.
Dinner: Instead it is time to move
east, on the 2pm
flight to Gran Canaria. In the airport bookshop I stumble across a fascinating
little volume about the Guanchos, who are thought to be related to the Berbers
of Morocco. These people not only developed the world's first whistling
language but also learnt the skill of bounding around mountainous terrain on
long poles at dizzying speed. The book strikes me as a small step along the
road towards proclaiming an independence movement. Nowadays, trendy Canarians
name their daughters after Guanchos princesses.
From the air, the true desolation of Fuerteventura is
revealed in its dusty magnificence. Only the western hills reveal the faintest
of green fuzzes, before we are jumping over the sea to Gran Canaria.
The two desert islands I have seen this
morning do not prepare me for Las
Palmas, the main city of the Canary
Islands. This turns out to be a huge metropolis
marooned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
with roaring expressways lined by high-rise buildings.
Dazed, I wander into the old city, La
Vegueta. Sweaty youths in basketball shirts lope past in pursuit of girls with
delicate eyebrows. Old ladies lean over wrought-iron balconies, tiny cars
muscle up tiny streets. Outrageous floral flourishes in plaster adorn the
facades. I keep wondering whether this is Third
World or First; the higher I walk the more
precarious and provisional the houses become, like a Rio
favela. Is this perhaps a Latin American city?
A stocky man in sunglasses who is
washing his car vigorously looks up. "What do you expect?" he says.
"We are half-way between Europe
and Latin America.
You can fly to Venezuela
from here in only six hours."
With the oily broken tarmac, the smell
of bubble gum and ducados, the modern buildings and traffic jams, this could
easily be Caracas.
Nightcap: Like a vast apparition in the
sunset, the volcanic dome of Mount
Teide, Spain's
tallest mountain, looms up out of the island
of Tenerife,
one hundred miles away across the dark sea. The highway along the north coast
of Gran Canaria to
the ferry port is as busy as the M25 during rush- hour but I am more stunned by
the view.
We board in darkness, under a warm
wind. Passengers range from glamorous Spaniards to chunky Canarians. There are
no foreign tourists. The ship has boutiques, a bar and a restaurant and I feel
like I must be in Dover.
Arrival at Sta Cruz de Tenerife is
around 10.30pm.
The crowds evaporate and I wander alone into town. There are cheap pensiones in
these streets, where a bed will cost pounds 8 a night. It's time to get
stationary.
Canary fact file
When to go
The weather in the Canary
Islands is drier and sunnier in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura
than in Tenerife.
Nevertheless, all the islands are pleasantly mild in summer and winter alike.
Stationary holidays
Hundreds, if not thousands, of packages
are available at any time of year, including large numbers of last-minute
deals. Check teletext or visit a travel agent. Prices range from around pounds
200 to pounds 400 per person per week in a self-catering apartment, including
flights from almost any airport in Britain.
Quality of accommodation is not always high.
Motion holidays
All the islands are linked by ferry
services. Sample prices on Fred Olsen Lines include Lanzarote to Fuerteventura:
Pts 1,800 (pounds 8), and Gran Canaria to Tenerife:
Pts 2,700 (pounds 12). Discounts for under-26s available. Buy tickets locally.
Flights on the local domestic airline
Binter link up most of the islands. To book from the UK,
call Iberia on
0171 830 0011. Sample fares include Tenerife to
Lanzarote (pounds 43, plus tax, one way) and Fuerteventura to
Gran Canaria (pounds 29, plus tax, one way).
Flight-only deals from Britain to
the Canary Islands -
to any of the islands - can start from around pounds 100 or even less on a
last-minute charter seat booked through a tour operator. If you want scheduled
flights, Monarch Airlines (01582 398333) flies direct, twice a week, from Luton to
Tenerife. The fare until 18
December is pounds 170, plus pounds 14 tax.
Operators who offer tailor-made trips
taking in some or all of the Canary Islands
include Mundi Color (0171 282 6021), who also offer a cruise of the islands
starting from the UK,
Sovereign First Choice (01293 560777), Inntravel (01653 628811) and Magic of
Spain (0181 748 4220).
