Gran Canaria was formed by a volcano that grew out of the sea and continued to spew enough lava onto the surface to break through the ocean and form an island. It is circular in shape with a mountain peak in the middle which separates the island into two distinct sectors, north and south. Viewed from above it looks rather like a beached jellyfish.
Posted in Beaches, Cathedrals, Childhood, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Postcards, Spain, Travel
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Life, Palmitos Park, Sioux City Gran Canaria, Sioux City Iowa
“Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important” – Jules Verne “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”
In my previous post I told you about not going down into a cave. This was a cave that I did visit in 1983…
On 25th January 2016, I was on my third and final day in Essaouira.
“The camel and his driver — each has his own plan.”
African Proverb
The day started badly and it was my own fault. Entirely without question my own fault. After an excellent breakfast in the Riad Chakaris the plan was to visit the beach.
This meant walking once again past the fishing port and this morning by chance straying into the boat building yard. I was admiring the boats when a man appeared and beckoned me over. I wasn’t sufficiently alert and wandered across and he invited me inside a wooden picket fence to take a closer look.
To be fair he gave me an informative ten minute tour of the yard but then at the furthest point from the fence he asked me in a rather threatening way for 200 dirham (about £15). I said no way but he was big and smelly and intimidating and blocked my way. I stood my ground but even so eventually handed over 50 dirham which was still too much and money that I would have preferred to give to a street beggar rather than a thief. Lesson learned!
Posted in Africa, Beaches, Cathedrals, History, Literature, Morocco, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged camel rides, Cleethorpes Beach, Culture, Essaouira, Jimi Hendix, Lanzarote, Lawrence of Arabia, Life, Lost Manuscripts, Samuel Johnson, Seven pillars of Wisdom, The French Revolution: A History, Thomas Carlyle
What now seems an awful long time ago I used to like going on holiday to the Canary Islands, that agreeable part of Spain which is located just off the north-western African coast and in December 1983, before I was even thirty years old, I flew to Lanzarote with a group of friends with the intention of having a pre-Christmas party week in the sun.
Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…
Posted in Africa, Age of Innocence, Childhood, Europe, History, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Arrecife, Canary Islands, car hire, Culture, Fueteventura, Iceland, Lanzarote, Life, Photography, Puerto del Carmen, Yellowstone Park
Posted in Africa, Arts and Crafts, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged camel rides, Culture, Essaouira, Jimi Hendix, Lanzarote, Lawrence of Arabia, Life, Lost Manuscripts, Samuel Johnson, Seven pillars of Wisdom, The French Revolution: A History, Thomas Carlyle
Posted in Africa, Beaches, Cathedrals, Europe, History, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Fortuventura, Fuertuventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote
“I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink” – American comedian (if there is such a thing) Joe E. Lewis
The beach at Essaouira in Western Morocco stretches for a couple of miles or so and about half way along there are camels, lots of camels. Once they used to carry trade goods from the Sahara to the port but now their job is to provide rides for visitors and tourists.
I have always thought that some things should only be done once in life and for me a camel ride is quite high on this list.
I took a camel ride in Lanzarote in 1984…
Having very quickly forgotten my lesson in the boat yard about being easily hustled I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself negotiating with a camel owner for a one hour ride along the beach and before I could say Lawrence of Arabia I was sitting on a shaggy carpet on the back of a dromedary and being hoisted into the air! It is a long way up on a camel so once on board there is no realistic opportunity of changing your mind that won’t involve a sprained ankle or a broken leg!
To be fair I was happy with the price – 150 dirham (£12) for one hour and one mile which compares very favourably with £2.50 for a five minute and two hundred yard donkey ride at home on Cleethorpes Beach, near where I live.
And so we set off at a leisurely pace along the beach with the camel man persistently trying to persuade me to spend more and extend the ride to two hours. I refused, I was certain that an hour was long enough and I held out. I was proud of myself for that.
In my pocket I had brought with me some pages from a note book so that I could make a record of the day and at one point I thought of something so brilliant, so Bill Bryson, so Hemingway, so Laurie Lee, that I felt I needed to write it down immediately in case I forgot this potential literary gem and I reached inside my pocket for pen and paper.
Unfortunately it was quite windy and as I clung on firmly to the wooden saddle with one hand I was surprised by a strong gust that separated me from the paper and it went back-flipping across the sand like an Olympic gymnast and it was lost. Now I would have to rely on memory.
As it happens, this was rather like Lawrence of Arabia himself. Lawrence kept extensive notes throughout the course of his involvement in the First-World-War and he began work in 1919 on the manuscript of his book ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’. By December it was almost complete but he lost it when he misplaced his briefcase while changing trains at Reading railway station sometime in the following year. It was never recovered and he had to start all over again.
At least Lawrence still had his notes but he did have to rewrite four years of memoirs, I only needed to recall four days!
Another famous loss is the story of Thomas Carlyle and his book ‘The French Revolution: A History’. In 1835 he finished volume 1 and gave it to his friend John Stuart Mill to read for his comments.
Unfortunately it was the only copy of the work and Mill’s servant allegedly mistook the book for household rubbish and used it as a convenient source of material to get the kitchen fire going one morning!
Unlike Lawrence, Carlyle apparently kept no notes at all and had to completely rewrite the first volume entirely from memory.
Little wonder he looked so glum…
In 1922 Ernest Hemingway lost his entire early work including the only copies when his wife had a suitcase stolen from a train in Paris as she was transporting it to her husband in Switzerland. I can’t imagine Hemingway being terribly understanding about that.
Anyway, the camel ride continued until it reached a block of stone in the sand – a ruined red brick fortress, battered by the years into submission and collapse by the unrelenting waves. At some point in the late 1960s Jimi Hendix visited Essaouira and stayed a while in a nearby hippy village and they like to tell you around here that it was during this sojourn that he was inspired by the ruin to write his song ‘Castles in The Sea’ but sadly the dates don’t quite correspond and it turns out that he actually wrote the song two years before ever setting foot in Morocco.
And so the camel ride had reached its turning point and then returned me as promised to the start where I was mugged for a second time today when the owner told me that we had been out for an hour and a quarter and that I owed him 200 dirham. Another lesson learned!
Posted in Africa, Arts and Crafts, Beaches, History, island hopping, Morocco, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel
Tagged camel rides, Cleethorpes Beach, Culture, Essaouira, Jimi Hendix, Lanzarote, Lawrence of Arabia, Life, Lost Manuscripts, Samuel Johnson, Seven pillars of Wisdom, The French Revolution: A History, Thomas Carlyle
“Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important.” – Jules Verne – ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’
After the drive to the west of the island to Timanfaya we had the knackered old jeep at our disposal for another day and this time travelled north along the eastern coast to visit the volcanic caves just north of Arrecife.
It is a rather odd thing but people seem to like to go below the surface of the earth and go down caves and caverns, grottoes and mines and I have to say that I am no exception. I used to live near the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire (UK) and would go down the Blue John mines near Buxton pretty much every year. Well, the guide book pointed out some caves in Lanzarote so that is where we made for today.
La Cueva de los Verdes is what is known as a lava tube and was created around three-thousand years ago by lava flows from the nearby volcano Monte Corona, flowing across the Malpaís de la Corona toward the sea. The lava streams cooled on top, developing a solid crust, before the lava drained away leaving the top part as the roof of a cave. In a number of places along the tube the roof of the cave collapsed, forming a cavern known locally as a jameo.
The cave system at Cueva de los Verdes is around six kilometres long and claimed to be the longest lava tube in the World but I am willing to wager that somewhere else in the World will be making exactly the same claim!
Visitors can take a tour along about a kilometre of illuminated path and so we handed over our money and prepared to leave the sunshine and like Otto Lidenbrock in ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ * descend below the surface.
We followed our guide through an intriguing maze of gigantic caves, carved by lava and gnawed by erosion, through a succession of caverns and galleries with lighting displays arranged to illuminate the colours of the rocks and the eerie shadows that they cast. As usual in underground caves he kept pointing out natural sculptures that, with a lot of imagination, had a resemblance to familiar icons – the Madonna and Child (several times), Bulls, Matadors and famous Spanish Kings and Queens.
After an hour or so we returned blinking to the surface and drove the short distance to nearby Jameos del Agua and prepared to go straight underground again.
This time we descended steeply down a flight of steps and arrived in a rather gloomy café area where we stopped for a drink and an overpriced bocadillo before continuing into the cave. There was a walk now along a narrow path on one side of a flooded cavern where in the water the main attraction were hundreds of blind albino crabs, apparently the only ones like it in the World, which is another claim that I am unable to confirm.
We didn’t spend nearly as much time underground at this cave because it opened out quite quickly into the collapsed cavern where the afternoon sunshine was pouring into a luxurious tropical garden with exotic plants and scarlet flowers, fish ponds with turtles posing obligingly for photographs and a brilliant turquoise swimming pool and recreational area.
At the end of the day we drove back to Puerto del Carmen and as we were running low on fuel we were forced to find a garage so we pulled into a filling station where the smiling attendant approached probably in expectation of filling the tank and a big sale:
‘Si Seňor?’ he beamed,
‘two hundred por favor’ , we said calculating that this would be enough to see us through until we returned the vehicle to the car hire office.
‘two hondred?’ ‘two hondred?’ the man pushed his black beret up over his forehead scratched his head in that puzzled sort of way, twisted his face into a squint, wrinkled his walnut sunburned face and looked thoroughly confused as he searched for clarification, finally he just said – ‘not enough room in tank!’
We looked confused and then we realised what he meant and were more specific, ‘no, not litres – pesetas!’
Now, this was the equivalent of about seventy-five pence so this required great precision on his part to deliver only just the required miniscule amount into the tank. We handed him two one hundred peseta notes and he walked away shaking his head and repeating over and over to himself ‘two hondred, two hondred…’
This had been my first time visiting the Canary Islands and I liked Lanzarote even though I have never been back but for the next few years I did make it an annual event to visit some of the others.
Do you like going underground? Which is your favourite cave?
* Rather interestingly in the book the Professor and his assistant search for the Centre of the Earth by entering a lava tube at Snæfellsjökull glacier in Iceland and eventually comes back to the surface through another one on the slopes of Mount Etna on the island of Sicily.
Click on an image to scroll through the gallery…
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Other Cave Stories:
Drogarati Cave and Blue Lagoon, Kephalonia
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Posted in Beaches, Europe, Food, History, Natural Environment, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Cesar Manrique, Cueva de los Verdes, Culture, Jameos del Aqua, Lanzarote, Life, Puerto del Carmen
“The camel and his driver — each has his own plan.” – African Proverb
“On the first day of September, 1730, the earth suddenly opened near Timanfaya. An enormous mountain emerged from the ground with flames coming from its summit. It continued burning for 19 days. Some days later, a new abyss developed and an avalanche of lava rushed down …” – Father Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo from Yaiza – an eyewitness.
In the early eighteenth century more than thirty volcanoes exploded on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, spilling fire, smoke and huge deposits of magma onto the surrounding landscape, engulfing entire villages and destroying once fertile agricultural land. Today this is Timanfaya National Park, a desolate and lifeless place of barren landscape and arid volcanic rock.
The eruptions transformed as much as a quarter of the island into a sea of solidified lava, multicoloured volcanic rocks, copper coloured sand and a thick layer of course grey ash and nearly three hundred years later there is still hardly any vegetation in this place. Black lava ribs of the mountain spill from the top and in the occasional sunshine the colours were ever changing, the rocks were black, brown, purple and umber with a sulphurous yellow crust like fine filigree lace and all over there was vivid green copper oxide and some hardy mosses ferociously clinging on to life in a highly improbable location.
Together with a group of friends I was staying near the coast where the December temperature was comfortable but it soon began to plummet as we drove into the interior of the island and started to climb and we weren’t prepared for that and it wasn’t long before we began to regret not bringing more clothes along because it was soon very, very cold indeed with frequent rain squalls and a stinging wind that lashed our legs and faces.
As we had a four wheel drive we thought we might test its capabilities to the full so rather than sensibly follow the tarmac highway we went off road and tried to plot our own course. We got hopelessly lost of course and at one point came across a surprised islander, a whiskered, toothless old lady in rusty black clothes and with a lined face that could easily be mistaken for a road map so we stopped and asked for directions to the park.
I can’t be absolutely certain but I think she said that the really sensible thing to do was to go back to the main road because this was safer and even though she was quite insistent about this we ignored her advice and carried on along a boulder strewn track that tipped and lurched the vehicle for the next few kilometres until eventually we came to the boundary to the Parque Nacional de Timanfaya marked by a sign carrying the mischievous El Diablo (The Devil) logo.
The significance of the demon emblem of Lanzarote is that the early settlers interpreted their first experience of a volcanic eruption as the work of Satan himself.
It was so cold today that we would have welcomed some sort of volcanic activity I can tell you!
We arrived at the visitor’s car park and that was as far as we could drive into the park and there we tagged on to some coach party trips and watched several demonstrations by a sun gnarled old man with a face of leather and twisted knotted hands of ‘how hot‘ the area is because temperatures just a few metres below the surface here reach between up to 600° centigrade!
Happily the volcanic craters are dormant now but vents by the vantage point at the Islote de Hilario give out super-heated air at 400° centigrade which comes from a boiling chamber of magma – estimated to be safely four kilometres beneath the surface at this point.
First of all he threw dry brush into a harmless looking hole in the ground and it immediately burst into flames and then he demonstrated the geyser which he made perform by pouring cold water into a bore hole and then retreating swiftly as it erupted seconds later in the form of steam and a brief but satisfying ‘whoosh’ and he finished this incendiary display by demonstrating a natural gas vent that doubled as a natural BBQ for the nearby restaurant.
Due to the fragility of the rocks and the possible danger of collapsing lava tubes and gullies it isn’t especially advisable to go wandering about by yourself or poking the surface with a sharp stick and quite sensibly unescorted walking is not permitted.
“I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink” – American comedian, Joe E. Lewis
The really prudent way to proceed further was to use a coach tour into the National Park and around the volcanic craters but instead of the restful seat option in a heated bus we choose an alternative camel ride which involved a twenty-minute circuit of the craters on a form of transport that even made the Jeep seem comfortable and we were jolly grateful when it was all over and we could make our way back to Puerto del Carmen in the beat up old hire car.
Have you ever taken a camel ride? Did you enjoy it?
Posted in Beaches, Europe, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Culture, Fire Mountain, Lanzarote, Life, Puert del Carmen, Puerto del Carmen, Timanfaya, Volcanoes
“The camel and his driver — each has his own plan.”
African Proverb
The day started badly and it was my own fault. Entirely without question my own fault. After an excellent breakfast in the Riad Chakaris the plan was to visit the beach.
This meant walking once again past the fishing port and this morning by chance straying into the boat building yard. I was admiring the boats when a man appeared and beckoned me over. I wasn’t sufficiently alert and wandered across and he invited me inside a wooden picket fence to take a closer look.
To be fair he gave me an informative ten minute tour of the yard but then at the furthest point from the fence he asked me in a rather threatening way for 200 dirham (about £15). I said no way but he was big and smelly and blocked my way. I stood my ground but even so eventually handed over 50 dirham which was still too much and money that I would have preferred to give to a street beggar rather than a thief. Lesson learned!
A very good reason for visiting Essaouira is to take a walk along the beach at Tensift-El Haouz just a short stroll south of the town. This is a magnificent beach, Blue Flag of course, curving like a crescent moon with lush caramel sound that is washed continuously clean by lashing waves as strong winds blow in from the Atlantic Ocean and bring in the foaming rollers. I have always said that Cofete Beach in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands is my favourite but this one will now always come a very close second and the only reason that it doesn’t get my top spot is because there are a lot more people on it.
The beach stretches for a couple of miles or so and about half way along there are camels, lots of camels. Once they used to carry trade goods from the Sahara to the port but now their job is to provide rides for visitors and tourists.
I have always thought that some things should only be done once in life and for me a camel ride is quite high on this list.
I took a camel ride in Lanzarote in 1984…
Having very quickly forgotten my lesson in the boat yard about being easily hustled I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself negotiating with a camel owner for a one hour ride along the beach and before I could say Lawrence of Arabia I was sitting on a shaggy carpet on the back of a dromedary and being hoisted into the air! It is a long way up on a camel so once on board there is no realistic opportunity of changing your mind that won’t involve a sprained ankle or a broken leg!
To be fair I was happy with the price – 150 dirham (£12) for one hour and one mile which compares very favourably with £2.50 for a five minute and two hundred yard donkey ride at home on Cleethorpes Beach.
And so we set off at a leisurely pace along the beach with the camel man persistently trying to persuade me to spend more and extend the ride to two hours. I refused and held out. I was proud of myself for that.
“I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink” – American comedian (if there is such a thing) Joe E. Lewis
In my pocket I had brought with me some pages from a note book so that I could make a record of the day and at one point I thought of something so brilliant, so Brysonesque that I felt I needed to write it down immediately in case I forgot this potential literary gem and I reached inside my pocket for pen and paper. Unfortunately it was quite windy and as I clung on firmly to the wooden saddle with one hand I was surprised by a strong gust that separated me from the paper and it went back-flipping across the sand like an Olympic gymnast and it was lost. Now I would have to rely on memory.
As it happens, this was rather like Lawrence of Arabia himself. Lawrence kept extensive notes throughout the course of his involvement in the First-World-War and he began work in 1919 on the manuscript of his book ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’. By December it was almost complete but he lost it when he misplaced his briefcase while changing trains at Reading railway station sometime in the following year. It was never recovered and he had to start all over again.
At least Lawrence still had his notes but he did have to rewrite four years of memoirs I only needed to recall four days!
Another famous loss is the story of Thomas Carlyle and his book ‘The French Revolution: A History’. In 1835 he finished volume 1 and gave it to his friend John Stuart Mill to read for his comments. Unfortunately it was the only copy of the work and Mill’s servant allegedly mistook the book for household rubbish and used it as a convenient source of material to get the kitchen fire going one morning!
Unlike Lawrence, Carlyle apparently kept no notes at all and had to completely rewrite the first volume entirely from memory.
Anyway, the camel ride continued until it reached a block of stone in the sand – a ruined red brick fortress, battered by the years into submission and collapse by the unrelenting waves. At some point in the late 1960s Jimi Hendix visited Essaouira and stayed a while in a nearby hippy village and they like to tell you around here that it was during this sojourn that he was inspired by the ruin to write his song ‘Castles in The Sea’ but sadly the dates don’t quite correspond and it turns out that he actually wrote the song two years before ever setting foot in Morocco.
And so the camel ride had reached its turning point and then returned me as promised to the start where I was mugged for a second time today when the owner told me that we had been out for an hour and a quarter and that I owed him 200 dirham. Second lesson learned!
Posted in Africa, Beaches, History, Marrakech, Morocco, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged camel rides, Culture, Essaouira, Jimi Hendix, Lanzarote, Lawrence of Arabia, Life, Lost Manuscripts, Samuel Johnson, Seven pillars of Wisdom, The French Revolution: A History, Thomas Carlyle
Have Bag, Will Travel 