Today was designated as a free day in the tour itinerary. I’m not usually a fan of free days on such tours ‘cos it leaves me wondering what to do. On this occasion, though, with my leg muscles aching from sudden activity after lockdowns, I made an exception and was quite looking forward to it.
Had there been any fresh water on Lanzarote and anything approaching insect life, I’d have been happy to putz about looking for it. As it was, we decided to stroll along the promenade to the harbour of Puerto del Carmen in search mainly of lunch. It would be about 12kms there and back with a total ascent and descent of almost zero metres. 🙂
The promenade of Puerto del Carmen would appear to be where the majority of holiday makers on Lanzarote spend their time, cruising the front with its bars, cafes and restaurants. On day #1 we’d met a chatty English couple on their last day of a 1-month stay. I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth they’d spent their time doing with no rental car.
There is some form of electric scooter rental scheme operating in Puerto del Carmen. Preferring Shanks’s Pony, we didn’t bother to find out how it worked but clearly plenty of people had. Scooters were almost constantly zipping back and forth along the bike lane partitioned from the road. I am self-aware enough to know that I am now not the most sylphlike of people but here were countless fat blobs on electric scooters getting fatter and blobbier avoiding anything at all approaching physical exercise. Electric scooters are bad news.
We paused for a reviving coffee at a small cafe en route. Naturally I ordered in Spanish only to find that the owner was Liverpudlian. Duh!
Eventually we made it to the port itself which proved a tad on the tedious side, in truth. The waters of the harbour were clear and I couldn’t help but notice that I could see no fish. What is it with Lanzarote and a lack of wildlife?
We went in search of an appealing restaurant. Those with a sea view are predictably more expensive but the cost isn’t great anyway so we settled into one which was, at least Spanish. Francine opted for sardinas, which she pronounced excellent, whilst I plumped for the pulpo [octopus] with a few Lanzarote potatoes. It was good but not as good as the trusty old Aleluja Bar back in Jalón.
Having walked off lunch returning to home base. We wandered beyond our hotel to a roundabout adorned by another César Manrique wind toy, this one called El Róbalo. Being a wind toy, this has more cone shapes to catch said wind, decorated as fish. The problem for me is that the wind makes the fish swim backwards. Artists, eh? Being a moving artwork, Francine indulged in a little artwork of her own featuring multiple exposures.
Having had a decent lunch, we elected to self-cater for the evening. This turned out to be a bit of a disaster. There are a couple of local sauces, mojo rojo and mojo verde, which the Spar supermarket has in bottled form. I chose to chuck a pack of frozen prawns into mojo rojo. The prawns proved to be almost completely tasteless. I am not accustomed to tasteless Spanish prawns. The local Indian restaurant visible from our balcony looks like a much better option when we have more of an appetite; it smells good, too.
I’d been making friends with a Collared Dove which had been frequenting our balcony back at the hotel since we arrived. He nervously began taking food from my hand with my arm resting on our balcony table. After a few days, I was a bit taken aback when he quite suddenly got considerably bolder and perched on my finger tips to take crumbs from my palm. I felt a little bad about habituating a bird but this was quite a thrill and it clearly wasn’t the first time this character had been fed by humans, though maybe not from the hand. We didn’t get visits from any of the local Parakeets, though.
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