OCTOBER 2003
Playa Blanca - Cosa Del Sol Bungalows
Both my partner and I went to work for the morning to save a precious half day’s holiday. My parting shot to my work colleagues was, “Right, I’m off to Lanzarote now, I’ll be about a week.” Local trains were dodgy after some renegade train had torn through the power lines at Selly Oak and New Street station, so plans to go the ‘cheap and easy’ way were scuppered. We booked a taxi. I sat on the sofa finishing my book, determined not to take it with me for the sake of a few last pages. Threw the last few just-in-case items into the suitcase, threw suitcase in back of taxi, and we were off on our journey to our place in the sun.
Steve behaved as normally behaves whenever we enter an airport. He was edgy, he was nervous, he moved like a whippet on speed. Glancing quickly at the departure board in Terminal 1 and seeing nothing but European flights, he instantly decided we were in the wrong terminal and he was off, racing through the Arrivals lounge dragging the suitcase on wheels behind him, me struggling to keep up with the heavy hand luggage and weaving my way precariously through the crowds whilst Steve just barged his way through (people don’t tend to argue with a six foot two inch Yorkshireman wearing a hat). He paused briefly at the departure board in Terminal 2 and, before I’d even managed to catch him up, he turned on his heels (with a deft manoeuvre of the suitcase) and raced back towards me. “Wrong terminal,” he said, whizzing past me in the opposite direction. “I thought we’d just left the wrong terminal,” I gasp. “Nope, this way, its where we first came in,” and he’s off again, scattering newly arrived passengers in his wake.
He’s always like this. He’s not nervous of flying or anything – we both love flying. I think he must be paranoid about being seen with a suitcase on wheels. His only thought, his only concern (like a blinkered racehorse) is Get Rid of the Suitcase!. Once we’ve checked in and the suitcase disappears (hopefully not forever) on the rubber conveyor belt, he relaxes, smiles, acknowledges my existence in the universe.
We felt like seasoned travellers this time – it was our fourth time abroad, our fourth flight to the Canaries. We didn’t linger around the duty free like over-excited newbies, we bypassed it in the full knowledge that anything on sale here was probably cheaper at our destination. We were all too familiar with the bar in the upstairs lounge (the only place to smoke inside the airport), and went straight to WH Smith without wandering around with eyes like confused rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
Actually, a wonderful thing happened in WH Smith. In a mad frenzy of holiday decadence, I picked up a newspaper, two glossy magazines and, throwing caution and financial restraint to the wind, I chose a book. The cashier, who was all of 12 years old, totalled them up. “£3.65.” She said this even as she put the book, priced at £6.99, in the carrier bag. My heart stopped. I didn’t dare breathe. Nonchalantly, and with a casual air that should have won me an Oscar, I paid the £3.65, slid the carrier bag off the counter as if it were an unexploded bomb, and hissed at Steve, “We’re leaving. Now. Don’t make any sudden moves. Just walk!”
The flight was uneventful, apart from a half hour delay. We both love take-off, its like being on the ultimate roller coaster ride and we sit there grinning like over-excited children. An hour into the flight we were so high up that all the lighted towns in some unknown country below us looked like separate glowing cosmoses in a black universe.
Two films showed. The Italian Job (okay) and, much to Steve’s deep joy as he’d promised to take me to see it after our holiday (and so saved himself a few quid), Finding Nemo (absolutely hysterical).
As we approached Lanzarote, the coastline glittered like a hugely expensive diamond necklace. We arrived at 11.05pm. The heat that hit us as we emerged from the plane was suffocating - a small child behind me whined “Lets get out of here, I can’t breathe.” I was wearing ‘comfortable travelling clothes’ which consisted of socks, boots, a jumper, a fleece and … a scarf. Not sure how the scarf appeared around my neck as it wasn’t exactly cold in Birmingham, but in Lanzarote I was melting into my boots.
The coach left the airport at 11.45. After dropping off other passengers at other holiday resorts (and you always think to yourself, thank god we’re not staying there), we pulled up at our destination at 1.30am Friday morning. We’d both been up since 5am, been to work for the morning and had, by now, been travelling for 10 hours. I was, quite frankly, more knackered than I’d ever been in my entire life.
“You read,” said the man at reception as we handed over our passports. The words of a page sellotaped to the desk wavered before my bleary eyes – something about plastic tags to use the swimming pool. “Tomorrow,” I managed to gasp. He thrust a site map under my nose. “You stay here.” I looked at the map. “Could it be any further away,” I almost cried.
Steve, regardless of the fact that I had the map, raced ahead with the suitcase on wheels, darting down alleys and small pathways whispering, “Down here? There? Where is it?”
We eventually found our bungalow. It was pitch black, there were no lights, and we couldn’t see the locks or the keys. It took us 15 minutes to open the patio doors with the use of a cigarette lighter that was fast running out of gas. Inside was fantastic (always a massive relief to discover you’re not staying in one of those hovels featured on Watchdog or Holidays from Hell). A quick scout around the rooms and we realised we had a fully equipped kitchen complete with dishwasher, a massive bed, a leather sofa, an immaculate bathroom with a washing machine and a spare room. It was gorgeous. I was a bit disappointed there was no bath as, not having one at home, spending hours in the bath was my holiday treat, but you can’t have everything. This place was a virtual palace. Steve muttered the immortal words he mutters at every place we stay at, “Wow, this is the best we’ve ever had.” I figure that, based on this assumption, we should be holidaying in the New York Ritz Hotel in about five years time.
Without unpacking, we fell into bed and into a coma.
The next morning I awoke to the sounds of Steve pulling at the patio doors, and grinned to myself. Steve’s an early riser and he was doubtless on his way to or back from the local supermarket, where he had purchased fruit juice, coffee and something nice for breakfast. I got up. I found Steve at the patio doors doing his impression of Victor Meldrew: “I don’t believe it! ”
“What’s up,” I got my cat litter mouth to utter.
“We can’t get out,” he said. “The doors won’t open.”
“Its just stuck,” I told him groggily, looking for my breakfast, “Give it a good yank.”
“No,” he replied patiently, “I’ve been here for an hour and I can’t get the door open. And there’s no water in the taps, no food, and I can’t get the barred windows open more than an inch so there isn’t much air either, and its starting to get very hot in here.”
We actually thought it quite funny … I suppose most trapped people find it funny at first, until they realise they’re going to die. We waited for someone to walk by so we could attract their attention. It was 8am in the morning, we were holidaying out of season in a quite resort and the place was deserted. We saw no one for a good half an hour. We tried finding a number we could ring for help - reception, the owners, anyone. Then, just when I thought we should perhaps stop laughing and start panicking, I spotted a woman out of a back window. “Excuse me,” I said, opening the window an inch, “Excuse me.” Steve rushed to my side and, in his bellowing Yorkshire accent, yelled, “Oi, would you mind coming to the front of our apartment.” The woman looked startled … even to me it sounded like some sort of proposition but, sport that she was, she came round to rescue us. Only, once we’d passed the keys through the window so she could try opening the doors from the outside, we were still trapped. She promised to go for help.
Finally, a Spanish man turned up with a screwdriver. He bodged it into the keyhole a few times and the door opened. Relief and fresh air flooded into the apartment. The Spanish man closed the door again, opened it, shut it, said something in Spanish I imagine was, “Seems okay now,” and stepped inside the apartment. Shut the door. It jammed. It wouldn’t open. There were now three of us trapped inside the apartment. The man looked stunned, Steve’s eyes widened in horror, I fell onto the leather sofa in a mad fit of hysterical laughter. “Wouldn’t it have been wise to have left one of us outside,” I gasped.
The Spanish man called for assistance on his mobile. Another Spanish man arrived, laughing. We got the door open again, closed it and opened it at least fifty times. They turned the water on for us. We had cold showers as we couldn’t figure out how to work the mixer taps – later finding an outside switch for an emersion heater helped.
We went to meet the rep. As we passed reception, we asked about the disks for using the swimming pool. The receptionist asked our apartment number. We told her. “Ah, 22B,” she laughed, nodding and obviously thinking we were troublemakers who deliberately locked ourselves in. “Your paperwork not sorted yet for disk.” “They don’t trust us with the disk,” I said to Steve as we walked away, “We won’t be allowed to use the pool, they’ll think we’ll empty it or something.”
The rep had a hard time. There were four couples at the meeting and, as we’d all been to the island before and had done all the trips, all the sightseeing, we were there to simply relax and do as little as possible. He tried to sell us a couple of trips, but we all said, “Been there, done that.” He kind of gave up towards the end and we all went off to explore.
Apparently, it hadn’t rained for 3 months prior to our arrival. On Friday, it rained. Not a lot, but the skies were grey and heavy with it. It didn’t bother us in the slightest, it gave us time to acclimatise. We walked along both beach fronts to check out the area, both of us sighing a lot and exclaiming, “Isn’t this great!” We had a drink and a meal at a restaurant where we could see and hear the waves on the beach - absolute bliss. Bed early to recuperate from our travels.
And then the holiday began in earnest. Our task was to relax, chill out and do as little as possible - and that’s exactly what we did. We walked (at ‘holiday pace’, which is barely moving), we swam in the sea, and we sat on our massive sun-drenched patio and read books until our eyeballs almost dropped out. I wore nothing but a sarong for days and tried to pick up a tan, but it was so hot I felt like a chicken on a roasting spit and could only (wimp that I am) manage about 10 minutes each time … I hate all that hotness and sweatiness, I’m just not a natural tanner. I’ve never seen the back of my hands perspire before! In awe, I watched Steve turn a gloriously deep brown.
Discovered that Rom Miel is not the little afternoon drink I always thought it was, its 20% proof! Immediately began drinking it with ice to ‘dilute’ it a little.
One morning Steve woke me up at 6am. Admittedly, I’d asked him to because he always gets up early and said the stars were magnificent at that time of morning. So I hauled myself out of bed and stared at the sky. I was that tired my eyes were blurry and I couldn’t actually see a thing. “Fantastic,” I croaked, and wandered back to bed.
We spent hours one of the two beach areas. I love swimming in the sea, it’s so warm (once you get used to it, tip toeing in and gasping when the waves first touch your groin and again at your chest) and SO BIG. There were fish in the clear sea water and I hankered after a snorkel. It cost £10. Steve tried it first, sucked in water, almost choked to death, then handed it to me. It promptly broke. £10 for 10 minutes didn’t seem good value. I was gutted.
The other beach had green seawater and, because of the stoned walls around it, was like a huge swimming pool or a lagoon. And there were loads of fish in there, swimming in shoals all around us - it was truly amazing. Someone fed them bread at the shoreline and there were literally hundreds tussling over each other.
We ate out every night. One night we had a meal at a Chinese restaurant on the front. We had the best seat in the house, on first level (not street level where passers by could cough over your food). Brilliant view of dock area and the island of Feuterventura, one of those holiday moments where you hold hands, stare at the beautiful scenery and sigh a lot. As we ate, we played at people watching, trying to guess which couples walking by were happy or not (“Yes.” “No.” “I give em a week!”). Afterwards, we sat on the volcanic steps and watched the sea lapping at the shore, feeling quite drunk and exceptionally happy. Half way back to our bungalow, we had to break into a trot, and then a gallop, in a race to get to the toilet. It happened every single night of our holiday! On the very last day, we discovered there was, actually, a toilet in the reception we sprinted passed.
Most of our meals at the restaurants along the front were wonderful, but there were a couple of exceptions. At one, Steve got talked into having the ‘special’, fish, which cost 13euros (about a tenner!) while I went for the spaghetti bolognese. The fish barely had any flesh on it and seemed to consist wholly of bones. The spaghetti was truly awful, like dog food heated up. At another restaurant, the food was obviously microwaved - in fact, I had to break the skin on my gravy before I could eat it.
On our last day, the receptionist recommended a ‘typical Spanish restaurant’ at the other end of the shopping area. Whilst watching bull fighting on the tv (really quite barbaric), we ate our GOATS STEW. It seemed like a good idea at the time, to have something different and fresh, and the goats stew was indeed very nice – but we would both suffer for it later.
At 8.30pm we were outside reception waiting for the coach to take us to the airport. The hyperactive convinced-he-was-a-comedian rep was fighting a lost cause with the tired just-want-to-go-home passengers. I started feeling nauseous – the goats stew had been very rich, fatty meat cooked in olive oil. I tried to think of other things, but every now and again it would make a lurch and I thought I’d have to stop the coach in the middle of nowhere to make a deposit at the side of the road. I didn’t. On the plane I felt increasingly ill. At 1am they brought breakfast round and I had people sitting either side of me eating while I was convinced I was about to throw up. Luckily, for all concerned, I didn’t, but it was very much touch and go.
We landed in Birmingham at 3.30 in the morning. Strangely, as we had never seen them before on previous travels, the customs people were out in force. Steve was a little twitchy as we had 1700 cigarettes stowed in our suitcase. We walked through the Nothing To Declare feeling (as we always do) massively guilty. Customs were pulling people to one side. The couple in front of us got nabbed. Steve quickly turned his 1000watt smile on one of the uniformed women, and we sailed through. Huge relief.
We arrived home at 4.30 in the morning. Our plan had been to make as much noise as possible to disturb my youngest son, who was always waking us up at some godforsaken hour, to see how he liked it. But youngest son wasn’t in! I rang his mobile, “Where are you?” “At a mates,” he said, “We’re just watching films. I’ll be home in a bit.” We didn’t actually see him until the next day, when he made a special trip home from work to see us (I think he missed us!) “There’s no food in this house,” he said, accusingly. It hadn’t occurred to him to shop for himself at all, and I have it on good authority that the living room curtains remained closed for the entire week. But he had kept the house tidy – well, tidy by 18 year old standards.
That afternoon, my partner was starting to feel ill. Then he started to throw up. Concerned, I rang the doctor. “We’ve just got back off holiday,” I told the receptionist, “And my partner’s being violently ill.” “Can you get here in 5 minutes,” she replied. We could. We did. Goats stew was mentioned and tablets were given. He felt fine after a few hours.
And now, sadly (and so quickly), its back on the hamster wheel of life again, avidly planning our next holiday.
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