ISLE BE BACK
Another overnight trek across the Atlantic saw us make good use of the famous trade winds from the Moroccan coast to the Canary Islands. The first port of call was the township Arrecife of the island Lanzarote. We now (expertly) knew that upon entering international waters, we had to go directly to the civil guardia to have our passports stamped immediately to avoid being detained.
In Spain, they run things a bit differently to suit their scheduled siestas, weekends and hair appointments. We arrived on a Friday afternoon, but the authorities were sleeping. Yes, sleeping. This triggered a lack of flying you-know-whats considering we’d been sailing for almost 30 hours with limited (broken) sleep and the fatigue had kicked into full gear. We were instructed by the unofficianado to come back mañana (tomorrow) and that our illegal squatting was “no problemo, no problemo”. Right. Generally speaking, after Friday, comes Saturday – and the port authorities decided that this particular Saturday was the perfect Saturday to shout themselves a lay day. Then Sunday swung ’round… Which was fine except that it was SUNDAY! As with most boat people, our illegal status didn’t prevent us from scoping out our new shores so we agreed that staying on board the boat was only eating into our tapas time, sangria sessions and paella parties. And this is was much of our itinerary for our entire stay of the Canaries. It was liberating to be able to swim in crystal clear azure waters, check out the islands by boat and car (we both made a unanimous decision to skip the idea of hiring a scooter from previous experiences!).
Ads found himself a new domestic hobby being no less than grocery shopping at the local supermarkets – the visual aesthetics of the check out chicks offering a somewhat positive contrast to those at Coles, The Junction. Meanwhile Kez was getting tired of overweight, lobster-red, Adidas-clad Brits with faded tattoos of their spouses name asking her for directions, tips on where to eat and “do you speak English”. Not such a bother when the young Spaniard lads would ask her (in Spanish) if she wanted another €3.00 Caipirinha. Si, uno mas, por favour.
The Canary Islands, whilst fantastic, do have a few parts that are crawling with roughed up Brits and can almost be like a humid imitation of Birmingham. We soon learnt which areas these were as we began to approach clusters of Irish pubs, Sunday Roast specials and peroxided hair. The engine revs would increase until we found more authentic villages on an isolated beach with a shanty-come-restaurant that offered only paella, Sangria and patatas bravas served by wrinkly old ladies wearing floral head scarves.
We fell in love with the food, culture, climate and “occasionally secluded” throughout these fabulous islands. We will be back.
theflightclub 