TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE IN LANZAROTE

 

Life must have been particularly hard on Lanzarote before mass tourism started. The main industry was agriculture and this in a land with no trees, no grass and only 100mm of rain a year onto a black , gravelly, volcanic "soil". Unusually for us, we decided to visit the agricultural museum in the centre of the island.   This is the surrounding terrain.

In this picture you can see the three-quarter circles of rocks which are placed around each grape-vine, each planted in a depression in the ground. We tried some local wine and it was quite good. The big rectangle is a walled concreted area used to capture rainwater which is then stored underground. 

This is some of the farm buildings

And these two, shots of the fields....

Camels were the main form of transport and beasts of burden. And they had chicken and goats but no cows.

A tethering point

And two examples of copies of Guanche figures.

Teguise Market Lanzarote

Dick and the Lanzarote Guide both recommended the Teguise Market on Sunday morning. We were only there for one Sunday, so we went. It is, it has to be said, a pretty big market, spreading as it does through the whole village/town. And although a good deal of the wares on sale were Chinese and/or plastic there seemed to be a fair amount of locally-produced goods on offer both food and crafts. We parked a little outside the place and walked in, passing by a house in which were displayed some copies of statuettes made by the original inhabitants of the island, the Guanches.  That would have been OK, but the owner of the property had been overtaken by delirium - probably caused by the 361 days of sunshine the island experiences per annum - and had crammed the former garden with hundreds of artefacts of decreasing cultural content. Here is one.

There are still a number of these windmills on the island. There is a shortage of water power there, but no particular shortage of wind. As you can see, aesthetic values score fairly low down when virtually all building materials have to be imported.

Teguise was formerly the island's capital (since removed to Arrecife) and the Spanish colonial style is still evident there.

 

 

Inside the church (packed with curious visitors) was this curious Christ on the Cross, badly in need of a haircut. Is there a story here? 

 

 

I can't remember what this statue was about. I know it was pretty difficult to photograph, with all the traffic going past.



Santander to Lanzarote Water Taxi

Well, we know there isn't a water taxi all the way from Santander to Lanzarote but it's a way of grouping the photos in this post. We had decided to celebrate my birthday this year in Lanzarote after last year's expedition to Barcelona. The reasons for the choice were (1) we had never been to the Canary Islands and (2) I had messed up a Ryanair booking to London and needed to use the flights elsewhere. Accordingly we had a 5 hour drive to Santander airport on the north coast of Spain to catch our flight. Whilst at Santander we repeated our practice of photographing our feet, as we had done on our tour around Europe 6 years ago.  

 

The next shot actually is of me sitting (or slouching) on the water taxi which plies between Puerto del Carmen and Puerto Calera on Lanzarote. It's quite a short trip , in fact we walked it one time on the cliff path, but we mostly did it to see the dolphins. There had been some a couple of days before and would be again, before and after our next trip on the taxi, but we didn't see any.

A selfie!

 

INDIA AND THE CAMINO REAL

Readers may have been puzzled to my reference yesterday to the camíno réal. It was, in fact, a reference to Tennessee Williams' play, Camino Real, which I saw about 40 years ago in black-and-white on BBC television. Each part was introduced by "Block One, Block Two etc. On The Camino Real". The "Day One, Day Two etc." of the India story is reminiscent of that tale.

 

The actual Camíno Réal was the Royal Road established up part of the west coast of the USA under Spanish rule.

DAY ONE, INDIA (I wanted to say Day One on the Camino Real)

Last year we were both 70. To celebrate we went on holiday.  I thought that our holidays were getting a bit tame. I felt like being somewhere new, uncomfortable and unknown. I had already visited 56 countries and wherever we went, it would have to be exciting and new. On Valentine’s Day I booked to go to India.

 

I checked out flights and the best way to go was to drive to Toulouse, fly to Gatwick, transfer to Heathrow and from there fly to Delhi. The intercontinental flights were with Jet Airways. This might be the place to show the map of our travels in North India.

 

We got up at 4 (a.m.), fed the one cat who was indoors and drove to Toulouse. We almost missed the plane despite having arrived early as we were told at check-in that the Gate opened at 9h05. This wasn’t true. It closed at 9h15. We left some of our luggage for the day at Victoria (at £9 per item!) and spent the day with Ben.

 

 In the late afternoon we went to Heathrow and, after a tiny portion of caviar and a glass of champagne, got the flight. We arrived in Delhi on Saturday morning.

 

After a bit of trouble with a Cash machine (you have to whip your card out pretty smartly) we were taken by prebooked taxi to our Delhi hotel, The Hotel Perfect.  The drive started gently enough, although I was a little disconcerted by the driver’s wandering from lane to lane on the dual carriageway and a little surprised by the bicycle which came towards us, against the direction of traffic. The journey was carefully nuanced, however, becoming noisier and more chaotic as we went along.  The hotel, however, was clean and apparently well-organised and situated near the Karol Bagh metro station. Our expectations of the accommodation weren’t high, but as a start, this exceeded our hopes. I have to say, though that we should never have found it on our own.

 

After a rest, we went out to explore the surroundings which consisted of lots of small shops and temples. Mostly the pavements had been taken over by traders so we had to walk in the roads, filled with cars, bikes, mopeds, scooters, trucks, trolleys, motor bikes, taxis, trucks and people, not to mention rubbish, building materials and dogs. We were a bit surprised to be caught in heavy rain, it being the end of the monsoon season.

 

We had a late lunch in a vaguely MacDonald’s-style restaurant (Ruffels) but serving solely Indian style food with beer the only alcoholic drink. The ordering methods were a little odd. You had to pay for your food at a counter, having seen what was on offer from the pictures shown on a nearby wall. Then, later you went to collect the food from another counter when you guessed it would be ready. Very tasty, though and not too hot.

 

That evening there was a briefing meeting with our Tour Leader, Nagendra Singh, and the other 10 members of our group. They consisted of two other (Australian) couples, approximately in the 60-70 age group (with me being the oldest) the other half of the group being approximately from 20 to 30. Was the age difference going to be a problem?  If so the split was not as we had expected – 10 young and 2 old. The meeting outlined that way things would work, what to expect and what not to and included the issuing of shoulder bags labelled “Say No to Plastic”, a step towards saving the planet. After that we went to dinner – in the same place where we had had our lunch!

 

 

Our room was on the top floor.
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INDIA - Day Zero

We have several hundreds of photos which we could put on our blog, but I have decided to recount our trip one day at a time. There'll be gaps between the blogs but they'll all be there eventually, and in the right order. So here goes....

BRRRRR!!!

 

It’s one of those later Winter days – cold, miserable, grey – when there’s nothing much to do and nowhere to go and the enthusiasm drains out of you like last night’s congealed soup which you pour down the drain when nobody’s looking because you can’t be bothered to do anything productive with it.

 

All of which is a lie. Looking at the thermometer I see that it’s not actually very cold: true there was a slight frost this morning, but it didn’t last. It’s not really miserable and grey either. In fact it’s quite bright despite the clouds overhead. But we have had quite a lot of rain recently and today seems rather an anticlimax to that. Not really winter and not really spring. I ought to be doing something more active but I had an operation on one of my fingers two weeks ago and the bandage was taken off it this morning and the stitches removed. But I’ve been told to take it easy for a few days so all the heavy lifting I have been precluded from doing for the past two weeks will have to wait a little while longer. Ho! Hum!

 

What this has got to do with India, you ask. Well, not a lot except that writing up our India trip of last year has been playing on my mind. But at last I’ve decided how to write it which will be One-Day-at-a-Time. You’ll see what I mean over the next few weeks.

 

When we came back from India we were very busy. We had a backlog of work to catch up with and most importantly, Ruth’s book, The Shaping of Water, was approaching its publication date and we had a lot of matters to attend to. The bird shit we found around inside the house, left by a bird that had got or been brought into the house by the cats, remained reproachfully for several weeks while we attended to these matters. It is now three months since our return, and I am only now recording our trip. Something which makes me apprehensive is the thought that, as time passes, only what I shall have written will remain in the memory.” Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo” (variously described as an ancient Latin saying, to Roman Law or to a number of Popes) roughly transcribes as “If it ain’t written down, it didn’t happen” and is, I’m afraid, true.

 

Anyway, to get you started, here is a picture:-

THE SOMERSET LEVELS AND THE SHAPING OF WATER

I am from Somerset and have been watching the encroaching waters rise on the Levels since Christmas. The Levels seem to flood every year but I cannot remember one in which the water has risen so high or for so long.

 

Ruth's book, The Shaping of Water, is receiving its French launch (no pun intended) this weekend, and there is a connection between it and the current (again no pun intended) flooding in that the Kariba Dam, which gave rise to Lake Kariba, was responsible for the displacement of tens of thousands of people, in their case permanently. The UK's present floods have caused  people to have to move from their homes but luckily only temporarily and in relatively small numbers. The creation of Lake Kariba has  changed the local ecology of vast areas of south central Africa and the way of life of a peaceable tribe probably for all time. Hopefully the UK floods will soon be  forgotten and steps taken to alleviate them in the future.

 

The displacements in the Zambezi will not be so easily forgotten and nor should they be.

 

Ruth's book - The Shaping of Water -    ISBN 9781783061990 or eISBN 9781783068043 for the eBook version is available from Troubador Publishing, Amazon, Nook, Kobo and all booksellers.