20 years ago...

From my favourite cafe, just beside a modern monstrosity of a shopping mall, complete with mini-golf and artificial illuminated palm trees, I look across at what’s left of the only “real” building in sight.

Tagged for demolition!

Complete with battered SOS sign decrying attempts to demolished it to make way for more condominiums or another kitsch tourist attraction, it makes a sorry sight. On the back wall of the cafe is a photo taken twenty years earlier showing nothing but the aforementioned condemned building on a wild foreshore.

Ah, to have seen Lanzarote then… I feel I’ve arrived 20 years too late.

Luna and Danny

No more unspoilt anchorages and wild beauty to be found here. I guess I will have to travel considerably further to find that, if it still exists!

My musings are interrupted by laughter prompted by the antics of Danny and Luna, (the bars avian celebrities). Danny has an extraordinarily large vocabulary but is currently amusing the crowds by meowing like a lost cat and responding to any chuckles with  a mad cackling of his own.

I'm next!

Well tended gardens surround white sandy beaches and a plethora of holiday makers gorge themselves at the restaurant bars overlooking neatly arranged rows of sun beds and beach umbrellas.

The fit are busy keeping that way in what looks to me like a playground for eight year old children.

The not so fit wile away the hours window shopping for trinkets in air-conditioned comfort, sheltering from the spate of unseasonably warm weather under the ever watchful eyes of bronze wilder beasts.

It's evolution!

You either love it, or you hate it. I’m doing my best to fall into the former category, but I’m not sure I’m succeeding.

Frankly, I can’t wait to move on.  Sailors recommending Lanzarote as a destination are surreptitiously sending you to loose weight at what amounts to an exotic health farm come retirement village.

But while I’m here I guess it wouldn’t hurt to join in on the fun…

I’m next on the ski machine… 🙂