Anecdotes

Part 2 of my account of Christmas in Gran Canaria

Edit (January 9, 2009): I've uploaded more pictures in Multiply but completely forgot to link them. You can view Day 1 and 2 pictures here; Day 3 and 4 pictures here; and finally Day 5 and 6 pictures here.

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Yes, my dears. Still more Gran Canaria, I'm afraid. But before you jump to the next blog, let me assure you that this is easy, reader-friendly reading.

I don't read my previous travel blog entries all that often, but I would guess that I've mostly written them in themes – talking about places, history, food, activities – or chronologically. Somehow, I just don't think that style suits this case very well, which is why I have been taking days reflecting about how to blog about this experience. Everything in this trip could be characterized by a word: spontaneity. Last minute booking, no specific plans... Heck, we didn't even know what hotel we would end up in (nor part of the island we would be shuttled to) until we got there! The lack of expectation surely contributed to the fact that we were pleasantly surprised with the whole vacation, but it's not enough to explain why Gran Canaria really made an impression on us.

How to blog to reflect the positive in the unplanned and spontaneous? Like when we talk about our stories, not – at least not completely – as we would write about them. ("Anecdote", from Green an- and ektodos, incidentally literally means "unpublished"). So I opted for this freer form, mostly of short and funny incidents, seldom chronological and never consciously with a overarching theme – or any full sense.

Here goes!

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1) A lechón in the bush (recycled from a family e-mail)

The Sahara sand in Maspalomas is very, very fine. I'd say it was even finer than Boracay sand or any white beach sand I've been to (we had to clean the camera after our trip there by blowing sand from the crevices of course). It was very windy on the day we visited the dunes, which is very unusual for the island. The sand was like a thin mist in the air, making some pictures there blurry. The sand in the air gets into our clothes and shoes without us even sitting on the dunes. I can just imagine how eye-irritating a real sandstorm in the Sahara would be and how much sand you get into your clothes after that!

To our surprise – clothed from top to bottom as we were with a sunhat and socks, no less; it's the desert after all – there turned out to be a lot of (I'd guess Norwegian and German) nudists by the edge of the dunes, in the half-desert area where bushes grew. Each of them would find his or her little thorny bush to hide in. They hid quite (but not totally) effectively, since you don't actually see them until you come close enough to the bush to notice a sunburned lechón-colored body. I swear some were really so bright red it looked unhealthy for them to sun some more, but that's their own business. Anyway, they must all be partly exhibitionist since a walking path actually goes through this half-desert half-bushy area – the only existing walking path if you want to avoid walking through the dunes. Marcus and I would walk and talk some and then turn our heads each time we saw these "white aborigines" appearing from nowhere, sitting in strange positions, trying to tan their butt crack or armpits. Of course we never moved close enough to invade on their privacy – they were more like 25 meters away from the path – and neither did we take pictures. Still, funny to have to turn your head suddenly away in the middle of a conversation at the sight of a lechón-person in the bush. Crazy sun worshipers!

According to an article Marcus read, it turns out that, aside from nudists, there were a lot tourists making out in the desert bushes. It's a common enough incident that the local government had come out with a statement frowning upon this. Not so much because it bothers the pedestrians in the path but because it scares the wildlife.


(2) "Agua! Agua!"




The southern part of Gran Canaria boasts of 350 sun days and a mere 15 days of rain. Just our luck that we got to experience four out of those fifteen days. On the third day of our trip, when we were about to go and walk up the mountain near our hotel, we woke up to heavy rains. "It's the worst weather we've had in the island in a long while," the receptionist was telling us days later. Our scheduled trip inland had to be canceled completely, which is why we held ourselves to the somewhat sunnier coast instead.

As it turned out, it wasn't just the occasional heavy shower; there was a storm passing through the Canaries. Beaches had red flags denoting that bathing was at one's own risk, and waves that splashed the rocks reached several meters high.

On our last day there, when we took a bus to Puerto de Mogán. Bus rides there are, by the way, a thing to experience in itself. The highway has two narrow lanes that twist along the mountain's edge. Though it differs from driver to driver, the buses usually go precariously fast. And some turns are so sharp, the bus driver has to honk while taking the corner – a car and a long bus can't fit in the same turn. Pure roller-coaster sensation.

Since it has been raining on that morning we went to Puerto de Mogán, the bus driver seemed to take it (too) easy. He was talking to a female passenger (possibly a friend of his) in Spanish, laughing out loud; turning his head to reply to her, and from time to time looking at the road. Somewhere along the road, he stopped on a bridge and seemed to jump in his seat, pointing at something. "AGUA!", he cried, pointing at the canal. His confusion to find water gushing from inland caused him to miss the next stop. A local passenger blurted out what seemed like curses; the bus driver said something back and stopped in the middle of the road; the passenger was let out jeepney-style. I understood then. It must really be true, what they say about the fifteen rain days a year.


(3) "Kaere Cristina og Marcus," or Our room smells like old toilet


On Day 4 there, when it has been raining for two mornings, the strong smell of sewage seeped from our bathroom (Hey, alliteration!). I'm a deep sleeper, so typical of me, I didn't really notice until Marcus woke me up. The smell was already kind of lingering there before we went to sleep, probably caused by the unusual amount of rains, but now the odor seemed suddenly... sharp. Alarming. We decided to change clothes and alert the reception upstairs.

The Spanish receptionist had his eyes pinned on us from when we left the elevator. "Tell me."
"Our room... it smells like sewage," Marcus explained.
"Eh?"
"It smells like, uh, sewer."
A confused look.

I racked my brains for sewer- and sewage-like synonyms. I thought of 'trash smell', which isn't quite the same thing, so I tried the next thing that came to my head.

"Our room. It smells like old toilet."
"Aaaah!"

We slept again with the bathroom door closed and we tried to avoid our apartment that morning. As promised, when we came back from our shopping tour, the technician had already done something to fix it, and the smell was gone. Someone rang the bell – another receptionist – and she presented us with a bottle of the hotel's wine and a letter in Norwegian thanking us for our understanding. "Kaere Cristina og Marcus," it introduced, addressing me by my first given name. Well. All's well that ends well, and in the end, in pseudo-Spanish, no problemo!


(4) Beware of gift-bearing salespersons, or how we took a free taxi

The Canaries strikes me as a very safe place, but if there's one thing that smells of a scam there, it's pronounced "timeshare". We were pre-warned not to be lured by timeshare salesmen, but we didn't realize it was that common until we met the salespersons.

In a nutshell, the salespersons try to sell you "membership" to a hotel or apartment, which is "yours" for one week a year. There are variants of the offer; some offer discounted stays in luxury hotels around the world for a week a year, some offer a cheaper stay in the hotels if you buy the "membership". They cost an arm and a leg, and they want you to pay on the spot, without time to think about your purchase.

We met X, a salesperson for a timeshare somewhere during one of our excursions. Actually, he realized after he tried to smalltalk us, that we weren't really the type to buy timeshares. For one thing, we're not in their age group target. For another, only one of us is full-time working. And, thirdly, neither of us are really impulse shoppers. Having no money that amounts to an arm and a leg is only one more guarantee that we can't get talked to signing anything.

"But here's the thing," he said. "You – pretend you're 29. And you – tell them you're working full time. This is only really for my points, you understand? Then you get a free taxi from here to hotel X, they give you free soft drinks, tour you there for 90 minutes and get a free gift at the end of the tour. You don't even have to say yes or sign to anything. These are only for my points. You know, my points. Okay?"

He knew from our smalltalk that hotel X was just a couple of hundred meters away from our own hotel, so what he was really trying to say was that, for getting him points, we could get a free taxi ride home to fool his colleagues into thinking that we were potential customers.

Poor, desperate guy. He was nice though. As for us, we got our taxi ride, our soft drinks, some bottled water and coffee, and two free tickets to a whole day jeep safari, all for free. Just remember never to sign anything (not that you'd buy something for 200 thousand on impulse, right?), and not to disclose any contact details. Anything they give you for free as bait to their hotel doesn't bind you to say yes to their sales offers.

The jeep safari was canceled because of the storm, but that part's not really their fault.


(5) And Christmas?


So, you must be wondering after all this: How was it to spend Christmas in the Canaries? All these stories don't seem especially Christmas-y to me. Well, you're right. Actually, Christmas seems to pass almost unmarked in the island. I say 'almost' because... well, what's the yardstick? Who said that Christmas everywhere has to be spent with shopping to intrusive music, living up to the Christmas stress, trying to beat traffic – for a fancy dinner? I'm not trying to defend my lack of Christmas socializing, but anyhow, it seemed comforting there to realize that Christmas can be spent in a somewhat – for lack of a better term – understated way.

There were some Christmas-y things, but all in kind of underplayed in comparison to how I remember it to be at home. We lay notice to locals carrying big golden boxes of something that I imagine could have been cake (in my mind, fruitcake). In the big grocery in Arguineguin, the Spaniards seemed to stock for Christmas dinner. They too decorate their houses (Santas climbing windows were the most common), and they play Spanish versions of American Christmas songs. Aside from this, the everyday pace didn't seem to change much from one day to the next. I just remembering thinking one morning, "Oh. It's Christmas eve!"

The day before Christmas eve, we walked to the summit of a nearby mountain in the morning, and in the evening, ate a huge platter of locally caught fish and seafood in the town. Everything was really good – just grilled plain, with two dipping sauces. My mouth still waters thinking about them. The service too was unbelievable – with three people serving us – and this was a mid-range restaurant! In the corner, the owner was toasting to friends, mixing business with his pre-Christmas get-together.

Christmas eve itself was spent in the quiet of our room, eating a very simple light dinner and drinking a small bottle of sparkling wine with our chocolate. Then, direct to sleep. The flight back home was on Christmas day.

Sällskapsresan

Part 1 of my account of Christmas in Gran Canaria.

Sällskapsresa (-n [definite form], -or [plural]. Noun). (1) A trip arranged for many people to a common destination, e.g. from a travel agency that organizes tours; (2) A group vacation or charter trip; (3) A conducted tour. Etymology: sällskap (company), resa (travel).


The classic Swedish comedy film Sällskapsresan (1980), sometimes described as reaching a cult status in Sweden, has this for a first line: "Swedes don't travel to something. They travel away from something".

There's a lot of truth in that line, which explains why even the average Swede would have been well traveled. A full-time worker in Sweden is entitled one to at least four weeks of paid vacation a year. Kids not only have Easter-, summer- and Christmas breaks, but also have an autumn break just when the skies begin to turn dark before winter and a so-called "sports break" starting sometime in February, just before the skies begin to lighten up again before spring. A lot of this vacation time is spent in a warm place (400,000 of the 9 million Swedes travel to Thailand every year, making it a charter favorite besides the Canaries, Egypt, Morocco, Greece and Turkey). If you moved here, you'd quickly realize the ubiquity of "charter trip". And you'd discover that, in these parts, solresa – literally "sun trip" – is a real word. What Swedes escape from with all this free time are rain, snow, and the darkness.

The theme song from the comedy movie Sälskapsresan, sung by a fictional travel agency called Sun Trip (they're in Gran Canaria too, by the way, which was one of the first charter destinations from Sweden).

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"Welcome to our island, stop thinking about rain and snow.
Sunbathe, swim and have it cool, with Sun Trip over Yule!"
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Our own trip to the Canaries was "classic" and like the movie in many ways: fully-loaded charter plane, Swedish co-passengers taking advantage of the relatively cheap alcohol prices already in the flight down, Swedish-speaking guides meeting the gang at the airport (and non-English speaking bus drivers taking us to the hotel), sunbeds with pale Swedes gradually rotating during the day to always face the direction of the sun. It was everything we expected but also – pleasantly so – more than we expected.

So, here follows a two-part account from one very happy charter trip traveler. We traveled last-minute too (unsold plane seats and 2-star or up hotel), which made this trip relatively cheap! We're more than satisfied with the whole vacation, despite having the weather (and temporarily, a weird sewage smell) against us. More about that later in the second post. To keep you in suspense ;-)

Continent in miniature


For being a small island, Gran Canaria is often called a mini-continent. It has mountains, ravines, a desert, a temperate climate in the north, and a dry and hot climate in the south. The landscape varied wherever one went (even though we actually just explored a small portion of the island's south coast). So did, to some extent, the fauna. Just exploring the different towns of the island was (with some imagination), almost like traveling to different countries. One time, the mountains looked like how I'd imagine South America to look like. A few hundred meters away, there was desert resembling the Sahara. The villages looked either like they were from Brazil or Italy, and some hotel strips looked like they could be in Las Vegas. The food, place names, people, and the language, though, are Spanish. But the tourists – they come from precisely everywhere.


Maspalomas was hands down the most exotic place we visited in our short stay. In this small volcanic island, just seeing fine white sand is exotic enough, but even more exotic is the fact that these dunes – kilometers of dunes – had been carried by the force of the winds from the Sahara. In fact, when I think of it, "forces of nature" seem to be all-present in the island. It makes itself known in the way the cliffs have been carved by the sea, in the way dry rocks chip off the bare mountains, and in the way that, slowly but surely, the dunes shift in the wind. The desert is a changing landscape.


Then, there were the mountains. Though we must have climbed about 300 meters above sea level, those mountains were just hills in comparison to the ones further inland. Even so, the climate already changed; plants turn from spiky robust cacti-like plants to lush round bushes, and, to our surprise, rocks started to grow moss, which was unexpected coming from the desert-dry sea level.


One thing that we liked the best was to walk aimlessly, exploring the town. There, you'll most likely find everything you need cheaper than you would in the established tourist areas. Our hotel lay thankfully away from Gran Canaria's party region (the infamous Playa del Inglés) and was located in a quiet area called Arguinegin. The town center was small, but it had an authentic feel. It was refreshing to see, in contrast to all the posh hotel development around the coast, houses where the locals seemed to live themselves. We loved walking in these in the towns that we went to. I loved the way the narrow alleys seem to sprout into unexpected directions, how the houses looked so unique, how their terraces looked alive with hung laundry and water drums, and how, from afar, the villages followed the contours of the mountain.

There's just so much to explore.

My next account will have to wait though. To give your eyes a rest ;-) Until then, happy New Year everyone!

The Canaries, Christmas and cats

Hej och god fortsättning! As I write this, it's still Christmas day in Sweden. We came back to this quiet, dark and snowy land this afternoon – it's such a change from the climate I've been exposed to all week. In the plane, as we stowed away our straw hats and sunglasses in canvas bags, out came our down vests and thick fur hats. Donning them was like a mental preparation to come home; our bodies, however, could take more time getting used to these cold surroundings we choose to live in.

I didn't feel for a thorough entry right now so here are just some cat pictures from our trip. We saw lots of cats in the island, many of them seemed unafraid of humans. Maybe it's the fishing industry that lures them out of their homes and into the town streets. Anyway, these may not the best pictures to show island life with; but don't worry, there's time for that later! I did put down where in the island I saw the cats, though!

White spot and chipped ear, Puerto de Mogán

Cat sleeping under tree, Arguineguin


The sign reads "Port fishing", Puerto Rico

Hmmm. I realize the titles sound like something out of a haiku. The weird thing is, I even tend to speak like that sometimes when I try to point something out in a hurry ("Hey look, the sun shining spots under the trees!"). Here's another one:

Black cat lounging in pearls shop. Puerto de Mogán

I don't even think that cat belonged to the owner of the store. It was raining a bit, so the cat decided to go in the store and lie down on the shop's rug. It might have heard something about jewelry and fur being luxury items.

Just to throw a couple of more things in – and in the tune of Christmas – are these pictures:

These were some giant blocks in a reclaimed area between Puerto Rico and Puerto de Mogán, taken from a walkway in the cliff. Each block was a bit taller than a man. Someone got inspired to paint them like presents.

And finally, here's something I thought was funny. In the Canaries, not a lot of the locals know how to speak English. I imagine the conversation behind this sign went something like this:

"Eh, How do you spell 'Christmas'"?
"Ahhh, just put Xmas."
"Okay."
HAPPY EXMAS

I'm dreaming of a warm Christmas...

...just like the ones I used to know!

Yes, we're going on what thousands of other Swedes do every year: Fly charter. To somewhere warm. To the Canary Islands. It warms my heart in this -8 Celsius winter coldness to think of sun, beach, and the possibility of going out without wearing 3 layers.


The Canaries are a group of islands that belong to Spain, located some 100 kilometers from the coast of West Africa. The islands are volcanic, but there's a lot of sand, taken by the wind all the way from the Sahara. The island which we'll be staying at is called Gran Canaria, a round island sometimes described as a "mini continent" because it has all four climate zones. About a third of it is a national park. The rest of the island, except its capital Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is inhabited by tourists. The reason for their invasion is the stable, year-round warm weather, which has been its selling point since the boom of the charter industry in the 60s.

Looking forward to meeting the sun and to test my (heheh!) new-found swimming skills. If I don't appear in the blog within the week, you know where I am: in the beach, with sand between my toes. We're leaving in a bit. Until we return,

Happy Holidays!

A scared cat no more

It's time to bring this picture back out.


Remember Joy the Cat? Fifteen weeks ago, I couldn't swim to literally save my own life. I panicked as soon as I had to tiptoe in a pool or swallowed pool water by mistake, and I wrongly thought that I had to thrash my arms wildly just to keep afloat. Since then I:

1. learned breast stroke and back stroke
2. learned to tread water – for whole minutes!
3. felt how it was to hop into a pool feet-first
4. could retrieve stuff from the bottom of the pool (shallow end)
5. learned (in principle) how to do a flip turn at the end of the pool
6. learned to swim with clothes on – good to know in case I fall in
7. And most importantly, I lost my fear of water!

Did you read that? I'm not afraid of water anymore! It just happened suddenly in one of our swimming sessions. One week, I didn't dare to swim into the deep end; by the next week I was doing two laps! It's crazy.

(This is the 25m pool where I overcame my fear, photo from their site)

An unexpectedly negative thing about swimming is that some of my nails have become brittle at the ends. I don't know if it had something to do with swimming with nail polish, but I consulted a manicurist about it and she says it just happens sometimes when nails get into a lot of contact with water, and you later go out into the cold. The nails get dry and brittle and start to look like they're peeling layers – which is exactly what happened to some of my nails' tips. As a "cure", she sold me some jelly-like nail strengthener that don't make the nails hard. I also have to oil my nails and cuticles several times a day to keep them from drying out.

I hope they heal until next semester's new round of swimming lessons. I'm already geared to re-enroll and learn new things, and I've even met new friends there who are also re-enrolling next year. Maybe I can even take the 200-meter breast-and-backstroke test eventually. Freestyle swimming though, is an even further goal that instructors say we can learn first after a year and a half of swimming (at least), when we can show that we're as comfortable in water as in land.

Got a Chinese food craving, part 2

After talking about how I would learn to make Chinese food, these gorgeous pork-and-shrimp dumplings came out of our kitchen this weekend. From scratch. After lots of hard work and salivating. In the end, all our slave work – chopping everything to a mince, forming the dough into circles 50 times, filling the dough 50 times, closing the dumplings 50 times, boiling everything 3 times in 3 batches – was all worth it. They were so delicious it was hard to believe we we actually made them! I love you, Linlin's cookbook! I wonder though... is there a machine for all this work?