Taxis in Fortuventura

Flight 6558 to Fortaventura had long ago migrated to the top of the departure flipboard, but with the qualifying remark of "TECHNICAL" frozen into the last column, a cryptic explanation for the superseded departure time, while underneath other flights were flipping their way up, disappearing with the final boarding call to New York, Cairo and Tokyo. I had been forewarned about the unreliability of TAP, but better a delay due to technical problems than a sudden, unscheduled return to ground due to technical problems. However, waiting can be a pain since the airport transit lounge chair is almost universally unkind to one's butt and back. It is usually an injection-moulded, one-piece plastic job that terminates exactly at that point where one needs the most lumbar support. Soreness lingers in my tactile memory from far-flung airport interludes in Johannesburg, Cairo, Moscow, and London. Clearly this is a calculated callousness designed to seduce passengers to the far cushier furniture in the restaurants and bars, where one can consume, in comfort, a 30 Mark spaghetti napolli or a eight mark lite beer. The airlines must be in on it, too, since the only seating possibly less comfortable than economy-class with their ever-shrinking baselines are the airport lounge chairs. I let myself get sucked in by the insidious stratagem (and my own appetite) into the restaurant, where I had the worst ham and lettuce role I would eat in my entire life.

By the time I boarded the aeroplane, the afternoon sun had heated the inside to near sauna levels. The passengers from the previous stop on this island-hopping flight were already aboard (or were they on the whole time?), sweat streaming down their sombre faces. The aircraft was old but in good shape, although I have to admit that I needed to kick open the ill-fitting door when exiting the toilet. I am beginning to think the whole world is conspiring against me. I know it a perfectly normal way to feel after a four hour charter flight with nothing but a nattering and unattractive woman to sit next to an when you suddenly have a whole other mysteriously threatening fourteen days to deal with for which you are not a bit prepared. But still.

It was Saterday evening. No it was Saterday night. I had gotten off the plane feeling tired crabby and particularly paranoid. Besides I also had indigestion. It was a charter flight remember. Ofcourse my rugsack came off the plane last just after the last bus already had left to be told by a taxi driver that it cost 3000 to drive into town and that the bag was extra. I have no Idea what 3000 is even worth but at any rate it is about 2800 to much. I hate that, taxidrivers that can't speak english except enough to rip you off 3000. They can proberbly do it in any language on eath including both Zulu and Swahili. And anyway from what was being put down there was no accondation to be had on the island anyway. It was fully booked and I was sure one dumb ass for even trying my luck.

The taxidriver suspected that there may have been something free at an aunts sister he had but that the aunt had died and it was all very sad and the price was only 12000 and the bag was extra. I figured that the price was cheap when this relation of his lived on the other side of the island, I guess he made allowences for the respect I had shown for his dead aunt. He lacked the english to have appreciated my sarcasm. A pity really.

In the end I walked to town. Fortaventura is a relativly small island in the Canaries and I guess it should be no suprise that the towns were just as small like the minds of the tourists that come here to lay in the sun. I was lucky cause I found a hotel straight away that was mostly empty and cheap.

The next morning was Sunday. Yep the only thing that is open is the church. That same church woke me up at eight after my alarmclock went off at three not having been ajusted to the local time. I had a warm shower and the waster was unexpectedly hot. I had this suspsious feeling come over me. I don't like it when every thing goes right cause it usally means I have missed noticing what has actually gone wrong.

I left the hotel and went to enquire as to busses. I realised with a sinking heart that when a calander was consulted insted of a timetabe that my spanish is not what it used to be. I put my hope righty away. There was no point in being dissapointed. At the taxi stand stood that same bloke that had been at the airport last night with a smile that was about two miles wide. I slung my rugsack over my shoulders and headed for the top of one of the hills that lay around Peurto del Rossario. Walking in these hills was great, not that much grows in the vocanic lava. The veiw of the sea got better the higher I got moving in parallel

to my spirits. After a while I even started to feel rather jovial but at the back of my mind I wondered what had gone wrong again that I had missed.

I figured on sleeping the night somewhere inland but I kind of missed any signs of human dwelling and in the evening I had already reached the other side of the island. There was no beach instead a cliff overlooked the sea that was bashed onto the rocks a hunderd feet below. Swimming was just not on. I ate the last two breadroles that I had pinched off the plane with a tin of sardines tht I happend to find in my rugsack. Presumably from the las trip or even before that. I was glad of the shelter from an abandoned house because the wind caused a light chill to hang in the air. I cant say I slept very well but it was not till six that I woke. The sun came up three quaters of an hour later and I was a good three Kilometers on my way.

I arrived in El Cotillo around ten. I thought it was somewhere else but the sign Welcome to El Cotillo persuaded me otherwise. I found an appartment over a supermarket. It would have had a beautifull view of the sea had the windows been on the other side of the building and the bathroom six feet to the left. I managed to get hold of a few more stale breadroles and a tin of beans which helped to oil them down. I stayed here for three days eating fish grilled to perfection between the stale breadroles and beans which by now I had become quite attached to.

It was a days walk to the next town. Corallejo was a tourist trap. I noticed that by the remodelled lobby of a beautifully styled and hand crafted in concrete 14 story square building called El Palmas Hotel. All these things were not worrying in themselves although they were a little disorientating. The thing that was worrying though was the decor. It was brash and glitzy. Expencive. But expencive and fun. Wild gaming machines lined the corridors. Insanely painted grandpianos hung from the ceilings, vicious sea monsters reared out of out of pools of tree filled atria. Butlers dressed in stuipid shirts roamed the corridors seeking paying hands to press frothing colourfull drinks into. Someone had done an iniguitious taste job on the place. People here knew how to have a good time and if they did not there were courses that could be signed up for to put that right.

I decided it was time that I wrote a few postcards. If I did not write the damn things then nobody would know what a wonderfull time I was having in the sun and the holiday would have been a waste of time and money. I sorted the cards out into little piles of which people were likly to see which others. That way I can write the same thing on nearly every card inventing variations only when nessesary. Yes I do seem to have taken onboard a bit of that Tuetonic efficiency. Someone should invent a postcard duplicator. Such a device is nesessary for those of us who travel a lot. Perhaps it could even be fitted into a swissarmy knife instead of the toothpick for which I seldom find use. Except when my nose is very blocked that is.

I found a little hotel near the harbour above a pub which would have been refered to by an estate agent as quaint. There is something especially grim about pubs near harbours. A very peculiar kind of grubbyness and a special palor to the pork pies. Worse than the porkpies though are the sandwhiches. There is a feeling which persists that making a sandwhich interesting, attractive or in any way appetizing is something sinnfull that only foreigners do. "Make em dry" is the motto next to "Make em ruberry and if you must keep the buggers fresh then wash em once a week". If there is something worse than the sandwhiches then it is the sausages which sit next to them. Joyless tubes full of gastly gristle floating in a sea of something hot and sad, each stuck with a plastic pin in the shape of a chefs hat. A memorial one feels for some chef who hated the world and died forgotten amongst his cats and sorrows. I figured there must have been somewhere better to eat and I knew I was right.

The proprietor had a know nothing bozo dog which always lay in the way such that you had to trip over it and then he would have an excuse to growl and show his teeth. This dog is so stuipid that it could not even be used to make dogfood comercials cause it would always choose the wrong bowl of food although the other bowls had dirty engine oil poured over them. The owner of the dog was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he had had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and I think he saw no reason to disagree except that he liked to disagree with poeple especially those he did not like. which included at the last count everyone. I guessed that was where this bozo dog got it from.

This town has wonderfull beaches and sandy dunes and a severe lack of tourists even if all the signs were there to indicate otherwise. I spent the next days in the sun living off fresh fish and cheap wine. Not that it tasted at all bad. I read a few books and even met a few people that I found to be quite pleasent company really. Even a few pints of relativly decent beer can be had here for a song. On the last day I walked to the airport for fear of meeting that taxidriver again and had a wonderfull view of the sunrise.

I realised that every once in a while the fundemental laws of the universe are momentarily suspended and not only does everything go right but nothing can stop it from going right. It is a grand feeling to have beaten the odds for a change and this holiday was one of those times when life just seemed to work without complications. But still I am suspcious as to what I have missed that did actually go wrong.