A tale of two Lanzarotes
Fed up with his bootcamp hotel, Hunter Davies flees to a luxury resort and an epic 13-course feast
IDON’T know how I did it – bad research, I suppose, not checking properly in advance. I had decided to have a few days in the sun before Christmas, so where better than the Canaries? It’s only a four-hour flight, yet the temperature averages a pleasant 22C, or so the local tourist board officials boast.
Actually, it was scorchio on arrival in Lanzarote, so they had not lied about that, but I should have suspected something when the tourist guide at the airport presented me with a bar of soap and some shampoo. What? Do they think we are filthy? That we are so hard-up that we have to eat carbolic? Or perhaps I was going to prison and this was my allowance for the length of my sentence? I said this to the guide. Turned out to be true… almost.
I knew only three days earlier that I would be staying at something called Club La Santa. I assumed it would be one of those posh, all-inclusive luxury resorts, with fab villas and gourmet restaurants – the sort they have in Portugal and Greece.
I was given a large map on arrival, and groaned. I am useless at hotel maps. Even in my own house I have to leave chalk marks on the floor so I can find the bathroom in the night. Can someone please lead me to my room? No. I was on my own. Several hours later (well OK, 20 minutes), I found it, but I could not turn on the lights or find a way to use the phone.
The furnishings were basic and minimal. The bedroom window looked on to a blank wall. I took snaps on my phone and sent them to my children. They had been jealous of my trip beforehand. ‘Wish you were here now?’ I said in my accompanying message. ‘I have landed in a bootcamp. Help!’
The sporting facilities were amazing, with Olympic-size swimming pools, endless stadiums, gyms and tracks, catering in all for 40 different sporting activities.
Club La Santa is where many Olympic athletes go to prepare for their big event. I met one fellow from home, in a concrete corridor about ten miles long, who told me that he had been training here for ten days for an Iron Man event. Why? ‘Cos I’m stupid,’ he replied.
The complex is owned by a Danish company and half of the people training appeared to be young Danes, all frighteningly fit. I survived one night and decided that was it – I had to move.
In the morning I asked at reception for the names of any luxury hotels. Eventually someone recommended the Princesa Yaiza, at the southern end of the island. The hotel is said to be the best in Lanzarote. I rang to ask if they had a room for the next three nights. They said they were busy, but offered me a one-room suite for $250 a night. I grabbed it at once. I have got to the stage in life when I throw money at problems. It seems to work.
Princesa Yaiza, in Playa Blanca, was indeed grand and luxurious, located in front of a wonderful sandy beach, instead of all those brutal black rocks in the north of the island.
It turned out to be bigger than I normally like, with 385 rooms, six pools and nine restaurants, but on arrival I was given a glass of champagne, then a man in uniform took me to my room and showed me exactly how everything worked. Three times. I am very slow.
By chance, on the Saturday, there was a gourmet evening in one of the restaurants. It’s a 13-course feast called Cero Kilometro. All the produce comes from a local farm owned by the hotel owner. The animals on the farm are brought up listening to Spanish pop music. Poor sods – I mean lucky animals.
Almost all the courses were tiny, hardly bigger than my thumb, except for the cochinita de la finca de uga, a sort of pork dish. It was delicious, tender and soft – so unlike pork, really. The pigs must have been raised on really high-class music. And all the way through there were local wines.
I had not realised that Lanzarote wines were so good, especially when you consider the whole island appears to be covered with volcanic dust. They dig a hole in the ash, try to find a bit of soil, then grow the vines flat, not tying them up with wires in the usual way.
Ihad another excellent meal at a restaurant at Jameos del Aqua, inside a series of volcanic caves, which were transformed into a cultural centre by local artist César Manrique before his death in 1992. It is thanks to him that in Lanzarote you won’t find buildings more than two storeys high.
In Playa Blanca I met a couple from the small village of Badby in Northamptonshire – and by an amazing coincidence, they know my in-laws. (The sister of my late wife was the village schoolmistress.) The couple were coming to live in Lanzarote full-time. During our conversation, I asked them if would miss the greenery of home. They said the volcanic rock spoke to them, putting them in tune with the real nature of the earth. But what about property prices? I thought expat Brits were now leaving Spain, selling their houses for half what they paid for them. The woman explained that some Brits might be, but French, Germans and Belgians were flooding in, trying to escape the danger of terrorism in their own countries. ‘Lanzarote has so much to offer,’ she said. Very true. If you want an excellent training camp for your next marathon, I can recommend a good place. And if you want to stuff your face with sustainable gourmet food in the height of luxury, I also know the very spot. The paperback version of the first volume of Hunter Davies’s memoirs, The Co-Op’s Got Bananas, published by Simon & Schuster, is out now, priced €10.49.