Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho

One of the blogs I’m enjoying reading at the moment is Islandmomma’s take on life on Tenerife and in general – it’s full of interesting thoughts and experiences.

A recent blog I enjoyed a lot was about different alcoholic drinks being associated with special memories. It really rang a bell with me and I hope she doesn’t mind, but it set me off down a nostalgic and alcohol fuelled trail thinking about what memories various drinks conjured up in my head.

Unlike Islandmomma’s roots, my family were no strangers to alcohol, being very typical of the working class West of Scotland – nearly every night of my dad’s life was spent in the pub. A heavy drinking culture was the norm where I grew up and nobody really considered people to have a drink problem even though they might be bladdered every night. Ironically, it was those who enjoyed a drink at home instead of the pub who were treated with suspicion and considered alcoholics as drinking was all about the social life. Even now my mum still looks a bit uncomfortable when we uncork the wine.

Probably because of this, alcohol has been my preferred drug and since about the age of seventeen I’ve been a loyal worshipper in the church of the Reverend D. Wayne Love (anyone who gets that reference is automatically a soul brother, or sister). Whilst my drinking patterns have changed throughout my life – cutting down as I moved from a heavy drinking culture (Scotland) to a drinking culture (England) to a culture where drinking is far more moderate (here) – I still enjoy the demon drink. I particularly enjoy trying local brews when we travel and much of my own memories of various drinks are connected with different places.

Lanzarote – Red Wine
Of all the places we have visited, Lanzarote was my least favourite. We went there the year we were married and stayed near the harbour in Puerto del Carmen. The harbour was pleasant enough, but we couldn’t walk anywhere without being hassled by time-share touts. But Lanzarote is the place responsible for a liking for red wine. We were in a fish restaurant overlooking the harbour when I noticed two men lounging on the wall below us, a terracotta jug full of red wine between them. It just looked like the most sophisticated way to drink that I’d ever seen and immediately ordered a carafe even though I thought I didn’t like red wine.

Sri Lanka – Arrack
One of the reasons that Lanzarote might have been a disappointment was that we’d not long previously been to Sri Lanka which completely blew us away and which still remains our favourite location. We struggled to get any decent vodka, our preferred drink at that time, so had to settle for the local stuff, arrack. It turned out to be surprisingly quaffable; smooth and not overly sweet or harsh. A long, iced glass with ginger ale was perfect when served with stunning sunsets, palm trees wafting in the breeze and strange haunting calls emanating from the jungle.

Greece- Retsina
I love ouzo and we’ve had some great times in its company on various Greek Islands, but it’s retsina that conjures up special memories, particularly of the island of Symi. We’d catch a water taxi from the town – usually a glass of ouzo and water came with the price of the ticket – to the most beautiful crescent shaped beach where there was only one vine covered shack of a taverna. After a morning’s sunbathing, interrupted only by cooling swims and fending off curious goats, we’d head to the taverna, order mezes of whatever they brought us and a bottled of chilled retsina…then snore our heads off on the beach until it was time to catch the water taxi back to town. Bliss.

Jamaica – Red Stripe
So many memories, so many bottles of Red Stripe consumed watching cliff divers from LTU (a poor man’s version of Rick’s Cafe) and people like Toots and the Maytals and Yellowman in venues where the air was thick with ganja and we usually ended up having to rescue our blonde-haired friend from over-amorous Rastas -  normally as a result of her behaviour. You can’t sing along with Yellowman’s Vagina Song at the top of your voice and not expect the local Lotharios to think you’re game.

New York – Champagne
New York on the eve of the Millennium and the signs were there that the Americans were expecting some sort of an attack. We had to sign a form saying who our next of kin was when we boarded the plane to NY, not a comforting thing to have to do. The manhole covers in the street were sealed shut and we were surrounded by a police cordon in Times Square. It was the most alcohol free New Year  we’ve ever experienced. Not a drop passed our lips as we watched the world welcome in the new millenium over a period of 12 hours or so. Sometime after it was New York’s turn and the crowds began to disperse we headed back to out hotel and, due to a mix of being thirsty and relief at not being blown up, immediately ordered two bottles of champagne which we downed in record time in the packed lobby. I don’t really remember what happened after that.

India – Feni
I’ve got to add this one because it is one of the most disgusting drinks I’ve ever tasted, or more accurately, two of the most disgusting drinks as there are two varieties; palm feni and cashew feni. One of them is revolting and one is just unpleasant, but I can’t remember which is which. It’s the popular hard drink in Goa and therefore deserved to be tried. It’s serious stuff. We were told that two glasses would get you drunk; we had three each. Two to try the different flavours and the third to mask the taste of the second. Did it get us drunk? Well one us hallucinated a giant moth after the second feni and the resulting panic caused a knocking over of what was left of the third drink. But I can’t remember who did what, so I suppose that says it all.

France – Wine (of course)
One of my favourite alcoholic fuelled memories is of two weeks we spent with Andy’s dad and his wife at a wonderful old gîte near Dinan which had gardens the size of a public park. Whenever we were out and about exploring, we’d pop into a local shop and stock up on red wines, the more local the better.

Each night one of us would announce at some point early on ‘time to test the wine’. A bottle would be uncorked, glasses poured and a rating would be agreed. Being France even the most modest bottle was given four stars. The result, plus a brief description, was recorded in a notebook so that we’d know which wines to buy again. Wonderful summer nights were spent in the sun-kissed garden as hot air balloons drifted lazily overhead whilst we quaffed the day’s booty. We got through an awful lot of testing on that holiday and by the end of each night I’m sure our judgement wasn’t to be trusted. It was a very special holiday.

The thing with this blog is that I could go on and on and on and I can’t decide whether writing it is making me want to go and pour a long cool one or give it up forever. Still thanks Islandmomma for triggering my boozy trip down memory lane…slangevar!

Things That Make Me Go ‘WOW’

The recent 7 Rockas Festival in La Laguna made me think of Bruce, and Bruce made me think of a guy I met in Las Américas, whose name I forget, when we were putting together a magazine feature.

The bloke in Las Américas seemed to model his behaviour on the Colin Farrell character in Phonebooth. He wore designer clothes, a designer watch and talked consistently about his flash car, other people he knew with flash cars, attending flash events with models on his arms… he talked money, money, money. His conversation left me as cold as the Arctic Circle (actually in these times of climactic change, probably colder).

Bruce on the other hand was a very nice bloke I met on a trip up the Yangtze. Bruce taught me a simple trick with two wine corks which confused and ‘wowed’ me. Clearly, as it involved wine corks, we had been partaking of the odd glass or 5 of wine and so it probably wasn’t that difficult to confuse me. It’s a useful little trick to know whenever a ‘party piece’ is required (unfortunately it’s impossible to describe in words) and it impressed the hell out of me.

Our friend Sarah has done lots of things which have also impressed me no end. She’s climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro for charity, been a dead body on the beach for the cover of a crime novel and gave up a very good job in the NHS to go and work for the VSO in Sri Lanka.

A while ago we interviewed an eye specialist in Santa Cruz who goes out to Mexico a couple of times a year to administer free eye treatment to the poor – I was very impressed by him.

On the same trip that we met Bruce we also met Joan, a ninety year old woman travelling on her own. She was as fit as a flea which was impressive in its own right, but what really impressed was a throwaway line as we flew across a piece of desolate land somewhere between China and Russia where we could see the occasional camp fire flickering beside large shadowy tents.

“I once spent the night in a tent with a prince down there,” She remarked and said no more, lighting my imaginative blue touch paper.

At a party a few years ago some people were talking about what they’d just been doing work wise. One bloke mentioned that he’d just finished making a movie about Bob Marley. As I’m a movie buff and had just read the review in Empire movie magazine, I was really, really impressed by that one.

The reason why Bruce made me think of Phonebooth man was that they existed at opposite ends of the spectrum. Phonebooth man and people like him try to impress everyone by parading material goods, but ultimately there’s no substance to them. Bruce and the other people I’ve mentioned haven’t actually set out to impress, they just did things that were, to me anyway, incredibly interesting and therefore impressive.

But what’s all this got to do with the 7 Rockas Festival in La Laguna, I hear you say?

Part of the 7 Rockas Festival involved an air guitar competition which reminded me that Bruce was the proud father of the UK national air guitar champion.

How impressive is that?

The Magic of Tenerife – It’s Easy to Discover

It’s easy to view Tenerife in one dimensional terms, as little more than a purpose built tourist resort. That’s the way it’s presented both wittingly and unwittingly in a variety of mediums. However, all anyone needs to do to discover otherwise is to venture forth from their resorts. Just about every time I drive on Tenerife’s roads (the old ones, not the TF motorways) I see something which brings a smile to my face and reminds me how ‘different’ Tenerife actually is.

It isn’t just on Tenerife that you only discover the magic of the place by getting out and about, and it isn’t just Tenerife that has holidaymakers who rarely leave their resort.

The first time we went to Sri Lanka the civil war between the Tamils and the Sinhalese Army had flared up. On arrival at our hotel we were given a F.O. memo advising us not to leave the hotel’s grounds. One woman broke down in tears, she had no idea that the country was in the grip of a civil war.

Anyhow, we’d been following the situation for some time and had spoken to the Sri Lankan Embassy in London and knew that it was only certain areas which were badly affected and we weren’t in one of them. So, as soon as we recovered from jet lag, we walked out of the hotel and went on a voyage of discovery into a land where very little seemed familiar. One of the many things which really gave us a buzz was the sight of giant monitor lizards lumbering along in the ditches and pools at the side of the road, some as big as crocodiles. They were everywhere.

The reason I mention this is that later in our holiday we went on a coach excursion. At one point the coach stopped and a local man stood at the window holding up one of these ancient looking monitor lizards in his hands. Nearly everyone in that coach jumped up from their seats and ran out to take photos of the big lizard, for which the man charged a small fee.

It was a stupid thing for the visitors to do for a couple of reasons.

1. It would encourage more men to catch monitors to earn ‘easy money’ from the tourists, not a particularly pleasant development for the lizards.
2. If they’d only stepped outside of their hotels they would have seen dozens of the damn things where they should be, in the wild.

That’s only one little example, but I could apply the same sort of thing over and over again to everywhere we’ve visited in the world, Tenerife included.

The Sea of Clouds Hugs the Mountain Slopes

On Saturday we sat on the edge of an abyssal ravine looking down on Costa Adeje. It was a spot of sobering contrasts. Above us loomed a cliff face 7 million years in the making and below us a resort which was younger than I am by some distance. Sitting on those gnarled rocks it felt as though I was looking into the future from the past. It was odd to experience such contrasting sides of the island in one vista.
Later, as we drove through the hills, we passed a gathering of hunters and their families holding a party in a small churchyard beside a statue of Hermano Pedro, the Canary Island’s one and only home grown Saint. As we left the pine forest above Vilaflor, a blindingly white sea of clouds hugged every nook and cranny in the undulating slopes; it was spectacular. Crossing the Teide Crater, the low evening sun made the landscape so sharp that I fancied it was clear enough to see a lizard scuttling on Mount Teide’s summit which was framed by an impossibly intense deep blue sky. Descending from Aguamansa we became caught in a traffic queue caused by a troop of caballeros (horse riders) who wouldn’t have looked out of place in Brokeback Mountain (not that I’m suggesting they were gay).

Mount Teide, Sharp as a Pin in the early Evening Sunlight

They were all little things, little magical things which were unique to the real Tenerife and which would never be seen from the inside of a hotel complex.

All Inclusive Hotels – The Dumbing Down of Travel

I detest AI (All Inclusive) with a passion. You can present any number of reasons why AI represents an attractive holiday option and they might all be valid, but you won’t stop me from hating it.

You want to see me?...Get off your ass!

There are a number of reasons why I’m anti-AI, but one of the main ones is that as the availability of AI increases, the world is becoming a less exotic place.

As I was growing up, I mentally compiled a list of places I wanted to see, things I wanted to do. Magazines, books and movies opened up a world full of adventure with steamy jungles, jetties filled with sacks of exotic spices, vibrant cities with maze like alleys and people whose clothes were of such bright colours that you’d be blinded if you stared directly at them.

I haven’t achieved half of the things on that list, but I have managed some.

Nope...no AI here.

I’ve stood on the Great Wall of China; inched along the Bridge on the River Kwai; stared into the eyes of a lion in Kenya; gazed on the Indian Ocean from the ramparts of the walled city of Galle in Serendip; sipped Marsala tea with generals overlooking the Gateway to India…and so on. These are cherished memories. Treasures which are special to me and which I dust off every now and again and take out of the little box in my head marked ‘unforgettable moments’.
However, the Mumfords are doing their best to turn this world of wonder into a bland version of an out of town hypermarket.

Ahhh, that feels good!

Apologies to anyone called Mumford out there, I’m sure most of you are very nice people, but that was the name of a couple we encountered on our first long haul jaunt. In the jungle in Yala National Park in Sri Lanka we sat at a long trestle table where we were presented with the choice of eating a typical Sri Lankan curry, or roast beef. The Mumfords opted for roast beef.
“I’m not trying any of that muck,” I think were Mr Mumfords’ exact words.

This was nigh on twenty years ago. Travel to exotic and far flung places was still a relative rarity for the masses. We’d only been able to afford Sri Lanka because much of it was still a war zone (some things never change). A British FO document on arrival advised us not to leave the hotel. We ignored it.

The point is that the Mumfords were the harbingers of the AI generation and in my opinion typified everything that was wrong with the concept…they weren’t particularly interested in where they were going, but they were interested in wearing T-shirts which broadcast to the world where they’d been. They were simply ticking off the world.

Just doesn't look the same in a hotel lounge

Nowadays it’s gone a step further; with AI people don’t visit countries, they visit hotel complexes. They can say I’ve been to Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, whatever without ever having to actually experience the country itself…God forbid.

And that’s why I dislike AI; it sanitises travel and makes countries accessible to people who wouldn’t otherwise set foot in them. AI makes the world seem that little bit less magical.

This might sound as though I’m being a travel snob. I don’t care. I am a travel snob, I’m an unashamed travel snob, but only in as much as I believe that travelling is about experiencing the country you’re visiting; about discovery and learning…oh, as well as having fun in the process. I’m not some Calvinist with a back pack.

But if I’m a travel snob, then what does that make someone who travels 10 hours to sit in the sun around a pool complex which could be in ‘anywhere land’ when they could do exactly the same a lot closer to home?

Uninvited Visitors

At this moment we have two lizards resident in the house. The first is a gecko which appears from god-knows-where at night, runs along the top of the bamboo blinds and takes up position at the top of the window. Presumably it’s a good spot to catch insects and, as that’s what he does best, I’m quite happy to share house space with him. Every home in sub tropical climes should have at least one. My friend Sarah in Sri Lanka with the VSO has recently discovered this.
The other one, a true Tinerfeño lizard, unique to the island is here more by accident. We have skylights in the bathroom and the kitchen. Both are covered by a screen. Initially we thought that these were to keep insects out, but we were wrong. Lizards come careening across the roof cartoon style on a frighteningly regular basis and overshoot the open skylight. The screen acts as a safety net; if it weren’t there I swear we’d be knee deep in reptiles.
The screen is pretty effective on the whole, but two days ago one decent sized fellow managed to fall straight through the only hole in the screen (necessary for opening and closing the skylight) and land with a loud ‘plop’ on the bathroom floor.
He immediately sought sanctuary under a large chest and, as far as I know, is still there. If I try to move it to get him out, I’ll probably squash him so I’ll have to wait until hunger forces his hand (or his scaly claw) which could be some time as there’s probably a couple of spiders and a tropical house centipede under there with him to help suppress his munchies.

It’s not easy trying to save lizards from self imposed incarceration. Such are the problems of living in a sub tropical climate.