Winter adventure in Papagayo, Lanzarote

Many years ago, I traveled with my friend Celia to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. We were traveling the hard way. We had taken a boat over from Guernsey where we lived to St. Malo in France. We made our way down through Rennes, Rendon, and Nantes, into Spain and to the seaport of Algeciras and the Straits of Gibraltar (which is the main port for ferries over to Morocco, North Africa and to the Canary Islands). We were traveling with heavy rucksacks. It had taken us four days to get to Algeciras. Many English grads avoided British winters by heading south to the Canary Islands where you were guaranteed beautiful winter weather.

We had very little money after we'd paid for our ferry rides to the Canary Islands. The plan was to try and make our money last all winter. When we arrived in Lanzarote, we went directly to the south end of the island; a place called Papagayo which was pretty much perfect; unspoiled and still untouched by tourism except for the Hostel Playa Del Sol, (which was also a bar and a restaurant, right on the beach). That was it; nothing else touristy, just local fishing wives and mothers sitting on their steps waiting for the men to bring back the daily catch of fish. The local children played close by. Other young travelers, like us, had come for a long-term stay.

The smell of food wafted from the Hostel beckoning us inside. We went in just as they were serving the evening meal. We sat on benches against a long trestle table. The food was basic, but really good. We were introduced to Peter and his girlfriend Sue who were traveling from New York and hoped to stay in the Canaries for 5 months. Chris, a British artist was spending the winter 'looking for inspiration,' Shirley was traveling alone from England as well as Sarah (a well-known historical novelist) who had come from London for an extended stay. There were also three young Swedes, Yoran, Soran and Ulla who had sailed over on a large yacht from Sweden and finally a young German couple, Helga and Paul.

Peter and I were welcomed with open arms and immediately liked these ten people, little realizing they would become our firm friends over many years. Due to everyone’s financial restraints, we all decided to share a couple of rooms – the guys bunked in together and the girls in another room. Because of the exchange rate and the incredibly inexpensive food and Hostel, It literally cost us pennies a day. (Spain was very cheap back in the day). Our daily diet consisted of goats’ cheese, loaves of bread and cola; (the local champagne was cheaper than the cola so we had some fun evenings)! We would treat ourselves to an evening meal at the Hostel a couple of times a week. It was a magical time and had we had such a lot of fun. Chris sang and played the guitar around a campfire most evenings. A local dog adopted us; he slept and snored under our beds. We called him "Capullio" which got inflated to ‘Don Capullio’ when he managed to scale a fairly steep mountain with us one day. The beaches were beautiful and most days were spent relaxing, swimming, fishing, talking and joking. We had taken over the little hostel completely and it became our home away from home.

One day we heard a Sirocco wind was coming over from the Sahara dessert, (Morocco and the coast of Africa is just across the ocean). We didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be a 'warm windstorm' that blew tiny particles of sand from the dessert. The winds were so strong they changed the configuration of our beach; we hardly recognized it the next day. But most funny was the fact that each one of us had dark ruddy-brown skin! The wind had blown layer upon layer of tiny particles of the red Sahara sand onto our skins and we looked amazing ~ it was the best tan I ever had!

One of our adventures was sleeping in a cave we found on a different beach further up the coast. It was large, cold and very damp. We brought our torches, sleeping bags, food and water and all managed to sleep in the cave for a week, before the morning damp sent us racing back to the Hostel for warmth and a nice shower.

Celia and I stayed there five months (which is incredible because we had so little cash!) It was one of the best times and we made lasting friendships with our Hostel buddies.