The Ironman circus is finally packing up. Yesterday Puerto del Carmen was full of road closures, nervous relatives clutching cowbells and frighteningly fit people wheeling bicycles worth more than a Ford Fiesta. Today the temporary pavilions are starting to be dismantled piece by piece and all the bikes have disappeared. Presumably they are now being airlifted back to European cities in cargo planes.
What strikes me most is how normal the competitors look this morning. We walk to the beach and they are everywhere in their finisher shirts, strolling about perfectly happily. No limping. No blisters. No visible organ failure. If I walk too far in flip-flops I need a sit down and a cold drink. These people have swum over two miles, cycled across volcanic mountains and then run a marathon yesterday, and now they are casually walking down the promenade and no doubt thinking about training for something harder.
It’s already heading towards 34 degrees Celsius and the forecast tells me that it’ll be even hotter later in the week. Madam settles on a sun bed with her book and I wander down to the shoreline and walk along the beach, the shallow waves washing lazily over my bare feet. The water is cold at first but eventually becomes bearable, then pleasant.
It’s barely ten o’clock so the beach is still quiet. One lone lifeguard surveys an almost empty stretch of beach. Ahead of me is smooth untouched sand. Behind me, only my footprints. Later in the day this same walk will resemble navigating Oxford Street on Christmas Eve.
The sand here changes colour constantly. Mostly golden, but streaked with patches of black volcanic sand which make the beach look as though nature started making one beach and then changed its mind halfway through. Hidden amongst it are tiny, sharp volcanic stones positioned perfectly to stab unsuspecting tourists in the foot. I speak from experience.
It’s tempting to compare this beach to our favourite in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. There’s less activity here on the beach than in Las Palmas. Fewer fitness people. No yoga groups. No people doing mysterious stretching exercises at sunrise. Here people mainly specialise in lying down. Occasionally they paddle. The beach here is bigger. The one in Las Palmas often has vast mounds of seaweed wash up with every tide. Walking on dried seaweed becomes a test of endurance. On paper Puerto del Carmen has all the advantages but Las Palmas still wins for us. PDC is very much for tourists, mostly of the type that doesn’t feel like they have had a good holiday unless they drink their weight in lager every afternoon. Las Palmas beach is more for residents and has a calmer, friendlier feel.
I return to the sun bed and continue reading The Island. This proves difficult because beach vendors patrol continuously along the sand shouting things every thirty seconds. “Cocktails! Ice cream! Beer! Cold water!”
Then comes the massage women, who look remarkably like those from Las Palmas, waving a laminated diagram of body parts she is prepared to work on. Back, legs and feet I think. At least I hope that’s what it is. I avoided looking too closely lest she take my curiosity for interest in her services. She keeps waving the card under your nose until you acknowledge her existence and tell her, sometimes politely, to piss off.
Eventually our patch of shade only covers one bed so I surrender it to Madam and go for another walk. The beach is much busier now and progress along the shoreline becomes increasingly hazardous. Children are wildly kicking footballs with the accuracy of malfunctioning artillery. At one point I accidentally wander through the middle of a mud-throwing battle and am caught in the crossfire with collateral damage to my shin. I wade further into the sea to wash my leg.
Back on the sun bed I work on reading The Island, though maybe work is too strong a word here. I’m enjoying it but it’s hard to focus sometimes. The Island seems to contain dozens of characters with long Greek names, many of them alarmingly similar. Reading it sometimes feels less like following a novel and more like trying to memorise the entire list of the players in the Greek second division.
The length of the names remind me of German sausages. An odd connection, admittedly, but that’s just how my mind works. If you ever visit a German restaurant there will be twenty items on the menu and nineteen of them will turn out to be sausages with names like Thüringer Rostbratwurst. The twentieth item will be something completely unhinged like chicken livers and lamb brain in a sour cream and banana sauce. Dessert is always ice cream. They may list half a dozen desserts and you order something that looks interesting but they bring you two scoops of vanilla in a glass bowl.
Apparently Germany has over 1,500 different types of sausage, which feels excessive. At some point someone in the past has made a sausage a centimetre longer or with a different herb and claimed it as a new variety.
Still, compared to the German word Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, even Thüringer Rostbratwurst seems fairly manageable. Germans, as a people, appear completely unafraid of adding extra letters to words, often to excess.
But I digress. We are still on the beach.
As the afternoon progresses several large families arrive and spread out towels and chairs. It’s a big beach but they keep arriving and planting themselves around us as though we’re a popular landmark. Sun shades pop up completely blocking our view of the sea or much anything else.
Eventually we get fed up with being crowded in and head back to the hotel. It’s a long walk carrying heavy bags and Puerto del Carmen appears to have quietly introduced several new hills since this morning. We are both tired from the heat and only manage a short trip to the ice cream shop before bed. We can always manage ice cream.
Travels With Madam 