The Lion's Den

How to escape mass tourism? Easy, look for it in the lion's den: the Canary Islands. There isn't a single European holiday destination that gets more charter flights filled with pale British, Dutch and German tourists. Three weeks later they're flown back as the typical bright-red holiday lobsters you see in the streets of Northern Europe during summer. However, it is actually possible to escape the packed discoteques of the all-inclusive holiday resorts.

Last March I went to Lanzarote, the Sodom & Gomorra of western holiday making, and spent a week in a 300-inhabitant village with no ATM, three buses a day and no hotels.

Lanzarote is the northernmost of the Canary Islands. Politically part of Spain, geologically part of Afrika. The island is basically divided in two parts: the Southern part is urbanised and filled with hotels and tourists (luckily the Russians haven't found this one yet) while the Northern part is a nature reserve. The law states that there aren't any hotels, resorts, urban developments, discos and the like allowed.

The little village of Caleta de Famara has close to nothing, but it does have the Playa the Famara with nice waves and an amazing view. The beach is a bay enclosed by a big rocky mountain on the North side, and open to the Atlantic in a NW direction. Any tourist activity going on completely centers around the playa.

This lead to the development of an illegal-but-tolerated bar, Lenny's, with Amstel on draft the only place to go at night for a beer. When the draft wouldn't pour anymore they switched to Heineken on the bottle. Just as you think you're standing on the edge of the world, you don't have any choice but to drink very ordinary Dutch beer. Damn. I would've settled for that Spanish crap.