Lanzarote is a dry old place

When we came back from our delish meal at the restaurant it was to discover there was no water in the villa. We had put this down to simply a water cut in the main services as we had had these frequently when we visited Cyprus and Crete, but we still had no running water the following morning, and whats more, the lady in the villa next door did!!

Kelly rang the managment firm in charge of villa maintenance. It turned out that it was a problem they knew about already. There was a huge underground water storage tank that supplied the villa with water, but there was a leak somewhere between there and the Villa. A huge leak!

Anyway the Maintenance bloke (Graham, a really ni
ce guy) turned up an hour later, refilled the underground tank via a series of valves, switches and pumps (technical stuff) and then showed the men of our party how to shut off the system when we went out or went to bed, so that the tank would not pump dry again. He said he was still trying to get hold of a man with sounding equipment so that they could trace the leak.

We weren't going to let a little thing like lack of running water spoil our holiday, so after a full english, we set off to visit the island's caves.

First we visited the Caves of Los Verdes, a long underground system formed by the volcano lava flow. I cant say I enjoyed this part much, I am not really one for caves, and this one wasnt particulary spectacular.

Not that spectacular - the cave, not Martin!

In some places it was quite hard to get through, some spots were particularly low and there were lots of stairs.

Some low spots - Ollie caught on the roof.

I loved the second cave we visited ( Jameos del Agua) though. It wasnt really a cave, more a tunnel, which has been converted into a cafe and night club. There is a large pool in which can be found tiny lind white crabs which were facinating.

Blind albino crab

The lagoon looked really inviting, especially as Kelly had forgotten the sun lotion, but alas it is not open to the public.

We got a bit lost in the information centre looking for the exit which got a bit frustrating.

Kelly was insistant that since there were so many games facilities available at the Villa, there was going to be league tables and leader boards. I did try to point out that since the order of winners/loosers was going to be pretty predicable before we even started that it was probably a waste of time, but she insisted and drew up the first table for playing pool in the games room.

After bbq'ing T Bone steak on the barbie,



we grabbed some sangria and made our way down to the pool table, clearing out the dead cockroach as we went. The games ended in much the way we had predicted, with me firmly at the bottom of the league.