Salt, Fire and an Enigma.

In which Sid and Doris discover the salty stinkwort and the endemic earwig before dining with Kaspar Hauser.

The Princess Estancia is a strange aspirational 4* resort with 2* mindset, at the bottom of a very steep cliff road.  It is not clear why Doris had picked this but no blame attaches as the duo go forth together.

We had asked them to save us some supper as we were arriving at nearly 23:00. S and D were led up to the empty Food Market (the lowest ranked canteen on the resort, in a place that makes India’s caste system friendly and explicable). The picture cannot capture bleakness on a plate. Food that has been sprayed with lines of brown dye in imitation of grill marks is not what Princesses offer their guests. These people have a lot to learn from the Hotel Riu Palace Jandia in Fuerteventura, perhaps they could headhunt Luc for some intensive staff training.

A poor first impression is hard to get over, even for old Sunny Side Sid, but of course Doris has booked us into the luxury package. Sid observes that a shower that scalds guest D when guest S cleans his teeth does not constitute luxury. It is a consequence of malicious penny pinching. At breakfast people queue six deep for watery cafe con leche. Imagine being on a Princess cruise liner….

S and D drive through what the map promises to be picturesque fields of bananas.  It turns out that bananas are mostly grown in banana tents, something that our beloved and determined reader might already have been aware of but we were not.

Onwards to a local visitor hotspot, the volcano visitor centre, a lighthouse almost knocked down by lava in 1971, some salt pans and the altogether more exciting crater rim walk.  S and D once walked the Scythian Coast, at first stopping to examine each temple ruin, but after a few days had developed the dismissive abbreviation: AFR. Happiness alert. S and D are near that point with volcanism but (spoiler alert) actually have a great volcanic treat waiting just a short time away.

These are salt pans.

The copywriters were perhaps given an extra alcohol ration before the challenging task of writing the information boards about bare black rock and pink crusty puddles.

“You will find very little vegetation, although the oldest rocks harbor salty stinkwort (Schizogyne serícea) and bush in the dock family (Rumex lunaria). Invertebrate fauna is represented by the endemic earwig (Anataelia lavícola).”

“The salt pans have been called Salt Gardens, because of the harmonious landscape and the permanent job of caring for them by their ‘gardeners’ the salt makers. The queen of this garden, half-way between the ocean and the volcano, is the salt flower.
The laborious job of harvesting it is only possible on warm, summer evenings, when the wind withdraws to the sea. The fine film of salt that appears at the start of the crystallisation process on the surface is delicately collected with the riddle. This salt has a lower sodium content, contains all minerals and has a bright white colour. It is undoubtedly the flower of the salt garden.”

We climb up to the Volcano Visitor Centre, which celebrates this 1971 eruption. The picture below looks down into the crater and the aforementioned fire-recovering Canadian Pines.

We can see today’s Adventure HQ from here which looks very like a low rise council estate but without the architects’ attempt at charm and humanity.

Realising that the raciones at the Princess might be a bit dodgy: Lunch! Although Doris’s choice of grilled cheese turned out to be a bit of a local speciality (what you can see in the picture is a thick slab of cheese with green stuff on the top), but all very cheering.

In fact dinner turned out to be full of incident. The Maitre d (henceforth known as the Fat Controller) directed us to a freshly opened seating zone, which we expected would soon be full of bustling Germans getting outside the  offerings. Instead, at the very next table, in an otherwise near empty zone, sat a bearded gent with big rimmed glasses of maybe thirty summers [D correction: a bearded gent of maybe thirty summers with big rimmed glasses].

It was not until he started to eat that he really marked himself out as having been brought up by wolves, tearing at his meat and making dog-like snuffling noises.

Sid went to a German couple nearby, the only other people who were ever seated in this zone, who were also unable to avoid seeing the display, to ask if they knew Werner Herzog’s film of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser – and to Sid’s delight they did and recognised the behaviour.

This German youth claimed to have been brought up in solitary confinement in a darkened cell. At 16-ish he was found wandering in Nuremberg where the town put him in the care of a teacher. Several people looked after Hauser. In the end the most likely answer to the riddle is that he was a scam artist looking for the easiest life he could contrive for himself. (Pause for Sid’s self examination.) The film may have been more nuanced and sympathetic.

Sid and Doris finally up sticks and move table – without seeking permission from the FC – from the zone of mystery to the main part of the dining room, a space with ambiance, cheese, a sympathetic wine waiter and a piano player, though he is only hired through to 9pm.

So ends another day at the resort of Princesses. And we never saw an earwig.