Lanzaroti 4.

Today it’s a trip to Timifia National (Slag) Park with its geology only slightly older than me. The landscape is so different to anything I’ve seen comparisons come from strange places. From a distance it looks like a giant freshly ploughed field but close up it’s a mangled, burnt and crumbled chocolate cake of solid rock often caught for eternity in mid explosion, or melted ice cream or furry sided play-dough extrusions amongst splurges of tandoori coloured custard. Nothing comes close to what it actually is. The road, a single track of svelte tarmac, meanders through this inhospitable environment like a lunar scenic railway. A simple fall onto it would incapacitate one in lacerations leaving one’s body to mull over the experience for a hundred years. We avoided the camel ride assuming the motion wouldn’t sit well with the hangover. Strange beasts, camels, natural born poker players. Their teeth splay out like the bones of an exploded corset, their legs fold like scissor jacks and their stare sees nirvana in the distance. Nothing in that vacant gaze or constant tobacco chewing would give away a winning hand. And even on the rare occasions you did win they’d cover your face with spittoon soup and lope off with your winnings. No, sitting in with a table of camels on a Saturday night would leave one penniless and equally devoid of self-worth. And fresh from visiting earth’s jagged disinterest for the human race we hear of Japan’s earthquake, ants under a stampede of buffaloes. We receive revolving video clips of visual interest, morsels of misery and hardship. I reflect churlishly that I have an unpleasant pain in my neck. Two things strike me: the power of water and why is every vehicle in Japan white? How do you know which one is yours? Not that that’s now a relevant question. There’s no other way of saying it, and I’m not proud of it, but sitting watching other people’s suffering from your four star hotel bed before the all you can eat, half board late booking discount dinner is entertaining. Time enough for concern when it happens to me.