The other stuff about Gran Canaria that the brochures don't cover....

OK, for the people who like a more sideways view on the universe, here are the experiences and thoughts from the last 2 weeks.

Firstly, a rant. Never, ever, ever hire a car from Orlando rent-a-car. We know that Canary Island hire cars are pretty battered by normal mainland Europe standards but there are limits. After waiting forever to get the shuttle bus to their so called "airport" location, we waited ages to be served. The man said he would upgrade us from the allocated Renault Clio to a Ford Focus as we had been there for nearly 30 minutes. This little beauty was our upgrade:

The observant will have noticed that it isn't the current model Focus. It had 62,000 Km on the clock and I'm sure it was a nice car when it left Cologne a while ago.  Made the Captain think a little - the last time he had a car with that mileage on it was in 1985 (a company car when working for Ford UK- it was a  prototype diesel under test). Sadly 62K in the hands of rental customers had taken it's toll on Ford's finest. The obvious lack of any maintenance had then done for any self respect the poor thing had left. The interior had been allergy tested according to the sticker:

Of course that was before the rental customers got to work adding a few stains:

And then the sun in Gran Canaria seemed to have upset the buttons which made things a bit of a  lottery when trying to use the radio / aircon / whatever. (We are sure it was the sun and not an aggressive cleaning fluid as the interior had obviously never been cleaned...):

The mechanical issues aren't worth listing here suffice to say it was, in used car parlance, a right shed!

Of course, it wasn't the only automotive shed that we saw. This was the shed to end all sheds:

They had removed the original van doors and replaced them with timber versions and a neat brass bolt to keep them closed:

I wonder how it gets on with the pedestrian safety tests that cars now have to undergo. Death by splinters? At least they had cut-outs around the headlights and being Spanish, I bet the horn works.

Enough about motoring. What about the people? Well, some stereotypes were fulfilled. The French could learn lots from the Germans (eg how to engineer nice cars that people want to buy) but sadly seemed to have picked up one of Germany's worst habits - reserving loungers around the pool by towel from 7am and pushing their way in front of everyone else at every opportunity. Guys, please pick another country as a role model in these areas.

For the non European readers, who have no idea about the lounger thing, Germans on holiday have a reputation for placing beach towels on loungers first and then defending their ownership of the said lounger forcefully even if they spend hours away from it. Here is what we mean sun lounger reservation . It is kind of a national joke in the UK, look at Sun lounger beer advert  to see how commercials in the UK make fun of this behaviour. Of course, as the hotel had lots of German and French guests, you can imagine the morning competition between then. Such sport.


Finally, I will never say anything bad about my previous jobs ever again. The trend of playing statues in tourist places to make money was taken to a new high (or should that be low) by this guy:

How much of the colour was put on each morning and how much came from the birds he fed during the working day we wonder. Didn't linger long enough to check it out though.