Postcards from Tenerife - Twinnies and a Car Journey

Dear Reader,

In my last post, I began my experience of being with the Twinnies, AKA Dear Lady Wife and Colleague, in a foreign land. We flew, we arrived and we hired a car. At the end of the last post we had acquired a hire car and began our journey. In short, we had to get from the hire car depot to the motorway, facing in the right direction, drive for about an hour and a bit, and then follow a map scribbled on a piece of paper. Like all good pirate maps, our destination was marked with an X.

Sounds simple enough, but, we have no SatNav, we have a map which has no detail, we have in the car two of the most incompetent people in the world when it comes to navigation and me. Things didn't start well.

Our not particularly glamorous car rental garage, which is a cross between the warehouse where everyone dies in Reservoir Dogs and the dispatch area from cult 70's comedy Taxi, provided us with some instructions for our escape / car rental. "Leff, leff, leff again, straight, head to airport and then keep on going," I was reliably informed by our rental person.

Everyone dies, my Ford focus is just out of shot to the left.

Leff? Leff? Leff again? 

Having departed we go leff, leff, then leff again. In short order we are on a dirt road with vultures circling and coyotes looking eager, this is not the plan. I backtrack, eventually we return to where we started.

The Twinnies, (one in the front, one in the back), find all this highly amusing, this is like some big adventure. After all, once this little issue is solved we will be there in no time. At this point I feel like Thelma and Louises' driver.

Having tried leff, leff and leff for the second time my only choices are leff or straight on. I didn't choose this the first time as arrows make it quite clear that the only way to turn is right. Not wanting to revise the expectations of vulture dinner-time unfairly I plump for right. Shortly we are forced leff and see signs for the motorway. Could this small but obvious flaw in the instructions not have been made clear from the start? A mere thirty minutes after picking up the car we have made the one kilometre transition to the motorway.

Now, it should all be plain sailing and for a while, it is. A wrinkle occurs about forty minutes in, I am not sure what happens, but we are not on a motorway any more but find ourselves plunging into a city called Santa Cruz. Whilst pleading with the now sleepy and slightly grumpy Twinnies to look at maps and provide advice, I plunge on through the city, reasoning that we will pick up the motorway on the other side.

I have since discovered there is no motorway on the other side of Santa Cruz. There is, however an extremely long and windy mountain hugging road which leads to the middle of nowhere (Tenerife, Northern tip). This discovery took approximately forty-five minutes. Another forty-five minutes later I discover  that the extremely long and mountain hugging road looks very similar going the other way. On the upside, there is a traffic lane between me and the sea, several hundred feet below.

Below is a map with some lines drawn on it. The red line indicates where we should have gone, the blue squiggles are an artists impression of the way we actually went.

Back on track, uneventful motorway follows, we eventually reach a signpost which points to the region where our villa is located. Neither Twinny can make sense of the map. I pull off at the first exit and demand to see it. I note a number at the bottom which appears to indicate a junction number, not far from where we are. Shortly after this we arrive at our villa, a mere three and a half hours after picking up the hire car.

They say practice makes perfect. When it comes to car journeys in foreign climes with Twinnies, I can attest to the truth of this saying. The return journey to the car rental desk / warehouse took a mere one hour and seven minutes.

More soon Dear Reader 

xxx

Postcards from Tenerife - Easyjet and the Twinnies

Dear Reader,

I find myself travelling again. Regrettably, I find myself once again on my least favourite orange coloured airline. I have spoken about these chaps before here, today they have some new surprises for me.

Today we have a new part to play, yay!

First we have to get to the airport. It is an early flight, the thought of which makes me shudder. The blow has been softened a little by spending the previous night in a hotel approximately four centimetres from the check-in desk. This does not prevent us having to get up three hours before we went to sleep so we are in time for our flight.

Having awoken, early and angry, we arrive at check-in to find our dear orange friends have requisitioned an entire hall of check-in desks for us to queue in, how thoughtful. What a shame they hadn't manned any of them. Given we were queueing within fifteen minutes of check-in opening I was somewhat disappointed to be dragged out of line when it became clear we would miss our flight if we stayed in the queue.

Dragged out and checked-in, we advance through security at high-speed. At this point we are united as a group, my good self, the Dear Lady Wife and her Twinny. 

I should break at this point and explain the Twinny. Twinny is a female colleague of the Dear Lady Wife and they share enough attributes to make the word Twinny seem appropriate. A  list of shared attributes follows:

• Shopping - preferably by mail order
• Lack of organisation
• Love of wine
• Love of animals (every single one, but especially cats and donkeys)
• Ability to wail at the slightest inconvenience
• Ability to meltdown at a slightly larger inconvenience
• Inability to make decisions.

I share most of these attributes so we get on well. For the journey we require magazines, speakers and something from the chemist. I do the speakers, DLW does the magazines and the Twinny does the chemist. We vow to meet somewhere. This doesn't happen. Last call for the flight is announced. I rendezvous with DLW, but no sign of the Twinny.

We run for the gate, making it with approximately three minutes to spare. Twinny, however has not arrived. We phone, she is still in the chemist haggling over the price of some unguent. Then her name comes over the tannoy... "RUN" we say. Having finalised her transaction, along with three or four others, she deigns to run. Having stood on the transfer bus for ten minutes, we see her appear at check-in. Astonishingly, she is only second to last. United again, we advance to the plane.

There were two special moments on the plane; for once I don`t just mean take off and landing. Our orange friends had gone above and beyond the call of duty. First, we ordered food, which in itself was not special. What was special was one of the food items. It was so special I had to capture a shot of the packaging.

WTF is this?

I have never heard the words meat, festival, arctic, bread and wedge used in the same sentence before, but there they were. I attempted to imagine what combination of ingredients could encompass such a grand and wordy title, I came up short. How many ingredients are required for a meat festival? Two of them, apparently. 

This astonishing artefact was in fact a lifeless chicken, ham and cheese sandwich in pitta bread with some leaves. Hardy a festival, but definitely a wedge. Below is the item in all it's glory. You will note a bite has been taken out of it. There were no more bites to follow.

Come to the Meat Festival...

Our second special moment came when the orange flight attendant attempted to sell some of their on-board wares. During his little speech he referred to page 494 of his brochure and announced the following... "We have a number of Loreal products at excellent duty free prices, and I know we have some Loreal fans on the plane today...". "HOW?" I couldn`t stop myself from asking out loud. Do you stop them in the check-in area, on the way to the flight? Do you suck out their minds when they check-in on-line in an attempt to get their buying preferences? I didn't get a suitable answer.

Eventually, we land and collect our belongings with surprisingly little hassle. I have a piece of paper which is our hire car voucher. It says that we should pick up our car from the Orinoco desk or something similar. The desk in question does not exist. After much wandering up and down the terminal looking lost, we locate someone who explains that Orinoco have a person who occasionally appears in the airport, waving a board. The Twinnies look less than impressed. As promised, the person eventually arrives. At this point, we are escorted to a mini-van, which may, or may not, take us to the fabled hire desk. We may be kidnapped; if only I was friends with Liam Neeson.

We arrive at what can only be described as an underground garage, located some distance from the airport. The possibility of kidnap looms larger. There is a desk, of sorts. Driving licenses are perused, papers signed and we are away in a car, on the wrong side of the road with no clue as to where we are going. Sat-Nav is neither an option on the car or as a stand-alone add-on. We are given a mysterious piece of paper with lines and pictures on it and ushered on our way. Apparently this is a map, I have heard of these but didn't think people still used them.

Thus ends the first part of our little adventure.

More soon Dear Reader.

xxx