Honeymoon Report part 2: Badass camels and other animals

Yay, it’s Friday! Thank Crunchie it’s Friday! Oh no, wait… I freakin’ hate Fridays, don’t I? They may be the day of the week when all the rest of the world winds down and gets ready for a fun-filled weekend, but for me, Friday is when I sit at my computer until midnight, getting all of my Shiny posts for next week written in advance so that I have time to do all of the other work that won’t stop pouring in, no matter how much I wish it would. So Friday? You suck. And because I’m bored, here’s the second part of my honeymoon report, which I know you’ve all been dying to read…

What I Did on My Holidays by Amber McNaught

So, for the first week, what I mostly did on my holiday was feel ill with that cold I told you about way back when I first started writing about the honeymoon. The cold sucked, and it sucked bad, but it didn’t suck nearly as bad as the cold Terry got exactly one week into the holiday. Terry, you see, is fairly unusual (“yeah, we knew THAT,” I hear you say) in that, other than the small matter of having kidney failure, he doesn’t really get ill. When Terry gets “the cold”, for instance, he just gets a bit of a sniff. (Unlike, say, when I get the cold, and hover on the brink of death for a few days). This, however, was a proper cold, and thus it was that we spent the one week anniversary of our wedding huddled under piles of blankets (and also: towels), sniffing and whining, and generally feeling as ill as two very ill things.

Luckily for us, this happened on the worst day of the holiday weather-wise, so we didn’t miss much. And although the cold stopped both of us sleeping at all, ever, it didn’t stop us doing anything else. Some of the things we did:

Went to Los Hervideros:

Note: if you’re ever in Lanzarote, don’t bother going there, because it’s kind of rubbish. It’s basically a place on the coast where the sea bubbles about inside caves. It did give Terry the opportunity to start his “comedy poses” series, though…

Went to some salt flats:

I had been to these salt flats before, with my parents, back in the days when I was an obnoxious teenager and was more interested in whether I would be allowed to go out clubbing that night, and if so, what would I wear? My 17-year-old self would no doubt be appalled to learn that Terry and I, despite having no curfew, didn’t go out clubbing even once during this holiday, but then my 17-year-old self was a bit of an ass, so really, who cares what she would have thought?

Went to the Mirador del Rio…

…which is a thingy at the very tip of Lanzarote where Ceasar Manrique has built a little viewing point where you can stand and look out over the little island of La Graciosa. I had been here with my parents too, but that time I wasn’t choked with the cold, and this time I was – d’oh!:

Went to the Cesar Manrique Foundation. I had been there with my parents and… oh, blah, blah, blah. No pictures of it because Terry filmed every single second of it instead. It was good, though.

No pictures, either, of our our visit to Timanfaya – big fire mountain, rar! I totally would have taken pictures of this, but it’s kind of hard to hold the camera properly when you’re clinging onto the seat in front of you for dear life… The volcano tour, you see, involves getting on a bus and being driven over the most bendy, frightening roads I have ever been on (including that time in Crete where every hairpin bend had its own shrine to the person who had died on it). They also do some cool stuff like throwing twigs into a hole in the ground and letting them burst into flames, cooking food over the volcano, and pouring water into a small hole so that it can come bursting back out, geyser-sty;e. Most importantly of all, there was a woman whose job it was to actually hoover the mountain, which I thought was pretty cool. We had lunch in the restaurant here, which is something I didn’t do with my parents that time, probably because my dad would’ve said it was too expensive. (It actually was too expensive, but it still rocked).

Went on a camel ride

Note: never try to touch a camel. Only stupid people do that.

As well as being lots of fun, this was mostly notable for the fact that the camel behind us was a total badass who never stopped making weird, threatening noises at us the whole time. He didn’t have anyone on him (presumably because he was too kerrazy), and also had a full mouth protector thing, to stop him spitting (or maybe because he was playing ice hockey later that night, who knows?). Terry and I christened him “Mad Boy”. Here he is:

We also went horse-riding, but took no pictures of that because, well, we were on horses at the time. First of all they put me on a pretty little chestnut pony, but then I let slip that I can actually ride, so they took away the pony and brought me out the meanest, fiercest horse in the stable. Yay for that badass horse! His name was Igloo (which was actually pretty cool because our business is called Hot Igloo), and the stable girl gave me lots of dire warnings about him before we left.

“Now, Igloo here, he likes to kick. And also bite,” she said, seriously. “And he hates other horses. In fact, one time? He kicked off another horses leg. So don’t let him go anywhere near the rest of them, OK?” She seriously said that about the kicked-off leg thing, which actually? Freaked me out a bit. “Oh, and Terry’s horse?” she called as we filed out of the yard. “He hates horses, too. Have a nice ride!”

I actually did manage to have a nice ride despite the heart-stopping fear anytime another horse came near me. And Igloo was impeccably behaved, which either means that they were totally lying to me, or I am one skilled horsewoman, seriously. So, lots of material for my next pony story, anyway.

So, I think that about wraps up the first five or so days of the honeymoon  (Yes! There is more of this to go! You lucky, lucky people!) except for one more thing that I did quite a lot of:

I shopped.