Things to do on honeymoon when you drain the water tank in your rental home and can’t wash, drink, flush the toilet or shower

So, on the last day of our honeymoon we broke the house.

For once, it wasn’t my fault. No, this particular random act of stupidity was all Terry’s, and even although Terry will probably kill me when he reads this, I’m going to tell you about it anyway because it was totally NOT MY FAULT. For once.

We actually broke the house on our last night in Lanzarote. We’d spent the afternoon at the pool, and, for reasons that still escape me, Terry decided to top up the water levels in said pool while I showered and got ready to go out for dinner. After dinner we came home and drank the rest of the bottle of champagne that was in the fridge, and then we were drunk. As skunks. It was at this point that Terry went outside and discovered that he’d left the hose he’d been using to “top up” the pool running the whole time we’d been at dinner. The pool was well and truly topped up. The water tank in the house? Was not.

Because we were drunk however (and also: stupid) we totally failed to make the connection between these two events. The slow trickle of water remaining was just enough for me to remove my makeup (because you should never go to bed without removing your makeup, kids – Amber’s top tip of the day) and flush the loo once. After that we just shrugged and went to bed, hoping that it would all magically be fixed by morning.

It was not all magically fixed by morning. In fact, there was no water AT ALL by morning. Not even a trickle. We drove down to the mall  in Puerto del Carmen to use their bathrooms:

It was a pretty expensive bathroom stop, I’ll tell ya. Then we came home to phone the owner of the house and tell him that, whoops, we broke it.

The owner of the house called a maintenance guy, who turned up thirty minutes later, by which point I was already in need of another bathroom trip, and Terry was hiding his wallet and hoping to God that the man would be able to fix the water.

The man was not able to fix the water. “There’s absolutely nothing I can do to fix this water,” said the man, before explaining that we’d drained the tank, and would now need to wait for it to refill. The problem with that? Well, it was Sunday. The water tanks in Lanzarote don’t get refilled on a Sunday. It’s like, “on the seventh day, the water tanks rested” or something. So we were now facing an entire day without water – and given that our flight didn’t leave until 11pm, we hadn’t showered since the night before and would be spending the day in the hot n’ sweaty sun, that kind of sucked.

There was only one thing to do. We had to get the hell out of the house, so we packed our suitcases as quickly as we could (which wasn’t very quickly, really, given that I had all that Zara haul to find room for) then we hit the road, Jack. We spent the day wandering aimlessly around, from public bathroom to public bathroom, and finally ended up at the beach at Playa Honda, which is where we discovered the absolute best thing to do if you ever find yourself in Lanzarote with nothing to do. So, here it is:

1. Drive to Playa Honda.

2. Park up at the part of the beach which is right next to Arrecife airport. Don’t worry, you’re not going to be sunbathing on it.

3. Walk until you see this structure:

4. These are the landing lights for the airport runway, which is now just a few metres behind you. You should be able to smell the engine fuel and see the sand whipping up a storm every time one of the planes take off. I’m not even joking.

5. Walk some more until you are standing right at the end of the landing lights structure.

6. Wait for a plane to come in.

7. Did I mention I’m terrified of flying?

8. Promise yourself that if you make it home alive, you will never, ever fly again. Airplanes are dangerous, folks, and don’t you forget it.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a short video filmed by Terry which doesn’t quite capture the sheer terror of this experience, but comes close: