Off to Tenerife! I register my kiteboard with Condor. I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that, as a heavy kitesurfer, I have to pay an extra €50 for my sports luggage every time, while the poor golfers are always allowed to take their much heavier luggage for free. But today Condor is serving me a new scoop.
My kiteboard is registered with Condor before I have all my new equipment together. I estimated the weight at 15kg. Condor charges 25 euros per flight for a board bag up to 25kg. My bag is weighed: 17.3kg. For the 2.3kg “overweight” the lady at check-in charges an extra 30 euros. [Update 10.01.10: Condor has refunded…]
Kitesurfers have been degenerating more and more into the airlines’ milking pigs for years. I could have simply declared the kitebag as 25kg, yes. But the fact that you have to pay an extra 10 euros per kilo per flight even for a kiteboard weighing up to 25kg on Condor is a mean rip-off. Kiteboarding with Condor is crap. Kiters, avoid Condor!
We land at Tenerife South Airport in the afternoon. There are a lot of grumpy and grumbling fat Englishmen at the car hire drop-off point. After a short drive, we arrive at the Costa del Silencio. The name was criticised in my travel guide because it is practically completely built up. I find it very fitting. The urbanisations stand empty in the sun. Lifeless streets, no sound from the restaurants. Everything is quiet. Someone has made a big mistake. Retort city del Silencio.
I don’t have a problem with emptiness, overcrowding is much worse. Our hotel is empty too. Gleaming marble, echoing corridors and deserted tables. I expect Jack Nicholson to storm round the corner screaming with an axe any second, the atmosphere is so much like The Shining. Around midnight I’ll be looking for the lost soul in room 215…
It’s not until dinner time that I see more than two guests in a heap. The average age is around 65, almost exclusively English pensioners. A Strauss waltz is playing discreetly on continuous rotation. The butter says Irlandese and all the pubs on the estate are Irish pubs.
In the evening, a British DJ plays in the Saturday Night lounge. The senior citizens shake a leg. I whistle Thriller quietly and enjoy myself. Outside, pre-Christmas fairy lights twinkle in the palm trees. Mum said I should write nicely…
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.