The stairs climbed to a level where I could see, outside the tube, gardens and a wide valley sloping down to a blue bay and a white village. Up more stairs the tube reached the surface and the view repeated what I had seen before, now with a wider vista and ocean on two sides. Echoes and reflections. And everything in dynamic balance. I wonder whether the balance can survive success.
Tourists throw coins into the dark pool, where signs explain that metal endangers the blind crabs.
And though Lanzarote still has hideaways, preserved by poor or nonexistent roads and high property values, the thousands who visited in the 1970s are now millions. Indeed, in 1996 arriving tourists outnumbered the residents by twenty to one. It was at one of these that Manrique was killed, in a crash. Manrique included, of course, but especially Impressionists in love with color. Not restraint but excess is the watchword here.