18 & 19 Oct A day at sea took us to the Canary Islands the first up being Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Arriving in the morning we disembarked and decided to walk in an opposite direction to the masses. We wandered about and ended up having coffee and tapas in a small bar being served by a local surfer who is married to a Venezualan. Well that gave us a lot to talk about, Marcus knew of NZ and had a friend living in an unknown place there, my brothers and nephews are surfers and of course we have travelled in Venesuela. He kindly allowed us to hotspot to his phone and catch up on events. Each time we are off the ship our first thought is to find a free internet connection, usually there is one at the wharf or in the town but sometimes we have no luck or as when we are on a tour, no time.
Walking further on we found a tramline an caught a tram going across the city up over the hills to a place called La Trinidad. We wandered about there enjoying being right out of the tourist zone. We had been found a store over 3 crowded small levels selling anything you may want in a home and got ourselves a couple of drink bottles. On the ship the buffet has juices available only in the mornings so now we can fill a bottle up to tide us through the days. Feeling hungry we sought out a eatery (Kent has good skills at this) and ended up in one in a back street where the staff didn't speak english at all. With it all bringing back happy memories of buying pizza in a country village in Italy years ago we ordered by hand signal, picture pointing, some known Spanish and French words and ended up with a yummy lunch and much laughter and happiness between all of us.
The tram back took us all the way to the dock, buffet dinner and a show then bed and ready for Lanzarote tomorrow.
20 Oct The wharf where we docked at Lanzarote is designated as part of the main road, it's a long road. There are quite a few on board who like us mostly get off the ship and walk into town or find ways to get there other than the expensive offerings by MSC or taxis etc waiting outside the ship. We walked to the end of the wharf and others off the ship were milling about at the round-about there trying to figure out what the next step was. I went into an eatery on the corner and asked the waiter who directed us to the bus stop which was not obvious and said a bus would be along soon. We headed across the busy double lane road and waited with a few other couples one of whom were wearing HD teeshirts so we of course had to chat. When the bus finally came all the others milling about on the other side of the round-about rushed over to get on too lol. The bus took us a couple of kilometers up the road and we got off at a local mall.
Lanzarote is a very barren dark earthed island with little to no vegetation, we have no idea why anyone would want to live here or even visit sadly. Needing a break from rushing about we chose to sit on the comfy seats at the mall and use the free internet access, Kent is posting a few pics and blurbs about our trip. Next was to explore the whole mall and find a place to eat. We decided upon an eatery that specialised in Iberian Ham (look it up) it was cut for us by our table in a full performance, very thinly, very carefully and displayed beautifully, a very cool experience. And that was it, we ran out of time so back to wait for the local bus... and wait... didn't show... got a bit worried as didn't want the ship to leave without us!
Finally the bus came but with lots trying to crowd on but we've had training lol. Dropped at the long road/wharf and hared it up there at a fast trot. There was another cruise ship docked in front of ours and we assumed it had the same leaving time when we saw a long line of people waiting. Thinking the long line was for the other ship we raced on past it planning to just carry on to the Divina, however what we didn't realise was that the line was for security and everyone from both ships was being checked through this small office. As we pounded past at a pace a woman official came up beside Kent said we'll get a person to take you through! What? Take us through what? Oh! Finally it clicked! Lucky that Kent was wearing shorts and the cripple card was being played lol, we got escorted to the front of this line and were through in a flash. We didn't need to worry about getting back on time as it took them so long to process all the others we had lots of time in the end.
23 Oct another sunbathing, book reading, friend meeting day at sea and we passed back through the Gibraltar Straits again in the night.
