La Palma Birthday Celebrations!

Happy 21st Birthday Elliot!

Another day, another Canary Island. Today we visited La Palma, the last of our stops in the archipelago. Hurray for the great tourist information lady. We loved the straightforward responses. Should we visit the volcano? If you've been to the caldera at your other 2 stops then no, they're most interesting. Should we visit the waterfall? No it takes 2 hours to walk there and the walk is boring. Should we visit the forest? Yes it is beautiful but it is a strenuous hike and not recommended if you have elderly travellers. Right! Walking through the historic town it is! 

It was a relaxing day. The ship docked right on the edge of the town, and the historic centre was small and pretty. We enjoyed morning tea enjoying the views of the Ocean before heading back to the ship for lunch and a siesta. Most importantly, Elliot turned 21 today! The waiter accidentally gave the birthday cake to Jonah...and we had to re-sing! Never mind the fact that it was possibly the worst rendition of Happy Birthday I have ever heard in my life! The celebration was low key and probably how Elliot liked it. We ended the evening with fruit wine purchased from Turkey and looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow! 

Waking up to see La Palma bathed in the golden glow of the morning sun

Ocean promenade of La Palma

Historic houses with typical wooden balconies

Um...a bit random but ok! Hello Olaf!

The town was small but pretty

With beautiful buildings

Yes, we had to buy some to try...

Relaxing by the ocean

One day, I will learn to appreciate black sand beaches

Macca's was closed...otherwise it would have been a McDonald's birthday lunch!

We had to make do with churros on board

The lunch dessert selection for today

Oma couldn't get hold of her Indonesian wait staff early enough to organise fried noodles, so linguini would have to be a good enough substitute for long life!

Cheers to Elliot!

Tenerife

Mount Teide on the left and Santa Cruz on the right, highlighting the altitude change!

It was great to wake up to a new destination. Today we learnt that there are 7 main islands within the Canary Islands archipelago. Lanzarote yesterday is the easternmost and Tenerife today, another volcanic island, is the largest. We booked a tour of Teide National Park at the last minute through Viator due to the change in cruise lines, and spent the day with Maria. She was an  elderly lady who was ex national park employee. Her English was not the best but she managed to get through a whole heap of technical information! Most importantly she was super sweet and thoughtful. We got off the ship at leisure, walked along the LONG dock and managed to find her at the carpark meeting point where she was cleaning her car for us! 

Along the way, she talked about the fascinating geography of the island and the resulting flora. 5 microclimates from sea level to the summit of Mount Teide at 3715m! All on an island of only about 80 km long and 50km wide. As a result, the temperature ranged from a lovely 22 degrees at the port to a chilly 2 degrees at the highest point that we reached on our tour at about 2350m. The children found the climate changing a bit whacky and were bemused that it was difficult distinguishing between the skyline and the clouds when looking at the Ocean. Oma and Opa were completely focused on the fact that bananas were a major produce on the island.

Once we stopped near at the top, we were treated to picturesque viewpoints reminiscent of the surface of Mars created from the previous eruptions and lava flows. Our last stop was lunch where we had our first tapas including Canarian potatoes (excellent), calamari (ok), and Spanish ham (good). Maria then gave us a free city tour before depositing us back literally in front of the ship, after sweet talking the port security to let her drive us along the LONG dock. It was nice waving to the other passengers making the trek on foot.

Although we had a great day, it was somewhat bittersweet remembering that we were not our full intended original travelling party. We rang Nana and Grandpa to say our Christmas Greetings with some sadness.

The long dock and the passenger walkway, our guide would later drive all the way down to the gangway lol

One of the microclimates. The children stated that it reminded them of Canada and Alaska

Mount Teide in the background. The highest point we reached was a 11km hike short of the summit. Mmm no thanks

Martian

Marscape or moonscape

Apparently inspired great poses

Lava flows and stops obvious here

The posing continued. Too many to post...

There was a strange kind of beauty 

Christmas lunch!

Different kinds of volcanoes leading to interesting rock formations

Goodbye beautiful Tenerife! Thank you for a relaxing Christmas day

Lanzarote

Time to explore Lanzarote!

Today we hit land. Lanzarote, known for its year-round warm weather, beaches and volcanic landscape, will be the first of the Canary islands off the coast of West Africa that we will visit. Being administered by Spain, we had to swap our grazies for gracias. 

We were blessed with beautiful weather. Tops of 22 degrees Celsius, sunny blue skies and a cool breeze. As we were looking for our pick up for our excursion, a group of 3 people tried to steal our van transport answering to "Malcolm"! For once, having a not so common name helped...none of their names were Malcolm! Don't know where they were trying to go as we were going specifically to H2O Sports where our 2.5 hour buggy adventure would start from...

The tour was pretty simple. We visited 2 stops on buggies  - Volcan Del Cuervo and Las Grietas. The first was essentially the caldera of a volcano. Las Grietas is called ‘the cracks’ or "mini" Canyon by the locals and the rock formation is just that: a crack you can walk through. Our guide, Jose Antonio, was lovely but only spoke just enough English to explain the basics of what we were seeing. The fun was in the driving and seeing the pretty villages and rugged countryside. But it wasn't so fun at the beginning driving on the wrong side of the road at nearly 90km/hr in an unenclosed vehicle!!! My mother's fun was telling me how to drive. My daughter's fun was telling me I needed to go faster. The free facial massage was a bonus. I was loving my extra large sunglasses even more today. 

Driving was exertion enough and we decided to head back to the ship for a late lunch, some bingo and corn hole before dinner and the evening show. 

The island is clean with pretty villages

I was concentrating too hard to look at the beaches

Yes it was scary!

The volcanic landscape

We were in the caldera

The view that our fat heads covered

Las Grietas

Also known as "The Cracks"

You can just see the cars parked below

Our buggy. We had 4 in one and 3 in the other

Back on the ship for bingo

Corn hole. The form is questionable

The pianist had a weird leg movement thing going that got a bit off putting to watch after a while! The movements were extreme!