Gran Canaria

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Day 6 at sea

Rest day after having 3 ports in a row, time to enjoy the ship. In the morning David Frost gave a great talk called “interviews I shall never forget”. David has interviewed the last 7 presidents of the United States and the last 7 prime ministers of the United Kingdom, plus many other interesting people, he was able to give great insights and share fascinating antidotes of some of those interviews.

The rest of the day was spent either in a deck chair reading, playing trivia, and enjoying lots of delicious meals.

Day 7 Gran Canaria - Las Palmas

As Gran Canaria is a volcanic island with deep valleys, volcanic cones and craters we decided to take a Cunard half day tour to see as much of the island as we could. Our guide gave us the history of the island including the fact that Columbus stayed at Las Palmas the capital on his way to and from discovering the New World.

First stop on the tour was the Bandama Crater, where we had views of the north and east coast and toward the mountainous centre in the west. We then travelled to a small town called Teror, the town had lots of whitewashed and red tiled houses most with carved wooden balconies.

We then visited the oldest country estate in all of the Canary Islands, La Hacienda dating back to the 1572. We were able to enjoy morning tea on the Hacienda’s lovely patio surrounded by banana plantations. The island was barren, not a lot of vegetation at all, apparently most of the trees had been chopped down in the early days and with the small amount of rain water the island produces it has not regenerated.

The tour travelled back to the port of Los Palmas in time for lunch. The afternoon we spent exploring the port on foot, when we found a lovely hotel facing the beach we decided to spend an hour over a drink while utilising the free Internet. The beach could not complete with Australia’s beaches but it was clean and had a number of bathing boxes along the shore. It seems the area is very popular with British tourists due to the consistent warm weather.

We were surprised to see a number of vintage car lining the docks to see us off, as we sailed out it was a little strange to hear instead of another ship answer the ships whistle the cars sounding their horns. It was also the first time we had seen daylight fireworks, which were lit, along the harbour to see us out.

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Comments

[Heather and Ron]

Great photos
Great photos, very picturesque and clean. Love the fashion parade Alex, you have some gorgeous gowns.