Blogs from Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain, Europe - page 5

Gran Canaria is part of the Spanish archipelago called the Canary Islands, which are to be found in the Atlantic Ocean, south-west of Spain and about 150 kilometers from Morocco. Gran Canaria has a population nudging one million, which makes it the second most populated island in the group. Gran Canaria has many different types of landscape living cheek by jowl, containing vegetation from Europe, Africa and America. You can pass through desert and tropical forest to the mountain range in the centre of the island, which peaks at just under two thousand meters and is home to some incredible canyons, in just a few hours. Consequently, you'll notice the vast temperature variations that are experienced by different parts of the island on the same day. Although Gran Canaria is well known for its micro climates, ... read more

When I was in Las Palmas, I met Enrique. He was standing over the railing, looking over at the boats in the marina, exactly where my favourite boat was docked. I went over and asked him if he knew anything about the boat. It was a very large sailboat, completely grey, and had the name UMBROS kind of rubbed out at the back. Enrique said the owner is Italian but he doesn’t know the design of the boat. Enrique said that he was 69 years old and he used to work as a German and Italian translator. He also spoke some French and English, so we spoke mainly French with bits of English and Spanish. He told me that he owned a sailboat once and on a trip to La Martinique in the Caribbean, it hit ... read more

We will be leaving dry dock early Wednesday morning. At least that is the plan. It will take a while to get the ship in the water and to check everything. Then we will “bob” our way back to Tenerife. The ship needed to be a light as possible for dry dock so it will be a rock and roll sail. We should arrive by the end of the day. We will be in Tenerife a few more weeks to finish up the work on the ship. The good news is that once we are on the water, the air conditioning will return to at least part of the ship including my cabin. There are ships from all over the world here in dry dock. And they all look different. There is the Polar Star next ... read more

The ship is on its way to Las Palmas for dry dock. That means the ship will be out of the water for a while. When the dry dock work is done, we will go back to Tenerife to finish work on the ship that does not require dry dock. It much less expensive to be in Tenerife because Mercy Ship has friends there who arrange docking, etc. at no or little cost. We are at sail now. I had to get up early to do laundry. After five years of constant use, the machines are breaking down. There are only a few left working at this point. Hopefully, that is one thing that will get repaired before we go on to Guinea. I looked about town for a Laundromat but only saw dry cleaning. While ... read more

He kept throwing me respectful glances across table at the seaside café as we all drank cañas of beer while the pink sky a lit with the last lingering rays of the Saharan sun. White hair contrasted the tightly pulled brown skin of his defined face enhancing the devious twinkle in his level, bright blue eyes. A thick Scottish accent told stories and cracked sarcastic jokes leaving me insatiably curious about the salty sea dog who had just guided us through Atlantic sea caves not far away. Getting a full story out of him took some coaxing after his being diswayed by previous and unimportant questions and topics such as, "Did you meet anyone famous in the Hamptons?" and Paris Hilton's true purpose. I understood that we needed to play on his level in order to ... read more