April 3rd, 2023 Day 90 of 128

Arrecife, Canary Islands, Spain

Good morning all. Today we are visiting our second of the Canary Islands of this cruise. Megan and I were up early this morning. Thee was a majestic sunrise this morning and I am so blessed that I got a great photos of it. Sunrises and sunsets are even that much more beautiful when you are at sea. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the Lido market and then headed the Rolling Stone lounge to meet our 8:30 excursion group with Cruise Specialists. They had three buses in our group today all going to the same places, but slightly staggered. We left the port first so we got to take the lead. We received a very educational talk today as we drove across the island to our first stop. We learned that there are 8 main islands that make up the Canary islands and five smaller uninhabitanted ones. The smallest of the inhabited islands only has 700 residence. Tenerife is the largest and the island we visited yesterday. This island measures only 43 miles long by 12 miles wide. We learned that this island is 25% covered in lava fields. We drove across the island to the Timanfaya National Park first. Here there are over 20 inactive volcanoes and 35 craters. The most uniques novelty here is that there is still many geothermic anomalies occurring. In fact it is one of only 302 Unesco Biosphere Reserves in the world. Only 30 cm below the surface we were given stones to hold that were about 175 degrees. 10 meters down, the temperature measures about 662 degrees. They demonstrated the heat by throwing some straw into the pit and a short time later it bursts into flames. Lastly, a ranger poured a bucket of water into one of the flumes and a short time later a huge geyser of steam burst up from the earth. It was very cool to see. There is a restaurant on site here called El Diablo, The Devil, and there is a pit where they are using the geothermal heat to actually cook the food here. We re-boarded the bus and took a tour through the National Park where we got to see the lava flow “rivers”, caves and craters all created by the lava flow and stalagmites and stalactites. The landscape looked like being on the moon. Very other worldly. There were some narrow winding roads and some sketchy hairpin turns and our bus driver was phenomenal. As we left the park we saw the queue of cars waiting to get into the park. We arrived about 20 minutes before opening and as we left we were told that the people waiting to get in were now in for about a 2.5 hour wait. So I encourage you to arrive early. We got to see an area where you could have taken a camel ride but that was not included in our excursion for the day. We had the opportunity to ride camels on the beach outside of Cabo a couple of years ago and that would be hard to top. From there we drove through some agricultural lands on our way to a winery. There is no well or ground water on the island. So they use the volcanic ash that was left here from the eruptions to attract the moisture in the air. The plants are planted down into hole so the roots reach the ground soil and stone walls are built to protect the plants from the trade winds. The ash attracts and holds the moisture and it in turn waters the plant. A wonderful solution to a major problem here on the island and a definite nod to human ingenuity. We did get to stop and sample one wine and I did purchase one bottle, which sadly had a fate worse than death…as I boarded the ship today I dropped the bottle at the gangway and it shattered. Not my finest moment and a sad ending to my bottle of wine. Our last stop was the geographical center of the island where a statue and a replica of a town honors the farmworkers who fought through the absolute adverse conditions this island has to provide life for the community here. It was a beautiful memorial and a lovely way to show the determination of the human spirit. A lot of this island has been built and designed around the artistic design and specifications of César Manrique. They buildings on the island are predominantly white, very reminiscent of Greece, and they are only allowed to paint their doors, green, blue of brown. There are also no buildings on the island over three stories except for one 17 story hotel in the downtown area. No building is allowed to take away the view of the island from another. We returned back to the ship and the pier by around 1:00pm. We had a chance to grab some lunch at the lido and ran into Gail and Marty and we had a nice chat about our days and each of our adventures. Then we headed home so I could write this for you all and we could relax. We are both pretty tired today. Must be the sun, the fresh air and the time change. We set the clocks back again this evening an hour making us back to the seven hour time difference to California. We went to the dining room for dinner tonight at our normal 5:00pm dining time. I had my favorite, Peruvian Chicken!! Since we had lunch we weren’t very hungry this evening. After dinner I headed to the Salon for a hair appointment and Megan hung out with me for about an hour and then went and played cards with Gail and Marty. I had my roots tricked back into being brown, not ready to go gray gracefully, had some highlights added and took about 4 more inches off. I officially have all my hair the same length. It was a journey letting my bangs grow out over the last couple of years and I intend on growing it back out now that it is all the same length. Photos to come later. My appointment didn’t end till about 9:30pm so when I got home all we did was crawl into bed and crash out. We had a delay in departing from the port this evening, about three hours later, and our arrival tomorrow has now been delayed but we don’t yet know by how much. They will let us know in the morning. Now it is time to sleep. We are at sea and will wake up tomorrow in Morocco. Excited to visit some Souks!! Spice shopping here we come. Love and hugs, enjoy all the photos from today. There are several again, but I want to give you a good sampling of what we saw and did. Want you to feel like you are here with us on our journey. Hugs!!