This is a series of articles covering our trip around the Canary Islands on the Thomson Celebration cruise ship. Once more meeting up with our friends, Tomas and Maris who sing as 2 Intense onboard the ship, we will be taking it easy on this trip, with far more independent trips ashore than excursions.
Click each of the photos below to view the associated articles and photographs.
Well, farewell hopefully just until the next time! It's Friday 10 April 2014 and we have to be out of the cabins by 8:00am so that the crew have a chance to get them back to pristine order in time for today's embarking passengers.
Last night we had our final night in the Horizons Bar with Tomas and Maris. We have become good friends over the years since we first met them. I hope we get to meet up again.
We are out of the cabin a bit early and head up to the Lido Deck for a first mug of coffee before breakfast. It's not properly light yet and we seem to be pretty much the only ones out and about on the deck. The port lights of Tenerife's Santa Cruz are still burning, though it won't be long before they sky grows light enough for them to be turned out.
Behind our ship the Delphin is already disembarking passengers into a waiting coach and containers of provisions wait to be unloaded. A Fred Olsen Express catamaran ferry glides slowly into her berth.
We finish our coffee and head down to Deck 4 to the Meridian Restaurant for breakfast. Then before long it is time to head off the ship to find our luggage for the coach journey to the airport.
It's fully daylight by the time we leave the ship. We find it has been nosed in up to the end of the dock and this gives me the opportunity to take a photo of the Thomson Celebration as it would be seen by the hapless occupants of a soon-to-be-destroyed row boat...
One of our suitcases is patterned so as to be immediately found. Miss Franny takes a seat so as to better direct me on my search for the other... The trip back to Blighty is uneventful and on time and a long and happy (I hope!) retirement looms before me. Our next cruise will be on Thomson Majesty in a few months and we are planning a short break in South Devon once the English weather turns a bit warmer.
Thursday 10 April 2014. The last day of our cruise around the Canaries is a day on Lanzarote. We awake in the port of Arrecife and after breakfast we bounce down the gangway and onto a coach as we have an excursion booked.
This will be a morning tour and sets off with a trip to a shop... Just about every sort of souvenir you can think of and of course this includes fridge magnets. There's a free "glass of wine" that's a small plastic beaker with an eighth of an inch of liquid in it. At 9:30 in the morning it's still more wine than I want to drink...
The first real attraction is at the Mirador del Rio with a viewpoint that looks across the Straits of Rio to a small island, La Graciosa, on which an incident occurred that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's book Treasure Island.
The fall of the cliff face is spectacular, plunging down to the sea in a sweep of barren rock. The viewpoint itself is fairly spectacular as well, being burrowed into the cliff face.
Designed by the artist Cesar Manrique, it is a delight, with a whitewashed interior with almost no sharp edges anywhere and a feeling of light, space and peace about the place. No mean feat when several coach loads of eager tourists turn up at once...
Little artifact collections decorate the place. Stones, plants, earthenware pots. It's just a touch misty which makes the view across the straits a little subdued. Never mind, we're being herded back to the coach for the ride to our next stop.
This turns out to be an aloe vera plantation. That's not an aloe vera plant above, it's a cactus with a flower, the desert rose, about to blossom. This was one of those stops that seemed to be a half-desperate "please spend money here". There was an extremely boring talk about aloe vera. It may well be someone's idea of heaven to travel to far-flung places and learn about household products, but sadly it left me cold... Aloe vera is edible apparently and after using a huge knife to strip and divide small bars of the leaves for us to nibble on, the company owner and living partner of our coach guide passed them round. It was a bit like nibbling a small bar of hotel soap, though with a nastier aftertaste... and... spit!
Final stop is at Jameos del Agua, another natural feature enhanced by the skill and artistry of Cesar Manrique. In this case it's a tunnel formed by a lava flow that at this point blew out and formed a hole which we descend by way of steps.
We let the rest of the tour go ahead and stop for a drink in the bar. Before us is a short length of the lava tunnel which now holds a pond in which resides a species of small white blind crab, unique to this site. They like deeper water, so it's lucky the water in the pool is crystal clear. Even so, they are so far beneath the surface they could be white blobs of paint most of the time until all of a sudden you see through a relatively ripple-free bit of water and make out just for a second that they are actually crabs! Being blind, they don't wave back or react in anyway to the curious tourist. They just huddle together saying in crab talk, "I feel like I'm being watched..." "Watched? What's that?"
Drink finished, we make our way through the tunnel and come out to climb out the other side where we arrive in a landscaped garden complete with a blue pool. A choice of steps lead up from this second hole in the tunnel up to a terrace and shop.
Snatched from the coach window as we drove back into Arrecife, this is the wreck of the Telamon, which started life in the UK in 1954 as the Temple Hall and was wrecked here in 1981, proving to be beyond salvage.
Wednesday 9th April 2014. 4:00am. Around two hours after we got to bed. The Thomson Celebration is on her way to the port of Agadir in Morocco. We have spent a day at sea and spent the night in the Horizons bar with Tomas and Maris providing the entertainment. After they finished we started nattering for a while and so it was a late night.
Now it's four o'clock in the morning. I know this because some huge monster just surfaced and roared at us! There it goes again!!! No... wait... and again... no it's the ship's hooter! It's pitch dark. I get out of bed and inch a curtain aside. The ship's lights show a blank wall of yellowy grey through the window. We've run into fog! A ship's hooter is not a quiet thing and - as ships' hooters go - that of the Thomson Celebration is an outstanding example! It goes off once a minute for several seconds. This lasts perhaps half an hour (or it might just have seemed like that...)
Once it stopped we managed to get back to sleep for a good ten minutes until it started again...
Again it didn't last all that long and we woke up refreshed and ... well we woke up... to find that Agadir was a bit grey and murky that morning! We weren't planning on leaving the ship anyway. I have an aversion to shopkeepers dragging me bodily into their shops and a finger in the eye often offends. Safer to stay on board. Once when we were here one shopkeeper told me I had a nice smile. For all their love of bartering he didn't seem inclined to want to enter into negotiations for me to produce it again...
So we spent the day reading and eating. I did consider running up to the gym to laugh at the people in there, but it seemed like too much effort. At lunchtime we looked through the restaurant window and saw the coast at the side of the ship quite clearly. But once back up on Deck 8 it was still foggy! There'll be more to write about tomorrow...!
Tuesday 8 April 2014. Thomson Celebration spent a day at sea as we sailed from Madeira to Agadir on the coast of Morocco. We were making good use of our balcony and, having missed out on our previous dolphin and whale sighting, I had hung the camera strap over my chair with the telephoto lens attached so I could grab it in an instant.
Staring at the sea for hours is pretty boring after the first 20 minutes of anticipation wears off. So I was reading (or dozing) when I became aware that a small crowd were gathering and pointing on the deck above me.
I peered out to where they were pointing and saw in the distance a bit of disturbance on the surface. Dolphins in the wild do jump out occasionally but not to order. They do surf as a group too, coming out and diving back in unison but generally these are shallow dives without clearing the water altogether.
So most of my shots show them under the water. Also we were on Deck 9 - something like being on the 9th floor of a building, so we were a long way above them! The telephoto lens was very necessary but meant that finding the very fast-moving critters was just a touch difficult!
This was my only shot of a dolphin out of the water and this one was quite a distance from the ship. They did come quite close to the side of the ship. I suspect they like to swim and jump the troughs of the wake that ships create from cleaving through the water. But to do that they are swimming fast and difficult to follow with a long lens.
This is my best shot and just a split second after the head of the dolphin fell back into the water. So close and yet...
Monday 7 April 2014 and by the time we surface out of our bed the Thomson Celebration has arrived at Funchal and is moored in the harbour close by other cruise liners, Aida Stella and the Braemar. The crews of these had arranged a 3-way football tournament.
We have been to Madeira twice before, on the tiny ship Carousel of Sun Cruises. The first time Sahara dust turned it into a foggy place of only a few hundred yards visibility and the second time we got soaked by rain which came on as we started to walk back to the harbour from town. Today is much kinder!
Opposite the ship a large fortress, Fortaleza do Pico, occupies the hillside. In 1566 Bertrand de Montluc led a force of French corsairs in eleven ships to attack Funchal. They moored outside Funchal and attacked overland which meant that the defences of the town were unable to bring any large guns to bear as they were all sited to fire out to sea. Small pockets of resistance were dealt with easily and the city was subjected to a violent sacking for a fortnight. A community of nuns fled the town and took refuge high up in the mountains of Madeira. Their sanctuary, Curral das Freiras, is spectacular and a feature of excursions to this day. The fortress in Funchal was constructed between 50-100 years after the pirate raid.
We hadn't booked a tour for today and instead got off the ship and walked into the town. I was going a little gingerly due to still having the blister from a couple of days ago, but it behaved itself and I stopped worrying about it after today!
We found Funchal filled with street musicians, some of them quite large bands and this one featured this curious instrument with bright red plastic tubes. They looked like and probably were drainage tubes. The ends were open and the musician whacked them with a sort of paddle and startlingly it sounded just like a bass guitar!
This is the doorway of City Hall. It has some nice ironwork and leads through to a courtyard with a statue. It was just one of several pleasing buildings in the centre of the town.
Being on the side of such a steep hillside, Funchal has a few rivers flowing down from the interior to the sea. This was taken from Ponte Do Bettencourt, "ponte" meaning "bridge". The river did not look as if it warranted such a deep ravine, but in 2010 a deep depression over the Atlantic and a few other factors led to Funchal experiencing several months' worth of rain over a short period. The rivers flooded, causing damage except where they were contained as here. They washed so much material down that there is extensive building work going on now to rebuild the Promenade which was badly damaged. Much of it is being rebuilt with the material washed down by the swollen rivers!
We dropped into seats at a table and ordered a drink opposite another similar cafe that seemed to be occupying a building originally a cinema or theatre. A beggar was moving from table to table, telling some sob story. I just thrust out a hand, palm out as he approached our table and motioned him away. It worked so well I must try it again...
After a couple of hours we were ready to start moving back to the ship and instead of going back down to the Promenade we walked along the back streets for a while. This was a wide pleasant street with cafes, bars, hotels and a few shops on one side and a park on the other.
Looking down a side street I saw the panels on the side of a hotel, filled with blue ceramic tiles which showed scenes of Madeira. One was of the wicker toboggans that can be taken down the mountain, being pushed and guided by two "gondoliers" who scoot the toboggan and just hope no motorised traffic will cross their path from a side street! We did it once and it was great fun.
We were back on the Promenade walk and nearing the harbour and I was just putting one foot in front of the other, happy in my own little world when I heard a voice say "We think we know you!" I came out of my daydream to find Tomas and Maris smiling at us. We laughed and chatted and Tomas took this selfie of the four of us. I put my camera on the wall and used the self-timer and managed to chop off the top of our heads... I'm sure Tomas won't mind me using his photo!
Back on the ship, later that afternoon we watched the replica of Christopher Columbus's ship Santa Maria return with her cargo of tourists who had gone out for a spot of dolphin watching, swimming and deck swabbing. They must have been friendly as the fortress guns remained silent. Next time, we'll have a look at a few dolphins ourselves!
Oh and our crew lost the football tournament...
Strains of Madonna flit through my head. It's Sunday 6 April 2014 and we have arrived at La Isla Bonita or La Palma as it's more properly known.
The Thomson Celebration moors up in the port of Santa Cruz de La Palma and we have an early breakfast as we are taking an excursion tour today.
Our first stop is at the Caldera de Taburiente National Park. The Caldera is a massive crater. Whilst it looks volcanic - and probably is - the crater was actually formed by natural erosion not a mighty cataclysm. It is huge though - 10 kilometres across and, at its highest point, almost 2.5 kilometres from the peak to the floor.
It is home to some pretty tame ravens as seen in our photo above. A few more photos are called for...
We set off as a group walking around to a viewpoint. They set off at a pace though and I found I was starting to feel the old angina making its presence felt after a bit, so we stopped and started back at a more leisurely pace. In fact the pace had been too much to actually admire the view - the ground was rocky and the drop at the side of the path extremely deep, so you tended to walk with your eyes firmly fixed as to where to place your feet! Taking it a bit easier meant you could enjoy the view a lot more.
Another couple joined us coming back. They were also struggling with the pace and she said she was quite relieved when we turned back as she didn't want to be the first.
We got back safely to the coach and had time to sit on a wall and relax a bit whilst the rest of the party came back.
Coming back we passed a sleeping giant...
Can you make him out? He's gone to sleep holding his pride and joy...
The Mirador de La Concepcion. Overlooking some brave souls who have built their houses around the crater of a volcano! It a few thousand - tens of thousands - of years since it made any fireworks, but still...
Form the viewpoint we could see Tenerife's Mt Teide floating in the haze above the sea. You could make out snow on the slopes near the summit. Once we got back on the ship I twiddled the pencil for a bit from our balcony. This wasn't a large sketch - I drew it across the top of the A5 pad so it only took a few minutes.
We also visited a small church - the Santurio Virgen de Las Nieves, the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Snows. This was quite crowded and we found out that a christening had been taking place. Just what you want in the middle of a family event - a load of camera toting tourists turning up...
Coming out of La Palma was a, or the experience of the cruise. Half an hour out of the harbour we were watching dolphins playing about in the sea from the balcony. I didn't have the camera to hand (but there will be some photos of dolphins from another day). However the real star of the show this day was a huge whale which majestically emerged from under the ship, which it had crossed beneath, and it was easily ten times the size of the dolphins, some of which were playing above it and not much more than the size of half its tail flukes. Awesome!
