Finding Our Land Legs!

Wednesday 4 April

Sure enough, the boat was stationary when we roused this morning – no engines and no gentle rocking – we had arrived at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. When we looked over the balcony, hoards were already disembarking and making their way to waiting coaches and taxis waiting on the pier to venture up Mount Teide, or visit the botanical gardens and pyramids. It was 08.30. The sun had only just risen and the sky still had some grey night clouds floating over a deep turquoise sea, and the flags along the quayside were flapping vigorously in the breeze.

After breakfast, we tried to use the computer, but just as we had logged on the system went down. The staff in the computer centre had explained before they left to go ashore that this sometimes happened at ports. There was nothing to do, but to wait until we were at sea again later today.

We decided to take a stroll into the town – there was a promise of more activity here than at Cape Verde (one of the ad lib jokes at last night’s show had been that if you were told you only had three days to live, go to Cape Verde, as at least it will seem like a long time – a lot of the audience clapped and cheered in agreement!). The skies now were completely blue and the sun shining very warmly as we stepped on to land for the first time in ten days. It seemed strange to walk up the road, without steadying yourself against the rock of the boat. Ten minutes later we were wandering along the esplanade, where major alterations were taking place to rebuild the gardens and gateways that had once graced this area in the 1870’s – drills were pounding the earth, brickies were climbing small towers to build what looked like ornamental arches, while others were securing netting around the whole area to keep the public out. And there was a lot of “public” in town today – holiday-makers brought in by local coaches and ferried from the other islands, as well as our cruise ship. We wandered up and down the main streets, window shopping – still no room in our cases for purchases – and met several of our traveling companions – some engaged in drinking and eating – how? Alan had an armful of white gladioli and Canterbury bell blooms to replace the Birds of Paradise flowers he had purchased in Rio, sadly now dying. We found the post office, and purchased postcards and stamps to send home to the grandchildren – these will be almost the last, with only Barcelona to go!!!! – a mere 1239 nautical miles away - which is very hard to contemplate. After a couple of hours we made our way back to ship, and lunch.

We sat on our balcony watching the odd ship passing on the horizon, container ships putting to sea, and a flotilla of yachts off the end of the bay, small white triangles on the water, seemingly in a race, as about thirty boats, all in line, followed each other on a circular course. But as the sun moved round to leave us in the cooling shade, we retreated inside. I caught up on yesterday’s blog, while Colin was “galloping” through his latest book. The ship turned through 180 degrees to make its way out of the harbour at 16.00, the sun still shining brightly, but the breeze feeling distinctly cold. One of the odd factors about cruising from the South America to Europe, is that daylight began about 05.00 when we left Rio, and darkness fell by 18.30, on the Equator daylight was a straight twelve hours from 06.00 to 18.00, now nearing 30 degrees North, daylight starts later at 08.00 and sunset is around 20.30 – it’s still twilight when we go to dinner, with the last rays of the sun reflecting pinkly on any clouds in the sky. Because of it being a ‘port’ day, there was no trivia quiz today, so we went along to a presentation about other Oceania voyages. I found this very disappointing – Rob spoke volumes about the hundreds of variations of Mediterranean cruises they have on offer - including a couple that are already on their way! - some cruises lasting twenty eight days, with twenty five port calls, to an audience that had mostly chosen this cruise because of the large proportion of ‘sea’ days, and who enjoyed the activities on the ship and didn’t want to engage in lots of sight-seeing. But as he told us, information is always available on the website.

As always, one activity leads to another, this time a concert by Katy Lee, one of the entertainers singing old jazz favourites such as from the Ella Fitzgerald / Billie Holliday repertoires, in the more intimate Horizons venue. Forty five minutes passed very pleasantly, sipping cocktails and watching the sea roll by. On our way to change for dinner, we stopped off at the computer centre, and checked emails, etc. We managed to connect and log off successfully this time, and learned that we still had over twenty minutes left on our package – time to post a few more blogs before we disembark.

Dinner tonight was another visit to Toscana – two nights running – but this is likely to be our last, as obviously the Polo Grill and this restaurant will be busy for the last few nights at sea – we have a booking in the Polo Grill for the last night on Saturday when, apparently, those continuing on the cruise to Athens are likely to go into Barcelona to eat. I decided to choose my favourite dishes from Toscana – Caesar salad and the lobster with spicy tomato sauce and linguine – tonight it was especially hot and zingy. Colin also chose Caesar salad, but followed it with the “pasta of the day” dish – another concoction including Italian sausage, but this time with penne. Both meals were very good and the service exemplary. It is going to be very hard to get back to thinking about what to eat, shopping, cooking and washing up for an evening meal when we get home.

Tonight’s cabaret was an extravaganza by the staff of the ship – including the entertainment team and Des and Cherry, the illusionist duo, but also some of the waiters, cleaners and, surprise, surprise, Mark, the hairdresser from the Philippines – he sang both parts of a dueted love song, singing both high and low notes, to finish the show – made you wonder just how much his high pitched, slightly feminine speech was an act, as he reached some very deep tones. On our way back to our cabin at the end of the show, we stopped to watch a couple of the tables in the casino – both playing “black jack’ at this time. At one table the contestants were losing badly, but on the other they seemed to be on a winning streak. We left them to it, and made our way to bed, grateful that we didn’t have to lose another hour tonight. Once in bed we noticed the phone was flashing with a message – something about exceeding our minutes on the computer time – strange as we had seen we still had twenty plus minutes a few hours earlier, and the message had said we had logged off correctly. Too late now to sort it out, we will have to pay a further visit to the computer area tomorrow.