This morning we arrived at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in the
Spanish Canary Islands. This will be the
last land we touch until next week when we disembark in Fort Lauderdale.
We took a bus tour of the island, where we were amazed at
how populated the island is, with Las Palmas being a city the size of London
Ontario along with many smaller villages. Las Palmas is a very modern city,
with tall apartment towers and shopping malls.
From the top of tallest mountain you can see that the island
is very lush with lots of vegetation. It
is very different from Lanzarote. Even
though it is volcanic island, the soil is not covered in thick ash and lava
stone.
As we descended from the mountain, we drove along an
extremely curvy road. It seemed that
there switch backs every 50 meters or so and the driver pushed the bus through
them at a very fast pace.
Unfortunately
Marg’s stomach couldn’t handle it and she had to take a Gravol. Along the way our guide pointed out some cave
homes. These are caves in the hills that
are inhabited. They have false fronts on
them to make them look like actual houses.
After our descent we arrived at the market town of
Teror. The Sunday market was in progress
in the main village square. Given how
busy the traffic was, this must be a major event in the village life. Marg bought some souvenirs and a couple delicious
macaroon cookies. I walked around the
town to look at the architecture. This
African town would not be out of place in southern Europe.
We then went to Arucus, which is home to the island’s main basilica. It is a tall imposing church made of black volcanic stone. We arrived just as mass was over and we got to see the locals in their Sunday bests.
We returned to Las Palmas, where we had the guide drop us
off close to the beach. We walked to
beach where we had lunch at one the many boardwalk restaurants
On our return to the ship we could not find the shuttle bus
to the Celebrity Constellation. Our
guide had given use inaccurate directions and we couldn’t get a taxi to take us
to the dock. We started to feel panicky because if we missed the boat we would
have had to fly back to Fort Lauderdale, which is the next port of call. Luckily we found some other passengers from
the Constellation, who directed us to the buses and we got back in plenty of
time.
On the TV there was a program that showed how the captain
was plotting the course to Ft. Lauderdale.
There are two major storms in the mid Atlantic Ocean and he is setting a
course south of these storm fronts. He
had also stated how much fuel the ship had taken on. For trip across the Atlantic the boat took on
250,000 gallons of fuel and the cost was $1,000,000. We found out that the ship uses a gallon of
fuel to go 10ft.
The evening show was a very interesting Irish violinist
named Craig Haliday. He played a wide
selection of songs, from Gun & Roses, John Williams and of course
Riverdance.
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