November 30 - Lanzarote Spain

Today we landed on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, which is part of Spain.  This is a volcanic island where civilization was wiped off the map when the island erupted in a ten year long series of volcanic eruptions in the late 18^th century.  Even today the volcanic ash makes up the main component of the island’s soil.

We started our tour of the island by visiting a vineyard.  The first thing we noticed was that the farmer’s field consisted of circular pits surrounded by a small rock walls to protect the pits from the prevailing winds.  In each pit, which was dug down past the volcanic ash into the soil, was planted a grapevine.

At the vineyard there was a fitness contest which involved athletes from all over the world.  Some the activities included long distance running, weight lifting and chin ups. Given the number of spectators this competition is very popular.

We then went to the base of one of the volcanoes where we took a camel ride up the mountain for about 30 minutes.  These camels have been trained very well and it was exciting to be on top of one of these ships of the desert.  We rode on a camel named Poloma.  She has reputation of being a bit of renegade with a mind of her own.  The camel behind us loved the smell of Marg’s hair as she was nuzzling up to Marg’s neck for most of the trek.  This is one of Marg’s most memorable moments of the cruise so far.

We then went into the Tinto Fire National Park, where we got a close up view of the volcanoes.  At one of the demonstration sights, the guide place some pebbles dug from just below the surface into our hands.  The pebbles were very hot.  At this site there was a geothermal oven which was used to BBQ chicken.  The pit was dug to a depth of 20m and the surface temperature was a constant 150c.

More photos from Canary Islands

At dinner tonight, Norman jokingly paid a complement to Marg by calling her Mrs Wonderful, because she enjoys everything with no complaints.  I can’t think of more accurate complement to describe her.  

Later we went to a karaoke contest.  One of the female singers had an amazing voice and she made the show.  I hope she wins the final contest later this week.