Thursday, 18 April 2024

Sailing from Isla Lanzarote, Espana, to Casablanca, Morocco

One of only two sea days on Seabourn, and the first day that the weather is cloudy and cooler--but still no rain so far. Tomorrow we visit Casablanca and on Saturday Tangier, Morocco. I have never been to Casablanca, but I spent a very pleasant (and long) day in Tangier, with a shore excursion to the mountain city of Tetuoun (on an Oceanic transatlantic cruise in April 2017). But those two ports are still to come and I am still catching up to our embarkation on Seabourn's Quest and our departure from Gran Canaria. Of course, I also have three more Canarian ports to describe before I can bask in the comfort of the present.

Sunday, 14 April 2024

Sailing from Gran Canaria to Isla La Palma, Espana

We spend our last morning in Las Palmas finishing packing and having a relaxing breakfast. We are scheduled to board ms Quest at 12:45pm and the hotel has ordered a taxi for the very quick ride to the port.  Soon after, we have deposited our carry-on stuff in our very large suite and headed to the informal Colonnade restaurant for lunch. I have promised that I will gather all the photos from and comments about this ship in a later blog. I will say now only that it was magnificently refurbished in 2019 (pre-covid), and is comfortably elegant, with very large suites and public areas.

Instead, I will move directly to our first port on the very next day.

Monday, 15 April 2024

Santa Cruz de la Palma, Espana

This smaller Canary Island is the site of the archipelago's last volcanic eruption. In November 2021 I was on my way home from my second visit to Dubai (the first was in 2019). After spending a week at Dubai's International Exposition, I flew to Rome to board a 16-day Oceanic Cruise to Miami. The ship was scheduled to stop here in Santa Cruz, but the intense smoke still spewing from the mountain made it too dangerous. The crew informed us that if we came too close, the smoke could destroy the air filtration on the ship. We were also supposed to stop in Casablanca, but that port was closed to all ships because of covid. If you wish to read more details about that trip, you may scroll down to the bottom of this page and link back to November 2021.

Today we are able to dock in Santa Cruz, looking at another "b-a" rock and a small town still shrouded in the morning mist.

We have booked a six-hour independent tour--"La Palma--Tacanda Volcanic Landscape Tour"--that will take us to the very edges of that volcanic eruption. We take a short taxi ride from the port to the center of this very small town. We arrive about 30 minutes early and spend the waiting time in a blossom- and vine-covered cafe enjoying late-morning cappuccinos. 

The bus and our local guide soon arrive. The guide narrates the tour fluently in three languages--English, Spanish, and German; she tells us that she can actually speak a total of five languages. We are soon driving up well-paved but steep and curving roads to a small hillside village with an historic church.

As the road climbs higher into the mountains, we make a brief stop at s second village, which offers a larger church and a panoramic view of the city and its black-sand beaches below.

We are heading west across the island to the very edge of the lava field where the road abruptly ends.

From here it is a short walk down a concrete pathway to a viewpoint from where the extent of the lava fields spreads to the very edges of grasslands and communities.

Large Hole Blown Out of Mt Tacande

New Vegetation Quickly Sprouts When the Lava Cools

Dead Tree Trunks Standing in the Lava Sands

I have more photos of the extent of the lava but I will save them for blogging after we return home to Tucson.

After this incredible viewpoint, we take a new highway, recently opened to replace the one buried by the volcano. We wind down from the heights to the beachside community of Playa del Puerto/Tazacorte, where we have lunch at a waterside restaurant.

We return to Santa Cruz by a different route and are conveniently dropped off right by our ship.