Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands – Apr 19

Retired Nomads - Part 3 https://retirednomadspart3.blogspot.com/

Well, it seems I have filled up another blog. I no longer can post photos, so I have started a Retired Nomads - Part 3. I will leave the last 3 posts here on this one, but all photos are now on the new one on the duplicate posts. 

Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands – Apr 19

Day 8 with no voice - very little coming out.

I had a private tour set up here, but it fell through when the guide quit responding and he fell off the guides list in ToursByLocals. I tried emailing lots of people to find a guide here to no avail. The La Palma Taxi only works out of a resort on the other side of the island, and they said you’d need to take a taxi to get to us and then we could give you a tour. Looking at TripAdvisor etc., it wasn’t clear if we could just grab a cab near the port for a tour. One source said if you find one, they probably won’t speak English, which would have been fine for us, but not if we had anyone else with us. Long story short, I gave up and booked a Princess tour. I say we need to take a big bus tour on each WC just to remind ourselves why we set up small private tours. So much wasted time and for some reason fellow passengers feel like it’s OK to tell other people what to do.

I think in the future we will take our chances even if we don’t do anything. It really is a painful experience to tour with 45 plus people. We have overheard a few people say they found taxi's so good to know.

So, we herd onto the bus and get seats. Our guide was Valentina, and the driver was David. Valentina talked non-stop. She was very nice and informative, but sometimes you just want some quiet. The tour really was a poorly planned use of our time. (but that is often the style of Princess tours since they have such a wide variety of mobility issues to deal with)

It is a beautiful green island with deep valleys and tall mountains. Ocean views and countryside were jaw-dropping. Honestly, I preferred Lanzarote with all the variety and just different sites there. This island just didn’t have the same charm. Maybe I’d felt differently had we been on a small group tour where you get to see more. (not that all private tours go smoothly either if you have a crappy guide)

We had a photo op at Mirador de San Bartolome’.

Our next stop was at Los Tilos Forest and were only given 30 minutes there to get out of the large bus one at a time and then take the walk to the waterfall and then visit the visitor’s center and use the bathroom. It took 30 minutes to get to the waterfall and back. 

Then, we visited a small town that wasn’t on our schedule. We visited San Andres’ for The Church of San Andrés Apóstol which the guide said she has never seen open. She talked for about 15 minutes on banana growing. We had 30 minutes here?

Once on the bus a lady had a printout of the tour and the guide said it was different from the itinerary she was given. Our next stop was to be Charco Azul Nature Pools, but the guide said now there wouldn’t be enough time. (maybe skip the town where the church is never open?)

Santuario de la Virgen de las Nieves was our next stop, and we had 45 minutes in this small place. The small church was beautiful, but really nothing else was there. One small coffee bar and a gift shop that sold alcohol and a few items. A larger shop that only sold church items.

Now, we are headed to lunch that is included in the cost of the tour. Dorada Especial Restaurante el Halcon Parrilla – Pizzeria. It was tasty food, just nothing special. Bread & cheese was served with a yummy sauce. Then a chicken noodle soup. The main was grilled chicken and a pork chop, potatoes and a salad. A locally grown banana was dessert. Wine was included.

Then we reboard the bus for the 45 minute ride to Volcano San Antonio. I think we had 35 - 45 minutes here and there are 2 viewpoints (slightly long walk for many of the folks on the tour) and then she says to follow her, and she brings out a map and uses our time to show us where we have been throughout the day. She just kept talking and we and a few others broke away so we could go see the landscape and make both of the walks. No time for the visitor’s center and we are back on the bus where we waited another 15 to 20 minutes for the slower people that she wanted to make sure got to both viewpoints.

Then, the 45-minute ride back to the port. Our last stop was to be Escuela de Artesania, a handicraft workshop where we had hoped to buy something hand-made or unusual. That, however, was not on the itinerary that our guide had. She knew people were “upset” over 2 of the not included stops and kept stressing that there was a really big gift shop at the terminal at the port. She had to drop us at the ship and then we had to walk back to get to it. Found my token magnet and spent off the rest of our euros on chocolates. Meh.

We had dinner at the buffet and the Show was Vocal Voice Impersonator Travis Turpin. He was OK.

Now, for 7 sea days before we return to Ft. Lauderdale for the end of our 111-day adventure.

We got to set our clocks back 1 hour tonight for that extra hour of sleep. We will have several more on the journey back, so we get back on Florida time.

Photos will follow and I probably won't post again until we get home. Nothing all that exciting about our sea days and we will be packing. I will do a last post of our impressions of this voyage.  

I'm only to the start of India with organizing photos, so I will have a lot to work on when we get home.

La Palma, Canary Islands https://photos.app.goo.gl/hcFr1rwPaDRUBqnS7

Birds seen:

Chiffchaff - NEW

Common Raven

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Eurasian Kestrel

Island Canary - NEW

Plain Swift - NEW

Red-billed Chough - NEW