A Week in Tenerife

The skies are leaden, there is a fine drizzle. A northerly wind, which the weatherman describes as blustery, blows a fine rain horizontally. He says, with masterful understatement, that it will feel a little chilly today. Spring seems late this year. No daffodils, to me the first sign of spring, are showing. I recently bought some daffodils, still in bud, from the supermarket for Madam. She held them at arms length and said disdainfully, ‘potential flowers, you bought me potential flowers.’ They came out this morning, pale and almost dead as soon as they flowered. It isn’t a good sign.

‘We could go somewhere warm’ says Madam.

‘Warm?’ I reply.’

‘And sunny.’

‘Sunny?’

‘Yes, warm and sunny.’

‘Warm and sunny? You should book somewhere,’ I say as I watch the rain blow against the window.

The flight to Tenerife is scheduled to take only three hours and fifty minutes. We had splashed out and paid extra for exit row seats for more leg room. Unfortunately this had placed us into a special section. I’m old enough to remember when there was a smoking section on planes. Bizarrely, this was often alternate rows. The row behind were smoking. The row in front were smoking. You were supposed to be happy that the man next to you remained smoke free. Thankfully this is a distant memory, but now we are plum in the middle of the coughing section. The woman in the row in front is coughing. The man behind is coughing. The woman next to me sound like she is in training for the Covid Olympics. She coughs almost continuously. My face mask is buried deep in my case in the overhead locker, so I sit and try not to breathe. If we don’t get ill in the next week it will be a miracle

The TUI app tells us that our bus to the hotel will be parked somewhere between bay 21 and 53. It will display the number 75. We trudge the long walk from bay 21 to 53 and then back again, dragging heavy suitcases. It is hot and we are still dressed for England weather. Sweat is dripping and my glasses are fogging. There’s no sign of bus 75. Finally we track down a TUI rep who tells us to wait over there by the G sign and the driver will take us to his minibus. The driver leads us to the far end of the airport, bay 62. There is no number on his bus.

There are four other couples on the bus and we are stopping at three hotels on the way to ours. The first three are in different areas of Las Americas. We pass a bar “The Pheasant Plucker”. Madam takes a photo. We pass the same bar again. Madam takes another photo. We go past a bar where young people in swimsuits are dancing to loud music and sloshing beer. We go through more of Las Americas for another drop off. More bars, more people holding beers. I’m becoming convinced the driver just wants to give us a tour of Las Americas as we pass The Pheasant Plucker for the third time. One of the other passengers tells us that Las Americas is grim and we haven’t even seen the worst parts.

As bad as Benidorm? I ask.

He thinks for a while and replies ‘Well… maybe not as bad as Benidorm.’

I make a mental note to visit Las Americas on the bus as soon as possible to further investigate cheap beer and scantily clad young women, purely from a sociological perspective obviously.

‘I think we have seen quite enough of Las Americas’ says Madam.

I cancel the bus plans.

We finally reach the hotel, hot, sweaty and tired. It is almost 6pm.

When we are searching for a hotel we eliminate those with recent bad reviews then I list them in order with the lowest price first, while madam lists the highest priced first. We each work down the list to find something we like, then Madam books her choice. She has chosen a five star hotel and it does seem to live up to that rating. All gleaming marble, fountains and artworks in the public areas. A bell boy brings your luggage to your room and shows you how to turn on the lights in case we are unfamiliar with the concept of electricity.

It is probably the nicest room we have ever stayed in. A massive bed with pillows to match, a balcony overlooking a lagoon surrounded by palm trees. There is a separate couch, a table with two chairs and a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall. There is a load of storage space, nine drawers and two wardrobes. Madam graciously allows me my own drawer and two coat hangers in one of the wardrobes. What is it with hotels nowadays? We have stayed in some quite expensive hotels where there isn’t a single drawer or anywhere to hang clothes. Maybe a shelf if you were lucky. Do they expect people to live out of a suitcase for a week? They should send their designers here to see how it should be done.

There are two sinks in the bathroom with a two-person bath and a rain shower. In the toilet there is a phone on the wall just above the toilet roll holder. The handset can easily be knocked of while reaching for paper.

‘Hola! Reception, how can I help you?’

‘Oh, sorry it was an accident.’

‘You had an accident in the toilet? Shall I send a cleaner?’

‘No, no, not that sort of accident, it was my elbow…’

‘Are you ok, do you need help?’

‘No, no I’m fine, I just needed the paper…’

‘Shall I send somebody with a roll? She can pass it under the door!’

‘No, really, I just need to, err, finish what I was doing. I’m hanging up the phone now. Goodbye.’

‘Ok, have a nice day!’

Neither of us have been to the Canary Islands. I’ve often thought about visiting them over the years, but work and circumstances got in the way. My parents lived in mainland Spain for twenty years so I always had free accommodation and never went anywhere else in Europe unless it was for work. Madam and I started seriously trying to plan a trip about four years ago, then health challenges, then Covid lockdowns thwarted our plans. Finally we are here.

After waiting for an age while Madam unpacks and rearranges the furniture to her satisfaction, we head into the local village of Alcalá to find some bottles of water. It is late Sunday evening and most places are closed. We finally find a tiny supermarket with cramped aisles. There are no prices on the water but I grab two large 1.5 litre bottles. I pull a twenty Euro note from my wallet thinking that should cover it or we would go thirsty. ‘Un Euro veinte’ says the cashier. He looks up at me and says, in English, ‘One Euro, twenty.’ Sixty cents a bottle. I find later that small half litre bottles are one Euro. How is it that small bottles of water are one Euro but large are only sixty cents? Are bigger plastic bottles cheaper to manufacture? It is the same in England. Do the supermarkets pay less for larger sizes or do they just charge more for smaller because they can? Maybe they could start selling two oranges for 50p or three for 40p. That would solve the cost of living crisis.

Further along the main street, there is a shop with only vending machines. Along with the usual selection of drinks and snacks there is a machine selling what used to be referred to euphemistically as ‘marital aids’. Need a dildo or a butt plug? The village has you covered. We don’t buy anything for those of you that are curious. I know who you are.

We walk back to the hotel and head down to the bar where we are charged an exorbitant €23 for two drinks. We have previously gone all inclusive in resort hotels, but they wanted £2266 extra here. I figured you could buy a lot of food and drink for that, but seeing the price of the drinks I’m not so sure. I’m temped to change to all-inclusive and drink myself to a stupor every night just to piss them off.

A young singer takes the stage and we listen for a while. He is very good but Madam is tired so we are back in our room by 10pm.

I look on the BBC News website to see if anything new is happening in the UK. In the middle of an article I see this paragraph.

“It was twilight, and Loy and his friends were jolting to a thumping bass drifting up from a space below. Down in the “Culture Courtyard”, crowds were shuffling to a grimy funk track which morphed into revved-up disco then deep house.”

I realise I am getting old as I have no idea what any of this means. I wonder if my grandparents were just as confused in the 1960’s. Maybe the BBC writer means it was fab and groovy. Feel free to explain if you understand it. I thought that getting old was all about aching joints and moving slowly in both body and mind, but my difficulty seems to be as much about struggling with changing culture. Maybe I will live long enough to see it go full circle and I can dig out my perfectly preserved flares. I’m sure Madam can take them out a couple of sizes.

Monday.

it’s 7:35 am at the end of February and I am sitting out on the balcony wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Palm fronds are waving gently in the breeze, the only sounds are birds singing, and the bubbling fountain in the lagoon below our room. A Cattle Egret walks along the edge of the water looking for a fish breakfast. The forecast for the UK is for snow flurries and the incoming ‘beast from the east’ bringing unseasonably cold weather. I consider asking how much it would cost to extend our stay, then I look up the price on the hotel’s website and decide two weeks is plenty.

The breakfast buffet is a bewildering choice of different stations, pre-made sandwiches, more fruit type than I have seen anywhere, pancakes, waffles, a pastries selection rivalling many bakeries as well as the usual hot food. It was so big I kept getting lost. I put bread in the toaster and go looking for butter and jam and never find the toaster again. The toast is probably burned to a cinder by now. The only sop to a traditional British breakfast is a tub of lukewarm baked beans. I find a coffee machine that has a button marked Descafeinado Cortado, I put a cup under the spout and press the button. A dribble of hot water is dispensed followed by a squirt of hot milk. No coffee. I sigh. There’s certainly no caffeine in that.

When we get back to the room the message light on the phone is glowing. I press all of the obvious buttons but nothing happens. I press buttons at random. Still nothing. I press every button on the phone and finally get a loud American accented voice telling me to enter my personal access code. I try several. Our room number. All zeroes. 1234. In the end I give up and hide the phone under the nightstand so I can’t see the light.

We walk into the village, there is a small port, which consists of a boat ramp and a few channel markers leading out into deeper water. The surf crashes over jagged volcanic rocks sticking above the water. Two locals are swimming. We find the central plaza, a small square with a handful of bars. Stalls are set up in the middle selling produce from local small holdings. A man sits on the edge of the stalls playing a guitar. We sit on a bench at the side of the square listening to the guitar player and watching the locals. Mostly they are sitting or watching each other. We walk past the guitar player and throw a couple of coins in his collection bag. He nods in appreciation

We look in an estate agent’s window as we leave the plaza. The prices are not as high as I thought they might be. You can get a decent small apartment for €145,000 or so. Madam immediately points out a €2 million luxury villa and tells me we could buy that. ‘I would’, I say, ‘but we can’t live here due to Brexit. We stop at the cash and carry for water and biscuits for Rufus then read in our room for a while.

We walk to a nearby restaurant for a late lunch, ‘El Rincon de la Barriga (The Corner of the Belly). The waiter asks what we would like to drink and before I can respond Madam asks ‘Do you have Sangria?’

‘Si, our own Sangria, es bueno, one litre,’ he replies in a mixture of English and Spanish.

‘We’ll take it’ says Madam before I can mention that one litre is an awful lot of Sangria for a pair of lightweights like us, and that maybe I would prefer a small beer.

Madam orders Sea Bass and says it is the best she has ever had. I have Spaghetti Vongole which isn’t bad either. The Sangria has slices of bananas as well as the normal oranges and apples. This gives it a slight banana flavour which I quite like. Madam isn’t so sure, but she picks out all of the banana slices with a spoon and eats them. As we walk back to the hotel she starts moaning that she has drunk too much, too quickly. We get to the room and she lays on the bed to rest her head and I go for a walk.

I sit by the pool and read for a while, but the sun goes behind a bank of clouds, so I walk around the resort. It’s big and confusing and I get lost. Not an unusual event for me, Madam rarely lets me go out on my own for fear of never seeing me again.

There are different areas of the hotel grounds roped off, there’s Red Level, Red Level for Families and Club Melia. all of them need a special level of stay involving more money than I care to spend. These levels enables you to lay on identical recliners in a separate area. Most of them are are empty. One of the reviews for this hotel said it was confusing what was included in their all inclusive package. They could get a drink in one bar but had to pay in another.

I walk through the main hotel plaza. There is a high end shop selling Gucci and Breitling watches. None are priced. There is a display of diamond pendants, they are marked with a carat rating starting at 0.25 up to 2 carat. Again, there are no prices. I’m sure that Madam would treat anything under three carats as disdainfully as she treated the ‘potential flowerers’ so I leave empty handed.

The sun has returned, so I stand at the edge of the resort to watch the sunset. I was hoping it would set over the sea, but the neighbouring island of La Gomera is in the way, so I watch as the sun dips behind the island. There is a picture on Instagram, complete with lens flare.

I come back to the room and Madam has had a bath and is ready for bed. It is 7pm. I bet the parties in Las Americas haven’t even started yet. I write for a while and get into bed at 9:30. Madam is snoring softly.

Tuesday

England weather 7C/45F and rain. a low of 1C/34F tonight. Tenerife 21C/70F and sunny.

Madam finally wakes up after eleven hours sleep. Who needs sleeping pills when you can have a litre of Sangria.

Breakfast. Still no descafeinado.

We catch a local bus into Los Gigantes (The giants), the closest town to Alcala. We work out a short cut to the marina from the map on our phones. We. walk down a long steep hill to find a barrier of tape and a sign saying ‘Peligro’, danger. We traipse back up the hill to the main road. Did I mention that the hill was long and steep? We eventually find our way to the marina and stop for a coffee and watch the boats rocking on their moorings. I wanted to see about whale and dolphin watching trips, but the sea was so rough they were all confined to port. There is a small beach next to the harbour and we find a shady spot and sit and watch the waves crash over the breakwater. Madam says she will pass on a boat trip. The beach, in fact all of the natural beaches, in Tenerife are made of black volcanic sand. Most of it is more like a fine grit which doesn’t make for comfortable walking. A few people are laying on the beach sunbathing. Some venture out into the surf but never stay long.

We walk back up the hill to the town. I’m sure I mentioned that it is long and steep. We stop several times in the shade to rest and buy more water in a local supermarket. We search for somewhere to eat but most places are closed. We finally find one, Alphonso’s Bar and order tapas.The waitress is Italian but speaks perfect English and complains that the Spaniards speak too quickly for her to understand them. I file that excuse away to use later. Madam has wanted to try a local specialty, Papas Arrugada con Mojo, so she orders two along with a Tortilla Espanola (think potato omelette) and some tuna croquettes.

Papas Arrugada is a dish made from small new potatoes which are cleaned, but not peeled, then boiled in salt water. After cooking, the water is removed and the potatoes are briefly left in the pot on the stove to dry off, until they become shrivelled with a fine salt crust. They are served with two sauces, one red and one green. The sauces are unique to each restaurant but usually involve chilli pepper and garlic.

The tapas are excellent but we could probably have managed with one Papas Arrugadas as the Tortilla Espanola was the size of a small car tyre.

We walk, mercifully downhill, to the bus stop to head back to the hotel. The buses are scheduled every thirteen minutes but we end up waiting 40 minutes then two turn up at once. Just like London. The first looks like standing room only but the second is less crowded and we find two seats.

In the evening we head down to the hotel bar and spend another €23 on two drinks. As the jazz quartet is warming up we realise this hotel isn’t really for us. There nothing wrong with it, the staff are efficient and polite, the room is lovely, the grounds and pools immaculate, but we just prefer a waitress to be casual, fun and flirty instead of being formal with a uniform and bow tie. There is a dress code in some of the restaurants in the evening which the hotel describes as ‘Resort Elegant’ which includes the line ‘formal dressing for women’ whatever that means. They stop short of demanding that men wear a jacket and tie, but only just. I’m sure the jazz band are talented but neither of us are enjoying the music, so we leave at 9:30 and head back to our room. I lie in bed and imagine I am listening to a classic rock cover band and drinking €1 beer in Las Americas.

Eventually I fall into a dreamless sleep.

Wednesday

England forecast is for grey cloud and a high of 7C/45F degrees. A frost tonight. Tenerife 22C/72F and sunny.

I find two more coffee machines in the breakfast area. I try all three but none have descafeinado. Spoke to a fellow guest at one machine who went off to find someone to refill the machine. The waiter does something with the back of the machine but now I can’t find any clean cups. I give up and have another orange juice.

Madam declares that today will be perfect for lounging by the pool. She has had enough of walking and hills for a while.

‘The TUI rep is in the hotel today. Do you want to see about one excursion while we are here. I think there’s a coach tour of the national park.’ I say.

‘There may be one for the cable car up the mountain!’ she replies.

I hate cable cars. The thought of being in a box suspended from a thin wire high above the ground scares me. How about this one in India last year: Cable car crash kills three or this one from Italy: Fourteen dead in cable car accident.

‘I think it will be fine.’ says Madam.

‘Statistically we are due for another one any day now’ I tell her.

We go and see the rep anyway.

‘We’ll take the one with a cable car!’ says Madam.

‘It doesn’t always run,’ says the rep, ‘high winds, snow, rain, then all you get is a coach trip to the base of the mountain. There’s another excursion that takes you up at night to see stars which is amazing.’

‘Book us on that one then.’ says Madam.

There’s another that takes you to the…’

‘Book that as well!’

‘A popular trip is…’

‘Sign us up!’

I pull her away before she can agree to anything else but we still walk away €430 poorer. Mentioning the TUI rep may have been a mistake.

We are by the pool when Madam asks ‘Did you need something to do? I’ve been married long enough to know this is code for ‘I want you to fetch me something.’

‘Do you need something my sweet? I ask.

‘Only if you aren’t busy.’

I try to think of a reason how laying on a sun-lounger could be considered busy, but fail to do so.

‘I was thinking of going for a walk anyway my sweet.’

‘You could walk by the shop and fetch some nuts… and maybe some wine.’

I walk to the cash and carry to fetch a bag of mixed nuts and a bottle of red wine. Rufus still has biscuits left.

Madam spends the rest of the day by the pool. I walk around the resort and briefly down the local promenade, before going back to the room to listen to my Spanish language tapes. Or taking a nap as Madam calls it as I usually fall asleep. Español es muy difícil.

We go into town and find a tapas restaurant. They have a special of seven tapas for €32, so we order this along with a couple of drinks. I’m not sure what some of the stuff was but it is very nice. Madam is particularly impressed with the mussels, large and plump. That was a description, not their names. I prefer not to names things I am eating. The last one is only slightly open.

‘Should I eat that?’ asks Madam

‘If in doubt, leave it’ I reply.

She prises it open and declares it fine. We walk back to our room and open the bottle of Tempranillo wine I bought earlier from the local cash and carry for €2.47.

The entertainment this evening is billed as Flamenco. Dancing, I assumed. Madam is tired so I go down on my own to see if it is worth watching. It isn’t dancing. It sounds like a sort of opera with two singers, not singing in time to each other. I’m not sure if that is deliberate or they can’t keep together. Either way, I leave after five minutes, well before the fat lady sings.

Thursday

England weather 7C/45F and showers. Tenerife 22C/72F degrees and sunny.

Madam is ill. The toilet is permanently occupied. I suspect that last mussel but she tries to tell me it’s either Norovirus or Covid. I remember hearing something about having an R, or maybe not having an R when or where you should eat mussels. Alcalá doesn’t have an R so I guess you should only eat them in places like Las Americas.

We have an excursion booked today leaving at 1:45 to visit Mount Tiede and watch the sunset, followed by a bit of stargazing. I go down to try and find the TUI rep to see if it is possible to change our excursion from today to next week. He isn’t there and a sign on the desk tells me he won’t be here until next Sunday.

I eat breakfast alone, later than normal. It is packed and chaotic, there are queues for everything. Queue up to get a glass, then another queue to get orange juice. Queue for a plate, then queue for food. In the end I just grab some pastries, the only thing without a long queue. No descafeinado. I don’t join the queue to check but I already know it’s empty.

We message TUI, which seemed to be the only way to get hold of them, in hope that we could change to a different day. We get stock responses, nothing to do with our original message. No doubt it is an AI bot. We finally got a response from what may have been a human and leave Madam’s phone number and excursion details. I’m not hopeful of getting any further messages other than wishing us a great holiday and flight home, which is their main response to anything we send.

I have given up on losing €178 when the local TUI rep calls Madam and changes our booking to next Thursday. Credos to TUI for their excellent in-person service. Not so much for their AI bot.

I spend the rest of the day on my own while Madam rests. I start to walk along the coastal path to Los Gigantes but it soon turns into a clamber over rocks, so I turn back and find a shady spot to make up stuff about Madam. I mean tell the unvarnished truth. I come back to the room to check on her from time to time and she is either asleep or alternately complaining or apologising about being ill. I assure her it isn’t her fault. It’s a tradition that she is either injured or ill on every trip.

Friday

England weather 8C/46F and cloudy. Tenerife a high of 25C/77F and partly sunny.

Madam is feeling better this morning but still a little weak. We are at breakfast at 7:30 before the crowds. Still no descafeinado.

Madam declares that she will spend the day lying by the pool until she gets her strength back. We go to the pool and she rearranges several sun beds to her satisfaction and orders me to gather up used glasses. The pool is supposed to be heated so I dip a toe in. It’s pleasantly warm. I think I packed a swimsuit but Madam may have turfed it out of the suitcase to make more room for her stuff. I will check later.

I manage thirty minutes lying by the pool before I am bored. I walk along the promenade listening to the surf crashing onto the beach. Groups of women are practicing Yoga in the morning sun. A lizard scuttles past my toes and makes me jump. There’s a narrow path that leads down to a group of volcanic rocks scattered across the beach. I expect them to be worn and rounded by the sea, but they are sharp and jagged like they are newly formed. In geological terms they are new. The island of Tenerife itself was formed by an erupting volcano about five million years ago. The volcano is currently considered ‘unstable.’ Major recorded eruptions were in 1492, 1706, 1792 and 1909. Many smaller eruptions are probably unrecorded. A number of small earthquakes were felt in 2016 just down the road from us in Adeje, leading to concerns that another eruption may be building. The most recent on the islands was in 2021 on Las Palma which lasted 85 days. Local volcanologists are monitoring carbon dioxide levels which they think might be a precursor to an eruption. Volcanoes, as any geologist will confirm, are unpredictable creatures that do what they want when they want. I may not mention these facts to Madam until we are on the plane home.

I walk a little further along the coast and stand and watch the crashing waves, lost in my own thoughts. Eventually, I stop thinking altogether and just watch and listen. My mind is empty and calm. It is only then that I start to understand the allure of Yoga by the waves.

‘I’m not eating in the town again!’ says Madam who has decided that last mussel was to blame.

That might be tricky, I thought. I mentally rehearsed ‘I can get you a sandwich and a candy bar from the gas station,’ in my best American accent and am about to say this out loud when she says ‘Why don’t we go all inclusive here?’

We are another eye watering sum poorer but, on the bright side, I can now get a bloody descafeinado from the bar and have it brought to my table, which is exactly what I do.

We had expected lunch to be the normal crowded buffet but instead, they have two a la carte restaurants. We eat at a Mexican themed restaurant with table service. In my quest to at least get some of my money’s worth I have two beers. We share a table with a lovely couple from Scotland and Madam tells them her life story. She does that a lot. She returns to the pool again and I manage to go for a walk without getting lost. I don’t go far as the heat and sun were stronger than I expected. The weather forecast says it is currently 21 degrees but in the strong sun I am wilting. Tenerife is on the same latitude as the Sahara desert or Mexico which explains a lot.

I come back to check on Madam who says ‘Did you know there’s an ice cream bar just down there?’

‘I think I did hear that.’

‘Do you need an ice cream?’

‘And it’s now included in our room?’

‘It should be, yes.’

‘I might have two then.’

And very nice they were too.

We eat at the buffet in the evening. The food is good, better than our previous experience in all inclusive resorts. As part of our package we can eat at some of the a la carte restaurants on the resort on three evenings next week which should break up buffet boredom. The evening entertainment is Latin music with two talented singers. We stay up until 11pm. I poke Madam occasionally to make sure she is still awake

Saturday

England weather 7C/45F degrees and cloudy. Tenerife 24C/75F and sunny.

Breakfast. I sneer at the coffee machine, tell it that I am receiving satisfaction elsewhere, and that it can stuff its descafeinado where the sun doesn’t shine. Not that it has any obviously.

We find two sun beds by the pool. Madam starts telling her life story to a woman on the next bed so I head to the bar for a descafeinado. A pleasant young waiter brings it to my table and even includes a small but nourishing biscuit. You don’t get that from a machine.

Madam lays by the pool and I walk to the central plaza in the village. I send Madam a picture of the tapas bar where she ate ‘The Mussel’ and asks if she needs anything. She declines. I had hoped there would be a Saturday market but it is empty apart from a teenager rollerblading figures of eight. I sit on a bench, built for one person, in the shadow of a palm tree and rest for a while. As I leave, I look in the estate agent’s window. The €2 million villa is still available.

The evening entertainment is way better than any before. It is billed as Classic Rock. Three talented singers sing numbers from Elton John, Queen, Guns N Roses, Tina Turner, Status Quo, AC/DC and others. It wasn’t just singers, it is an entire floor show with a troupe of dancers on five separate stages, or dancing through the plaza twirling fire torches. Madam posted videos on Instagram and Facebook if you want to see a snippet.

Sunday

England 6C/43F and cloudy. Tenerife 21C/69F and sunny.

Breakfast. I give the coffee machine the cold shoulder. I refuse to even talk to it. I really want to give it a kick as I walk past but I’m not going to give it the satisfaction of any attention. Madam is still feeling delicate but manages to eat a little breakfast. She says this is probably the only all inclusive holiday where she will lose weight. I suggest she write a book ‘How to lose ten pounds in a week with the mussel diet.’ I think it would sell well but she just goes pale and tells me to shut up.

W are still talking about how good the entertainment was last night. An order of magnitude better than anything we had seen at other resort hotels. We would have been happy to spend money just to see the show.

The first of our rescheduled trips is today. A trip on a catamaran in the hope of seeing pilot whales and dolphins. The chap who booked our tour, I didn’t catch his name, gave us very precise percentages for each. It was something like 85% chance of dolphins and 79% chance of seeing a whale, or maybe it was the other way round. I suspect he just made up the figures on the spot but we shall see. Either way it will be nice to spend a couple of hours at sea, sailing along the coast. Madam isn’t really well enough but she is determined not to miss this excursion.

This take us up to a week from leaving England and we are about to head to the bus stop to meet our coach, so I’m going to take a break from writing and post this.

Can I ask you a favour? Since I moved to free hosting I can’t see any visitors statistics. If you have read this far, can you leave a comment below please? Anonymous is fine. That way I know at least one person is reading this. If you would like to hear about our second week in the sunshine, let me know in the comments.