The travels of Viridian...: Last stop before the Atlantic

We are only 2 days away from crossing the Atlantic and things are getting very hectic. Our crew have arrived, and we are loading up the final provisions. Its all getting a bit crowded. I’ve been cooking up meals to put in our small freezer and fridge which is definitely a challenge and have now discovered the merits of tinned butter and long life everything. We are also trying to avoid packaging and plastic in particular as we will have to manage our waste without causing any ocean pollution, but that in itself is a huge challenge, as packaging tends to make things easier to stack and store.

Greg has been very busy and focussed on boat readiness, essential maintenance and safety issues as well as emergency communication. Our crew have arrived and are a sensible lot, so we should be OK.

So luckily, we have done our exploring over the last few weeks because now our focus is totally on getting safely and happily across 3,000 miles of ocean.

We have never been to the Canaries before and so it has all been a bit of a surprise. Certainly, we can see why people come here in winter and why December and January is peak season as its definitely warmer than anywhere else we have been at this time of year within easy striking distance of the UK; but we hadn’t realised how very different the islands are.

We first arrived in Lanzarote and I think its fair to say this is definitely not our favourite island. The weather wasn’t great at the back end of November and it was ridiculously windy. As the island has virtually no vegetation and has a post-apocalyptic feel due to the vulcanicity, the wind whipped up the black dust and deposited it everywhere. Wading through the stuff was hard work; so we could understand why it was used as the training venue for astronauts preparing for the lunar landing

The Lanzarote countryside was a bit brutal....

The black dust got everywhere!

The weather wasn't the best

We would have loved to get out of there sooner, but the weather was too bad and unfortunately our good friends Ella and Rutger who we were due to meet in Tenerife, had to fly to Lanzarote to us instead. We had a great time with them though, hired a car and went to the cactus gardens and to the main volcano.

How many different types of cactus are there?

Some of them were pretty weird....

What could they be laughing at?

Even the grape wines have to be grown in little hollows because of the wind and dust. The wine industry is pretty small scale and limited in production. We tested some at a couple of bodegas - it was all a bit acidic – definitely not our favourite.

The grape vines were hidden from the wind in little hollows

Somewhat surprisingly...the wine was very good.

We enjoyed a trip to Cezar Manrique's house. He was a major influencer behind the sustainable tourism in Lanzarote and the reason there are very few high rise blocks and all properties being painted white – which makes them stand out against the stark black background.

The volcanic landscape is stunning here though, and we enjoyed a well organised trip around the most active part of the island. Here we also saw hot fumeroles and a restaurant using the open vent to barbecue food on.

The volcanic landscape was stark

This pit on the volcano is used as a barbecue

We decided to miss out Fuerteventura when Greg realised that the translation meant strong winds. We had had enough of the wind and dust by then so as soon as we could we set sail overnight to Tenerife.

Tenerife is probably our favourite island of the three that we have visited in the Canaries. It is surprisingly lush in vegetation and a lot more colourful. No uniformity of architecture here though, so it has a messier feel. We enjoyed Santa Cruz – a good sized town and met up with our friends Sandy and Brian on Persephone there where we played several games of very competitive Farkle and have now ended up holding the Farkle cup which we will have to nurse across the Atlantic until we see them again!

We hired a car and headed up to Teide, which with its peak at 3,720m is the highest mountain in Spain. Unfortunately, we missed the last cable car to the very top, but Greg got some drone footage on the way up.

We passed miles of banana cultivation but were surprised to find that bananas here in the supermarkets are actually more expensive than elsewhere in Spain or in the UK. No idea why.....perhaps they go to Spain en masse and are then re-imported to the Canaries?

We then waited until the boats crossing the Atlantic on the ARC (Atlantic Race for Cruisers) had left at the end of November and headed straight to Las Palmas on Gran Canaria to get a space in the marina. It’s a good job we did that as it filled up very quickly and other boats we know of have been turned away.

The ARC fleet leaving Gran Canaria

So, we have been in Gran Canaria for the past 4 weeks and it’s the first Christmas we have actually spent aboard. Ed and Miranda arrived and were pleased that the sun was shining although Miranda said it didn’t feel like Christmas. I made an attempt at a 2D Christmas tree made out of 3 sticks, some tinsel and a set of lights and we hung the stockings up. Amazingly Santa found us. 😊

Our Christmas tree on the boat

We spent a great day at the beach in Las Palmas, one on the sand dunes at Maspalomas and another high in the mountains visiting Roque Nublo which is stunning!