We walk to the old town and get a bus to the south of the island, the old town is ok - the cathedral is a useful landmark.
However Alan and Gwen hire a car and take us inland, suddenly we get Gran Canaria - the scenery is incredible - we go to the Rocque Nobel - nearly the highest point and a lovely piece of rock.
The mountains have it.
We also go Agaete - a valley in the North facing Tenerife.
The good old silly times in the evenings, it's good to have friends.
On Sunday (Christmas Eve) we go to the town Teror - an hour bus ride up in the mountains on the recommendation of the bar owner in the marina - (Marea Baja- thank you). We go with Rick and Julie who are berthed two boats up in the marina, they are members of the Seven seas Cruising Association (Rick is a board member) which I had recently joined. Alan and Gwen drive there and we visit the church to see Mass.
We had also been on Rick and Julie's boat "Believe" a few days earlier and been entertained beautifully. In the course of the evening I promise to write a few paragraphs for the SSCA newsletter, I'll post it here when it happens - the SSCA looks like a fun organisation to belong to and I make sure I fly their flag in a superior position on my port shroud.
There is a market and the air is beautifully cool (14 degrees) and sunny - the view (and drive) is stupendous.
We head back to the airport to pick up Matt and then on to the apartment with Alan and Gwen. Their apartment is in the mountains and so so scenic. We head for a wee cafe for tapas and have a fantastic time - the owner is liberal with her wine and beer and the tapas are super - an avocado with garlic and tomato was to die for.
Next day we go on a walk before our turkey lunch - complete with black puddings - lovely.
On boxing day we chill out on the boat,and on the 27th say au revoir to Rick and Julie, and son Brett as they depart for Antigua, I hope our paths cross soon. Fair winds and God speed to them.
Then preparations continue - a parcel from Compass arrives via UPS, I hope the "U" does not stand for Urgent as it has taken 27 days to reach me. And Compass sent the wrong part! the catalogue number shows a boarding step with a width of 27 cms and no wooden insert, I get a wooden insert version with a width of 24.5 cm that doesn't suit the boarding ladder. However I resolve to fit it anyway and make a rope ladder for the swimmers. <sigh>
Meanwhile Alan has worked out how to use his satellite locator to update a website with positions - he will upload a new position at noon UTC every day - (01:00 BST). At least I hope it is a new position! We need to careful as there are two versions of the web URL, one allows sending a message to Alan but that will cost him money. Our four partners will have this URL, Shirley, Ann, Ruth and Gwen. The other version has no messaging facility. I will post details here soon.
Theoretically the ham radio equipment will pass location data to a site in finland http://APRS.FI and I believe marinetraffic harvests this data and displays it mid ocean, however the ham radio traffic is linked to my US amateur radio callsign AI6QL and you may need to search for that - however I cannot test or experiment with this until outside the marina. Also normal amateur radio voice contacts will be with my UK callsign MI5AFL since QSL cards are setup for the UK callsign only.
To see where we are try the website https://eur-share.inreach.garmin.com/AlanDoyle if https://www.marinetraffic.com has old data on it - Alan will update his inreach each day at 12:00 UTC (GMT) each day.
We plan to leave Gran Canaria on the morning of Friday 29th December and head South to the Cape Verde Islands, to meet Doros and Peter by January 5th. Crew on board son Matt, me and Alan Doyle