Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

May 18^th, 2024

We decided to do a ship’s tour today. Both stops on the itinerary looked interesting, and there looked like plenty of time to look around on our own, which is what we like to do.

It was another cloudy rainy day, but our guide kept on reassuring us that the weather would get better as we headed to the south of the island. She wasn’t wrong, the rain did stop eventually and there were patches of blue skies, but it was definitely not swimming weather.

Our first stop was at the Maspalomas Nature Reserve.

We walked past the shopping area

to the reserve with its lagoon and sand dunes.

We watched the bird life,

It was very beautiful, and there was a long stretch of sandy beach where most people seemed to be walking along the beach and building sandcastles rather than braving the water.

Beyond the light house there are several resorts and some very upscale shops,

and  a mall with some not so upscale shops. There is something for everyone there, it really was an interesting area.

When we returned to the bus there was some confusion. We were bus number 10, but a tour from the P&O ship Ventura also had a bus number 10, so several of the Ventura people were now on our bus, and we had lost a few to the Ventura bus. I must say that the sign on our bus very clearly showed that we were a Cunard tour, but I suppose people were still easily confused. I was not sure that it would really have mattered that much, but our guides were intent on getting the correct people on the correct bus, so it took a while until we could drive to our next destination, Puerto de Mogan.

Puerto de Mogan is a very pretty seaside town known as the “little Venice of the Canaries” because of its canals that lead from the marina to the center of town.

It was a short walk from the bus to the town, and we soon found a tapas restaurant where we had a great lunch.

I loved their plates!

After lunch we walked around the town. The bougainvilleas were stunning, and we had a really great time walking along the waterfront and through the alleys. It really was a lovely little town.

Both of the stops on this tour were very interesting, and although I had initially wanted to spend the day in Las Palmas, this was certainly a worthwhile tour.

We got back to the ship just in time for the sail away.

As we waited to hear our wonderful whistle, and watch us move away from the shore, Captain Inger announced that we all needed to be extra careful about using hand sanitizer and washing our hands. Apparently we had been in contact with passengers from another ship where there was an outbreak of AGE. AGE? Ah, does she mean acute gastroenteritis? The dreaded Noro virus? She didn’t name the ship, but we could see Ventura leaving the port as she spoke. Our 2 ships seem to have been on very similar itineraries, we had interacted with their passengers on several occasions. Hopefully this didn’t herald the start of an outbreak of AGE on Queen Anne. I mean, it really would not have been good to have a major virus outbreak on our second ever cruise. Pass the hand sanitizer please.