Spirit of Adventure blog

Having a nice ratio of sea days vs. port days is a great advantage on any cruise. The cruise started off with 3 sea days, followed by 3 port days with Funchal, Tenerife and La Palma, then 2 sea days south to Porto Grande on Mindelo and Porto da Praia on Cap Verde, followed by another 2 sea days back to Las Palmas and Arrecife. I spoke to many of our guests who all had only words of praise as they had plenty of time to explore the ship and enjoy the open decks, the Lido pool, the Spa, hydrotherapy pool and saunas as well as the activities offered, such as water colouring and craft classes, Bridge (the card game), general knowledge quizzes, lectures, choir, line dancing, ukulele class and open deck games such as deck quoits, shuffleboard and table tennis.

During one of the lunches I had with guests, one guest, Patricia Holman, mentioned she had stayed in my neck of the woods and had bought the earrings with the city symbol. I have a pair of cufflinks with the same design and we agreed that, on the next formal evening, we will match them up and we had a selfie to make a memory of it. Talk about cufflinks, I got an early Christmas present from guests on board. Thank you Paul and Jane!!

We had a busy day in Tenerife. La Palma was lovely, I went ashore for the first time there. I met up with a friend who was cruising on another cruise ship that was with us in port. The forecast looked promising and called for a warm sunny day. The reality was a bit different as the clouds were present from the early morning. Walking back to the ship from the lunch we had ashore was memorable as a fine drizzle started and by the time I got back on board, I was soaking wet. I did dry out just in time for departure. Staff Captain Simon was designated driver for both arrivals, and Safety Officer Igor got his hands on the “sticks” for both departures.

It took us 2 days to get down south to the Cape Verde islands. Weather was nice and sunny. As I have never been to Cape Verde, I took us in and Simon took us out. The hospitality in both Porto Grande and Porto da Praia was nice, they were very pleased to have us. After two days in the ”as far south as I have been in a while”, it was time for us to head back north towards our next two ports of call, a return to the Canaries.

Kind Regards
Captain Franko Papić