Spirit of Adventure blog

Since our last blog we have continued on our ‘Glorious Canary Islands’ cruise and have called at some of the amazing ports around the Canary Islands including Lanzarote on the 4th April travelling 121 miles overnight to the port of Las Palmas before a voyage of 131 miles through the night to Puerto del Rosario in Fuerteventura, and then a 157 nautical mile trip to our port call today in Tenerife. We have been treated to some brilliant weather on all of the islands with hardly a drop of rain at any of our port calls. This has provided the perfect conditions for our excursions ashore.

The Canary Islands were formed due to ancient volcanic activity around the island chain. The oldest islands within the canaries are Lanzarote and Fuerteventura which are the two eastern-most islands. From here the islands then become gradually younger as you move further west to the islands of Grand Canaria, Tenerife and La Palma.

Tenerife is home to the third largest volcano in the world and is Spain’s highest mountain at 3718m, which is still only three fifths the height of Mount Kilimanjaro. Currently there are only two islands that remain active, one of which is La Palma. Cumbre Vieja, or old summit in English, is the most active volcano within the archipelago with the most recent eruption being in September 2021.

During our visit to Fuerteventura we welcomed on board a new passenger. This passenger was what I would call a VIP or a Very Important Pigeon. This feathered passenger flew onto the Captain’s balcony, did not want to leave, and decided to enjoy the glorious sunshine from the ship. The pigeon had a green tag around its leg (as seen in the photo). After some research, I found that this would quite often identify racing pigeons. We contacted our agent ashore to try to find some care for the bird as it did not want to fly and so we thought it might have been injured. After some time trying to encourage our feathered friend into something safe for transportation one of our third officers stepped in to save the day, and was able to catch it and put it into a box we could use to safely transport the bird to some help. We gave the bird to our port agent to take it to a shore-based facility for some help. I’m sure the pigeon wanted to join us for the rest of our cruise.

We will continue our Canary Island adventure with port calls at La Palma and Madeira before we cross the Bay of Biscay back to Southampton. Hopefully the Bay will be as calm as it was on our southbound crossing at the start of this cruise.

Charles Warrington
Deck Cadet