To Madeira, the Cape Verde & Canary Isles - Las Palmas, Gran Canaria Page

Tuesday 1st January 2013.

The ship's noise woke us at 0625, as it berthed in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, on a rather dull day.

We were on a tour which left at 0930: to Teror & Arucas, up in the hills towards the centre of the island. Las Palmas is on a spit of land & quite large: 400k people & has sprawled inland. The courier bemoaned the shrinking of the banana industry because of competition from the USA but forbore to point out that the bananas from the US were grown by virtual slave labour in Latin America. There were a few banana plantations left. The road wound alarmingly along the steep valley side up to Teror, which has maintained a quaint old centre.

Teror in tiles	Typical balconies	Town Hall
Up the High Street	The Church from the main square	The Church Square
In the Church Square	Front of the Church	In the church, service on

Across the quite steep & deep valley

Las Palmas from Teror

We were walked around this, noted the Canary balconies & had a look in the large church. After, we were served honey rum in a rubbish shop, where I bought a bottle, having failed to do on the April cruise. Then, down to Arucas, which has a 20th C 'cathedral' rather similar to Burgos but in black basalt & utterly gross. This town had an old centre too & honoured a local poet.

The hideous church	Inside the church	Up the valley to Teror
The Poet's House	The poet Joaquin Bianco

Off to some gardens, with a snack & more spirit tasting before returning to the ship at the time we were all supposed to be aboard, as it sailed at 1400. I was on at 1500 with my talk about Spanish-temed music by non-Spanish composers & doubled my numbers: 40 this time. Word must be getting around. A discussion group developed after & I dashed for tea. Halfway through an eclair, Roberto, the audio-visual engineer, came up & said Ricky the Cruise Director & Connie wanted me in the cruise Office asap, asap being after the eclair & a cup of tea. No Ricky but Connie said I was on at 0945 tomorrow & I had to pick a talk. I thought Ricky was going to pick one & accused him of laziness (!) at the evening show after thanking him for the bottle of wine her sent to our dinner table. I chose the Grieg talk, printed it & marked it up. The evening show was an improved version of the Rock 'n Roll one we had seen in April, which I told Jane who said, dismissively, that that had been 'the other lot' but which had included Steve.