Sunday, May 30, 2010

29 MAY 2010 - FUNCHAL, MADEIRA, PORTUGAL - ANOTHER WONDERFUL SURPRISE

Madeira is another island located about 400 miles west of Morocco. We were able to join one of the small groups who hired a couple of 8 passenger Land Rovers to take us into the interior of Madeira. Like yesterday we headed up. The views and landscape are breathtakingly spectacular. I will let the pictures tell the story:















































































































On the way back to the ship we stopped at a rum factory.




















































































The views from the ship as we left were also beautiful.



28 MAY 2010 - SANTA CRUZ, TENARIFE, CANARY ISLANDS, SPAIN - BACK TO CIVILIZATION

Whenever Jim and I here of Tenerife the first thing we think of is the horrific crash of a Pan Am 747 and KLM 747 in 1977. Other than that we had no expectations of what we would find here. We were pleasantly surprised. Tenerife is owned by Spain, and it was a welcome return from third world countries. It has wide, four lane highways, it is clean and modern, and the stifling humidity was absent. We arrived to blue sky, but there were clouds hiding the mountain tops.


We rented a car and invited Brynn and Eunice to join us. The main place I wanted to visit was Teide National Park, which contains Mount Teide, a 12,000 foot dormant volcano.




We weren’t sure how much we would see because of the clouds, but headed up.



















The clouds turned out to be more of a mist, and as we drove into it we found lush green landscape. The wonderous thing was breaking through the mist, where we found the beautiful blue sky and amazing views of Mount Teide. As we drove further we could look down on the clouds, which obstructed views of the towns, but we could see the ocean.

















Around Mount Teide we found the Teide bugloss blooming. There was a cable car the went almost to the summit, but the 25 Euro fee plus the fact the clouds would obstruct most of the view helped us to decide not to go up it.
























































When we left we decided to take a different route back, which would take us up the coast, and we just enjoyed the scenery.















There are some pyramids in the town of Guimar which closely resemble the pyramids found in Central America. It cost 10,50 Euros to go in, and we only had ninety minutes before we had to be back to the ship, so we decided not to go in. However, Jim found a break in the fence and we were able to get a quick look at them.









After we returned the car Jim and I walked around the city for an hour seeing some of the sites, including the auditorio which looks like a wave.






































































It was a surprisingly beautiful day.

26 - 27 MAY 2010 - 2 DAYS AT SEA

27 MAY 2010 - DAY 2 OF 2 SEA DAYS - JUST ANOTHER DAY ON THE WATER

Today was pretty much a ditto of most sea day. No wins at trivia, close, but not quite.

26 MAY 2010 - DAY 1 OF 2 SEA DAYS - AND THE ANSWER FOR THE WIN IS...AEROSMITH!

Today started out like every other sea day-sleep in, eat breakfast, play trivia (and lose like always), eat lunch, take a nap. After this point, things changed a bit. Princess cruise line has a 5K ON DECK FOR THE CURE walk to help raise money for the Susan G. Komen foundation. Jim and I did it 2 years ago. We did it again today, in honor of his sister, Kathy, who just finished treatments for breast cancer. After that we went to our afternoon trivia game. The setup is this: there are about 10 teams each made up of six people, and we are asked 15 questions. The winners get a coupon that can be traded in at the end of the cruise for typical cruise junk like key rings, luggage tags, etc, so we aren’t really playing for any serious prizes, but you wouldn’t know that to see some people’s reactions! Fortunately for Jim and I we are with four other people who are doing this for fun, so when we lose every time it isn’t devastating to us. Today we were doing really well with the questions, and then THE question came up: “What band released the album ‘Just Push Play’”? I immediately knew the answer, because the boys listened to Aerosmith while growing up, and Ben downloaded one of their albums onto my iTunes, and “Just Push Play” is on the album, which means it is on my iPod, so I hear it every so often, which is why I knew the answer. As it turns out we got all 15 questions right, and our team was the ONLY team who knew Aerosmith, which means we won! YAHOO! Needless to say our little humble team was pretty excited!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

25 MAY 2010 - MINDELO, SAINT VINCENT, CAPE VERDE ISLANDS - 4 WEEKS DOWN, 2 TO GO







The Cape Verde islands are a small group of arid, volcanic islands off of the coast of Senegal. We stopped at the island of Saint Vincent. We had agreed to meet up with Brynn and Eunice and rent a taxi to take us around for the day. As we exited the port we met a young driver named Eldres. He agreed to drive us around for three hours, including Mount Verde, the highest point on the island, for 50 Euros. We were glad to be with Brynn and Eunice since we don’t have any Euros, and they do, and US$ are not accepted very readily. The Cape Verde escuedo is the official currency, so if we had used an ATM (which were very scarce) we still couldn’t have gotten any Euros.




Eldres first drove us up a small hill that had a nice view of the city.







Once in the city with there were stops at the produce market and the fish market.







































































We also saw the old palace and a small church.









Next we headed out of the city and up to Mount Verde on a long and winding road. The top is shrouded in mist most of the time, so the photo ops were on the way down. The landscape reminded us of southern Nevada, in that it is very barren, and there is little vegetation. It is hard to understand why they are called the Cape Verde islands, since verde means green.

















The next stop was a small fishing village named Baia. While we were there Eldres told Brynn he would take us around the rest of the island for 30 more Euros. We all agreed, so he drove up the coast where we saw some beautiful beaches.































After the beaches we turned inland and saw a huge dry riverbed where people grew gardens along the banks.






















Saint Vincent is a small island, and it wasn’t long before we returned to Mindelo. Eldres took us to another beach, then returned us to the ship.





Jim and I walked back into town, where he took a few more pictures, then we got back on the ship. After playing trivia Jim walked the deck and I blogged. It was another good day.