After a day ashore in Lanzarote that had seen us visit the impressively Martian-looking Timanfaya National Park followed by stops to see how aloe vera and Lanzarote wine were produced, we returned to Ventura in anticipation of a short wait before cruising away to the island of Madeira. Our cruise ship at the port and capital of Arrecife was being battered by the Atlantic winds but that didn’t stop us taking a wander around the top of the ship to see the views while we were still docked.
Ventura wasn’t the only ship visiting the island of Lanzarote on this day. The German cruise ship Mein Schiff 4 (let’s not talk about the unimaginative naming system) was on Ventura’s port side. Not a cruise line we’ve cruised with, and probably unlikely to given the additional hurdles of the language barrier and potential embarrassment and spontaneous combustion from wandering into the nudist section of the vessels that have one.
Ahead of Ventura was Sea Cloud Spirit, a luxury, three-mast, full-rigged ship that we’re also unlikely to sail with unless the lottery fairy pays us a visit. She looks gorgeous.
Taking those photos from the front of the ship involved leaning into the wind and bracing myself against anything nearby. An older passenger had been up on the top deck with us with his camera in hand and had given up. My wife and I returned to our balcony, enjoying how much the sea around the dock was being churned up by the wind, expecting an imminent departure.
However, the time for sailing away came and went, and we could still see staff down on the dock. Our initial thoughts that either an excursion was late coming back or that we might get to see pier runners (in that wind!) turned out not to be true as the captain made an announcement over the ship’s system. Two passengers had taken ill and, for reasons that weren’t explained but which led to a lot of speculation aboard Ventura, Lanzarote couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take them. As a result, the ship would need to make a detour to the island of Gran Canaria overnight and the planned stop at Madeira had been cancelled. Everyone was disappointed, of course. Us too, naturally, since we’d never been to any of these parts of the world before, including the Portuguese island. Worth remembering when you’re saving a little bit of money by doing things yourself during cruise planning, is that for those with trips booked through independent companies there likely was a flood of frantic communications at this point to get refunds, if possible.
Somewhat later than planned, Ventura backed away from Arrecife on Lanzarote. We passed one more cruise ship as we departed. La Belle Des Oceans is small enough to be classed as a yacht. You won’t be surprised to learn that she’s another cruising vessel we’re highly unlikely to ever experience.
The last thing to watch out for was the disembarking of the pilot onto the pilot boat. We didn’t quite get to see that as it occurred out of view of us, but it must have been a fun experience based on just how much the little vessel was bouncing up and down on the waves and getting drenched with spray in every trough it hit.
There then followed a long sail past Lanzarote’s south-eastern and southern coastline, and a very attractive coastline it was too, with plenty of coastal towns and rugged, barren shore backed by the pretty peaks of the volcanoes and mountains of the island. As the slow cruise progressed so the sun dipped towards the horizon and the colours of the sky and across the land changed from moment to moment. Late evening cruising with mostly clear skies and just enough cloud cover to reflect and refract sunlight is a wonderfully calming experience.
Enjoy the gorgeous landscape of Lanzarote from the sea with these photos from our balcony on Ventura.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series from the Canary Islands I’ll go through the evening meal and activities aboard Ventura along with the unexpected views of Gran Canaria at midnight as we cruised into a very industrial port.