In which Sid and Doris get their first – but very far from last – taste of Canarian ferries.
The success of this Not Very Epic journey depends on the ferries – 12 crossings in total. Sid and Doris have been on many different ferries, from the cheerfully chaotic Danube river crossings to the decidedly informal push-your-bike-up-this-narrow-gangplank Greek and Turkish passenger-but-we-take-bicycles ferries, to the cheerfully bucolic (Don’t do this at home) Jaegermeister-fuelled dockside scenes when travelling with Dutch classic car fans, to the obsessively rule-observing (but I will make an exception for you sir just this once even though your wife has completely messed up the arrival time) UK channel ferries.
Now I write all that, it does appear that generally you do not need to be too worried about the YOU MUST ARRIVE 40 MINUTES BEFORE THE FERRY DEPARTS printed on the tickets, and yet…
I dragged Sid away from La Laguna practically incoherent with fear, only 2 hours in hand, no need to use any of those pretty street side cafes, there will be a cafe at the port.
Hmm.
Domestic ferries don’t have the formality of international crossings, so we ended up on a piece of random tarmac with about 6 other early arrival obsessives. Eventually a competent and relaxed chap with a clipboard ambled over and checked us in (cool technology here, they swipe your passport and everything pops up on their handheld reader) (followed by the decidedly low-tech application of a coloured slip of paper about the size of a raffle ticket under the windscreen wiper which is your boarding pass) and made reassuring noises about the no-fuss aspects of catching our connecting ferry from the far side of the next island with only 25 minutes to spare … given that foot passengers are put onto a “ferry transfer bus” Shugi must easily be able to match that.
Once we’d been gently guided away from the panoramic view seats in the front of the twin-hulled ferry to the less shall we say dynamic seats of the middle, we still had a great view and saw ship Busan Express (fully loaded container Hapag Lloyd) taking the long way round from Singapore to Rotterdam – the benefits of AIS.
Back down to the car deck we found the ferry loaders had done a great job of getting a lot of cars fitted in so it was clear we would be last off and the run across Gran Canaria (see Doris’s map to understand the intricacies of the adventure) from Agaete to Las Palmas would be tight. Six minutes in hand apparently. Shugi did a nice job of being second fastest car on the road, increasing time in hand to eight minutes as distance to go fell. Until on the outskirts of the port area, it all went a bit prickly pear. In future Doris will enter ‘Fred Olsen ferry port’ so as not to have the scenic tour of the fish docks. Light-heartedly live, learn, laugh – once in the queue for Fuerteventura.
Checked in on our minute, we were one of the last cars to board and they got us to reverse up the ramp onto the boat, where cars were being carefully shuffled as close together as possible. Remembering the extraordinary loading of the previous ferry we happily complied. And then when we came down before disembarkation started we found… (Shugi is the front car on the left as we were indeed the last car on.)
We arrived at Hotel Riu Jardin at 9:30pm for a very cheery welcome and a saved salad dinner as dining times here are planned for foreigners rather than the Spanish. Talked to 2 brits in lift who said it is 100% German guests, so the dining room had probably been empty since 6:30.