Thursday May 16, 2024 – At Sea between Madeira and Lanzarote, Canary Islands
A welcome day at sea, going at 8 knots, some asking if we were moving at all! it is only a short distance between Madeira and the first of the Canary Islands we are to visit, but in order to give us a day of rest, before 3 islands in 3 days, Cunard opted for a day at sea today. We missed the morning lecture, but were fascinated by Keith Muras, the British diplomat in Moscow, talking about how each of the 15 countries that formed part of the Soviet Union (USSR) each had their own “independent” versions of the KGB. However in reality each of individual KGB’s of the “15 republics” were beholden to “Mother Russia” the big gorilla of the USSR. After the “break-up” of the USSR, the individual Republics were able to survive on their own, however each had it’s own problems as some had a very large Russian speaking population that had loyalty to Russia rather than the Baltic country with which they are affiliated. We see this in Eastern Ukraine with its many Russian settlements.
The next talk was Neil’s interview with the crime writer Val McDermid, which is always fascinating. He is excellent at interviewing all sorts of different “famous” people, making them feel at ease, yet getting very interesting information from them.
The third talk was the Civil Engineer – Andrew Roberts, who spoke of the way engineering helped Tenerife become the major tourism center it is today. From the early Guanache settlers to Columbus and all those who followed as ships would sail down to the Canary Islands and take on provisions to help get them across the Atlantic Ocean to “The New World”. Principal Ports were constructed and led the trade for a time, such as Garachico and eventually Santa Cruz. He spoke of the rise of the Yeoward shipping line (two brothers) that started buying one then another and more ships to take UK passengers to the Canary Islands and Madeira for “cruises” where getting there and spending time at the destination before returning became commonplace. They were very successful passenger transport lines in the 1800’s and early part of the 1900’s, as prior to this all ships were merchant vessels that carried a few passengers, but were not appointed for enjoyable travel, the focus being on cargo and passengers were incidental. In the 1950’s and 1960’s there were at most some 30,000 visitors to Tenerife a year, but this mushroomed to 3.8 Million in the mid 2000’s. The Banking crisis of 2008 reduced to 3.1MM visitors, but then gradually expanded until COVID hit which almost reduced the visitors to a handful at a time. The majority of the visitors are from European countries (UK – 35%; Germany 20%; Spain 10%; The Low Countries 10%; and Other Europeans 15%) leaving only some 15% coming from the rest of the world.
We skipped the evening show “Brief Encounters” as we had seen it previously.
Roger & Anne Travels 