When I said I didn’t mean to write two posts, you’ll realise that I definitely definitely didn’t mean to write three posts. But here we are. So far, I’ve told you about lounging and water parking and now for the whale-watching. I know, quite the change of pace.
This was again inspired by the Jet2 brochure but we found a few different ways of booking, all of which led to the same glass-bottomed boat. It was leaving from Dock 12 at Puerto Colón at 10:30 and whichever site we used, it would be the same excursion. Also, it was not glass-bottomed.
What they mean by that is that there are large glass windows in the bottom of the boat, that you can use to spot the wildlife. It is not, as you might think, a boat with an entirely glass floor.
We walked from the hotel and it was, again, around a kilometre to get there. When we got close, it occurred to me that we probably should have got a taxi, if only to get us up the road to the dock which didn’t seem to have any kind of pedestrian access. There was a promising-looking raised pathway on Google Maps but when we got there, we realised there was no way to get back down from the pathway to the dock. So it was a choice of either taking your chances in the road, facing down coaches as well as cars, or balancing on the edge of the dock itself, with nothing to stop you plunging into the harbour. We winged it with a little of both – swerving into the path of a coach when the dockside was blocked by a queue of passengers and squeezing past the queue when the road was blocked with cars.
After the Siam Park experience, I’m starting to think that H&S is not a Canarian speciality.
Anyway, we made it to Dock 12 intact and embarked fairly swiftly. Each family group was made to stop and have a photo taken on the way in but spoiler: we didn’t end up buying ours. We all looked sunburnt and apprehensive. It was never gonna make it to the family Christmas card.
Why apprehensive? Because of the prospect of seasickness, of course. A lot of the Google reviews of the trip had mentioned it in passing and, after playing in the waves at the beach, I was more than aware that they were…ungentle. I’m an easy puker at the best of times, although I somehow survived the very rocky trip back from France in 2019. It seemed likely that we would all struggle a bit on a catamaran that was tackling the high seas. The Royal Delfin website somewhat disingenuously advised to take medication before boarding but, despite my handbag resembling a mobile pharmacy, I haven’t trusted motion sickness tablets since the infamous Joyrides of the 80s.
With the mobile pharmacy failing to deliver, I stopped at the actual farmacia on the way. I left the hotel a few minutes before Nathan and the kids and didn’t tell them where I was going. I somehow felt that if I raised the subject of seasickness, then they would psychosomatically be more prone to it. So I remained vague about my early morning mission.
I needn’t have worried. It took approximately 10 minutes from sailing for the first sighting of not dolphins but the slightly-less-elusive green sick bags. A small child walked past us unsteadily and was sick in the bin and several others followed suit.
I think my teens clocked, at this point, that mal de mar might be on the cards.
So, to continue the metaphor, I showed my hand early. I whipped out the bag of “anti-nausea” lollipops the nice farmacia lady had sold me and we slurped on them like they were lifesaving medicine. Again, there might be a psychosomatic element to this but none of us were sick in the end. There were some close calls but we were OK. Good work, lollipops! I also banned the kids from looking down at their phones and made them stare straight ahead while seated, which is another trick I swear by. Look, I have experience, OK? I was a carsick child, a university student with a taste for cheap cocktails and an exhausted pregnant lady. Me and holding off the nausea are like that. I didn’t manage to procure any mint chewing gum or ice lollies, which are my other go-tos but these lollipops did the job.
And we didn’t just sit there in silence – there was a commentary from the guide and, in between points of interest, we played elaborate alphabet games and versions of “What Beats Rock?”. Around an hour in, we actually got to the point of the trip, which was to see dolphins and sure enough, we did.
What, you were expecting pictures? I was balancing precariously on the front of the boat when the dolphins were swimming past and I could barely stand up, let alone frame a decent photo. I took this one of the sea, which I swear had some dolphins in it, but even then I had to crop out a child vomiting next to me:
Nathan had a little more luck, taking photos from the windows on the side. Apparently there are pilot whales in this photo:
All of which is to say that sometimes, you just have to live in the moment. While it would have been lovely to get some amazing dolphin pictures for the blog, there was a risk that I would miss seeing them because I was faffing around with a phone and trying not to drop it over the edge. It was much more satisfying to just keep my eyes on the sea and watch them swim past.
And I do love dolphins. Don’t all 90s kids?
When the boat was stopped, it was probably also peak motion sickness time. We were getting battered around from side to side and I had to sit with my eyes shut and focus on reciting tube stations in my head. So while I got a good look at the dolphins, I missed out on the pilot whales a bit. But not as much as some unfortunate passengers, who had basically spent the entire trip with their heads in their hands. Weirdly, as soon as we were back in motion and powering back to shore, I felt fine. Fine enough to join in the tail-end of what was becoming a very surreal and existential “What Beats Rock?”
Incidentally, Reuben just put “Jet2 Holidays” into the site and apparently, there *is* something that can beat a Jet2 holiday. Rock, for one.
If it sounds like this was a small amount of pleasure for a lot of peril, then you’d be right. But it was nice to be out on the water and we saw a lot more of the island than we would on foot. We saw the volcano (Teide), albeit it from afar, and learnt a bit more about Tenerife than we would have just sitting around in the pool. But I was slightly relieved to get us all back on dry land.
After all that exertion, we had the perfect excuse to do nothing for the rest of the day except gorge on carbs at lunchtime to offset the earlier nausea. I even slept through cocktail hour that evening – it must have been all the sea air.
The rest of the holiday was mainly more swimming, sitting around and wandering along the beach at golden hour:
VK even began to swim on her own by the end of the week, which is a massive breakthrough for someone with so much swimming-related trauma. I’m still not ready to let her go solo on a waterslide though.
We also spent some time hiding in terror from resort mascots like Mr Balloonhead, with his strangler’s hands, and Skeletal Pooh:
But generally all went smoothly until the journey home. And even that wasn’t a disaster on the scale of our trip to Mallorca, where we were so late back that we’d had to check into a hotel in Crawley at 5am and stay there till lunchtime. No, these things are relatively minor but made us a little twitchy when we had a party to get to in Cambridge.
First, there was the transfer back to the airport which had a pickup window of 8:10-8:40 and didn’t turn up till 8:45. I was on hold to Jet2, listening to *that* song yet again by the time it lurched in. We made it to the airport with exactly two hours before the flight and cleared bag drop and security relatively quickly. Then we grabbed some Popeyes fries for VK and some crisps, water and headphones before going through another queue for Passport Control. The flight was 15 minutes late taking off, which is extremely good going by our standards.
However, a late take off runs the risk of missing our slot when landing and that’s exactly what happened. We landed at Stansted not far off schedule and then spent a very long time on the tarmac waiting for a gate to become available. Baggage Reclaim took an age and then we spent a while eating Leon fries, nuggets and burgers (vegan for VK) before buying some breakfast foods from M&S and getting to the car.
Not into the car, of course. No, that would depend on now having a flat tyre when we got back. Which we did. So once more, we were sitting on the tarmac at Stansted, this time inhaling lungfuls on manure-scented air, which didn’t sit that well on top of the Kimchi Fries I’d just devoured.
But all was well! The AA turned up, we had clear roads all the way to Cambridge and we got to the venue just in time for the first dance. As we left the airport, “Sit Down” by James was playing and we took that as a good omen that we would soon be dancing with our indie disco friends….to “Sit Down” by James, as it happens.
Minor catastrophises aside, it was probably our most successful holiday yet. Tenerife was beautiful and, for the most part, relaxing. There was also a woman who could spin a hula hoop on her arse. And that is a fitting end to this epic series of posts I think. Adios!
