La Gomera and Tenerife Islands. Days 9 to 10 of the trip

Morning of September 21. We got up early to make it to the water park for opening time. Sveta had read that it was one of the biggest in Europe. I had also read quite a few bad things about it, for example that there was basically nowhere to hide from the sun. I had also read about huge lines, and since it was Saturday there were probably going to be a lot of people.

While Sveta was still sleeping, I managed to photograph the sunrise from our room:

Then we had breakfast and packed up. Sveta was going to spend the day in the water park on her own, so I gave her my mobile router, and on my own phone I enabled MTS's "Zabugorishche" service. It was very convenient: for 350 rubles a day they gave you a home-like data allowance and incoming and outgoing calls at home rates. Earlier I used to buy another service at half price, "Vezde kak doma" or something like that, and they charged me 75 rubles a day just so I could receive calls. Here the 350 rubles were only charged when data traffic happened, or when I called someone, or someone called me. During this whole trip I activated it only once, and it turned out cheaper than on our previous trip.

We set off. We parked in a supermarket parking lot, walked to the water park entrance and waited for it to open. I bought Sveta a ticket, a fast pass and a food package. The fast pass lets you skip the line once on each slide. Altogether it came to about 70 euros per person.

Sveta disappeared into the jungle of palm trees inside the water park, and I confidently headed back toward the car. It had been a long time since I had traveled alone. On the way I enabled Zabugorishche and messaged Sveta. She wrote that everything was good and convenient there and that she was going for a swim. I got into the car and drove off. It was warm outside, but I was wearing a turtleneck because my skin was sunburned.

I got into the mountains pretty quickly and then started driving around places I already knew:

There were far more people than there had been back in March. Much more. I spent about an hour just sitting in the car, having conveniently turned it toward Teide. I sat there eating Prince cookies while the people around me kept changing, buses arrived, and tourists with cameras poured out of them. They ran around, took photos and left. There were a lot of Russians. Two groups of tourists arrived on quad bikes, and the tour was led by a Russian couple.

I burned a lot of fuel on those roads because they make you want to drive fast. They are straight and not laid through towns with narrow streets, but across barren land covered with a thick crust of lava. I also drove up to the observatory in the hope that it might be open:

That is how about five hours passed. Then Sveta wrote that she would be finishing soon, so I drove back down from the mountains. I got to the water park pretty quickly, so I still had to wait for her for about another hour. But I had my phone and the roaming service enabled, so during that hour I called my sister and we talked. While I was waiting I photographed a couple of people with the water park in the background.

Then Sveta came out and started telling me how great a time she had had. She said she had probably had enough water slides for life. She also said there were not really any lines and nobody cared much about checking her fast pass.

After that we stopped by a hypermarket, bought something sweet to eat, and drove home.

Morning of September 22. This time we decided to sleep a little longer because checkout was at noon. But the host said we could leave later if we wanted. In the end we left around that time anyway. Carrying the suitcases back and forth took a lot of time. My skin hurt less by then, so I was no longer putting much cream on it. In any case we were going to be back in the cold the next day.

Since we still had time before the flight, we decided to drive to Masca Gorge in case it was open. I even asked the host of our apartment about it, and she said yes, the gorge was open. But it turned out not to be true. We got there and barely found a parking spot. We even had to wait around until someone left. In the end we walked down, and as usual the sign at the entrance said it was closed. We were not too upset and just took a photo there:

Then we looked for a beach so Sveta could have one last swim. We went back to the very first beach of the trip:

Sveta swam there and I took photos of her. When we were leaving, some man said something to us in Russian. He had simply noticed the word "Subbotnik" on Sveta's cap. We chatted for a bit. As far as I understood, he wanted to offer us some kind of sea trip, but we declined because our flight was soon. After that we did what we always do before check-in: we went to our usual spot by the edge of the airport runway where the planes take off. There we finished the rest of our food, threw some things away, changed into warmer clothes so we would not freeze on the plane and later in Russia, cleaned up the car, packed the suitcases, and drove to the rental car lot. We took everything out of the car onto a trolley, and I handed over the keys. Everything went smoothly. Then we checked in for the flight and went through security. After boarding we had already taxied out for takeoff when the pilot announced that we had to return because a passenger on board was ill. And that really was the case. We could see people fussing around in another section farther away from us. In the end I never found out whether the person got better or was taken off the plane. We were about an hour late taking off, which of course also meant arriving late. Then we waited a long time for our suitcases because their delivery kept being postponed. After that we went looking for the shuttle stop to get back to our car. Outside it was freezing, +3 C, and it was already almost the end of September. After that everything was routine: we paid 2000 rubles for parking and drove to Dubna. I was sleepy on the road, but not too badly. Sveta slept.

Back in Dubna we unpacked, turned on the heater at home, and went to bed. It was good that we still had one more vacation day left.