Trip around the Canary Islands. February 2020. Highlights

During the New Year holidays we thought: why not fly to the Canary Islands once again, one last time before our Schengen visa expired. Besides, we still had 3 islands left unseen. We thought it over and started preparing. We checked at work whether we could get vacation for the dates we needed. It did not go perfectly smoothly, but in the end we got approval. I immediately bought the plane tickets, and that was it - nothing else had to be purchased yet. It is nice when you already have a visa.

Then, as usual, we started preparing for the trip and choosing places on the 3 islands. I did the research with Google. I always do it the same way: I type a query like "Lanzarote attractions", and Google shows a map of places. I go through them, pick the interesting ones, and add them to my own map together with descriptions, comments, and photos. For the Canary Islands I also use Mikhail's blog. After I finished, Sveta did the same and added the places she found interesting.

When choosing the dates, I looked at ticket prices and realized that flying for 2 weeks was cheaper, because the cheapest tickets were on weekends. I do not know exactly why. Most likely demand. A weekend flight pays off because the plane is full, while a weekday one is probably half-empty. So we decided to fly to the Canaries on February 16 and return on the night of March 1-2.

We drove 2218 km during the whole trip.

Coronavirus

Around the end of January the news broke about the coronavirus that had appeared in China, and I followed it very closely. In particular, I watched to make sure there were not too many cases in Russia or Spain. Around the world the virus was still spreading poorly. But by the time we were about to leave, there was already news that many people had become infected in Italy. Even then, though, the virus still felt far away from us. When we flew out, Spain and Russia each had 2 confirmed cases (one of them was a German tourist on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, and at that point he had not infected anyone yet). While we were traveling, we did not follow the news too closely, and the whole trip went by without any trouble. The only moment that stood out was near the end of the trip, when the news reported that a hotel on Tenerife had been quarantined after one infected guest was found there. Our last night was not far from that hotel, but we were staying in a small guesthouse, so we were not overly worried. When we got back home, we landed at Sheremetyevo. According to stories, they were supposed to check our temperature there, but nothing like that happened. On the way out we only saw two doctors sitting and watching the arriving passengers. Perhaps they were trying to identify sick people just by looking at them. We got home, Sveta went to work, and I did not, because I had already been working remotely for a long time.

Accommodation

In this trip, just like on the previous one, we decided not to move around too often, so we rented one place on each island. It meant more driving, but I tried to choose accommodation near the middle of each island. So we had one place on Tenerife, one on Lanzarote, one on Fuerteventura, one on Gran Canaria, and one more on Tenerife for the last night - the same one as on the first night. We had already grown used to it. We stay there every time we are on Tenerife. The owner, Ruslan, is from Russia (I do not remember whether I mentioned that in earlier posts). It turned out that his wife's father is married to a woman from Dubna. Small world.

Link to that hotel: https://www.booking.com/hotel/es/canarian-farm-near-los-cristianos.ru.html

Transport

We rented the car as always from cicar.com. And, as always, it was a Seat Leon. I was already used to it, so there was no point in taking a different car and getting used to that one. By the way, during the two previous trips I had never found the cruise control in it. On this trip, when we had to sit in the car and wait for the ferry for a long time, I finally found it. It had probably always been there, just hidden very well.

Climate

We were afraid it would be chilly, because this time we came in February, while the first time we visited in March. In the end everything was fine, and this February felt warmer to me than March 2019. But this time we ran into the weather phenomenon we had feared and had never seen before: calima. And we got it especially hard - people were calling it the worst calima since 2002. Because of it we nearly got stuck on Lanzarote: the ferry company canceled the crossing because of strong wind. We also spent about two days mostly sitting in the apartment and not going outside, because there was nothing to see in the poor visibility, and we preferred not to breathe the dust any more than necessary.

Internet and mobile service

This time, just like before, we used Drimsim and somehow spent only 1 euro on mobile internet. Our rented places always had good Wi-Fi, so we did not need mobile data very often.

Crime

There is crime in the Canary Islands, and we had learned about it even before our first trip there. So you always have to be careful. On every trip we bring bicycle locks so we can secure our suitcases inside the car, and we also lock the suitcases themselves with small padlocks. We normally have two large suitcases, and they do not both fit in the trunk, so one has to stay in the trunk and the other on the back seat. This time we did it differently: we took one large and one small suitcase so that both would fit in the trunk and still be easy to open there. Thieves should not be able to see through the windows what is inside the car. The locks are there to buy time, and sometimes that is exactly what thieves do not have. As far as I understood, in New Zealand they failed to steal everything from us only because someone scared them off.

As for who does the stealing, locals told us that people come from elsewhere in the EU, mostly Romanians, and make a business out of theft. In short, everywhere there are always people who ruin things and fall out of step with the normal rhythm of life.

Trip cost

This time I started preparing well in advance and got two multicurrency cards loaded with euros, so most of our spending was either card payments in euros or cash. I decided to show the trip cost in euros as well, because the ruble exchange rate was dropping fast.

Links

• Our map of points of interest
• Car rental
• The ferry company we used, and the only one that sails to El Hierro
• Another ferry company, but it only serves the other islands