We arrived in Arrecife before the sun and moored alongside a long quay.   It was quite windy early and we didn’t realize how significant this would become until later.

Our plan for today was to take it easy and leave the ship later around midday and walk around the small town of Arrecife.  Sometimes when you visit a port and immediately go on an excursion some distance away, you never get a feel for the port town.

There was a shuttle bus to the Marina which was also about 1/2 mile from the town.  It wasn’t clear to me where the shuttle bus would drop us off in relation to the town and we weren’t sure what was at the Marina.  I will answer both of those questions in this post.

As we stood on the pier waiting for the shuttle bus a gust of wind blew off my ball cap.  Fortunately, it was stopped by a nearby pole or it may have skipped further down the quay.

The shuttle ride to the Marina was about 10 minutes.  You weren’t allowed to walk out of the port.  A taxi may or not be available when you get off the ship.

The shuttle stop is located at the Lanzarote Marina, which is very modern, and less than 10 years old.  There are numerous shops, restaurants, and a grocery store and it is a little over 1/4 mile from one end to the other.  Many people went no further than here as it is adjacent to the shuttle stop.  Also near the shuttle stop is a small Tourist Information Kiosk.  It was closed for lunch when we arrived and was closed for the day when we returned after 2 pm.  We peered into the windows and it looks like they had some nice local maps.  There is a taxi stand nearby.

We spotted a sign that directed us across a pedestrian bridge to get to the city center and that’s where we headed.

Once across the bridge, we enjoyed the sculpture, “The Fisherman with Marlin” by Jorge Isaac Medina.  This represents a scene from The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of a duel between a fisherman and a huge marlin.

At this point, we could go left or right around a small lagoon.  We saw numerous outdoor restaurants off to the right and decided to walk along the water to the left and then loop back around towards the restaurants.

Arrecife has numerous sculptures throughout the town and we spent some time studying “Caesar’s Gaze” by Manolo González which shows the artist sitting in the center of an eye-shaped window, a metaphor for “his clear gaze, his visionary spirit, and his innovative character”

The Castle of San Gabriel was a couple of hundred yards offshore at the end of a causeway.  We decided not to go out and visit, but if you like old forts, you may find it interesting.

We crossed over the street and headed down Calle Leon y Castillo, a nice pedestrian-only street that runs from the water to the street that faces the lagoon.  There were many nice shops, a grocery store, more sculptures, and outdoor cafes.

We stopped in the SuperDino grocery store and picked up some peanut butter.  Alas, Tim Tams are long gone since we left Oceania.

Continuing down Calle Leon y Castillo we turned right onto Avenida César Manrique, which is a pedestrian street that runs along the lagoon and is lined by numerous restaurants with covered outdoor seating.  The restaurants were all busy with guests from the Zuiderdam and the other tourists but they all had table space available.  The menus were all similar and there wasn’t any of them that stood out.

Off in the distance, we spotted the shuttle bus back to the ship, over 1/2 mile away.  We figured it would be long gone by the time we arrived in twenty minutes.  But to our amazement, it was still there when we arrived and our timing was good as it left within a few minutes of our boarding the bus.

We left Arrecife 4 hours late due to gale-force winds pushing us against the pier.  Even an extra tug wouldn’t be enough to pull us off and then safely maneuver in the narrow channel.

After the wind was down to about 25 mph, the tug and pilot arrived around 8:30 pm and we headed out to sea at 9:00 pm.  The waves were around 10 feet and we were going over 20 mph to try and make up time.  We will still be several hours late arriving in Agadir, Morocco.