Los Cristianos; Sunday, 25 February, 2024

I had a relatively early start so that I could grab breakfast and check-out of the hotel in time to walk round to the harbour and pick up my whale watching tour that I’d booked for 10:30.

After leaving the commercial and tourist harbour in Los Cristianos the boat headed out into the strait that runs between La Gomera and Tenerife and is home to around 400 Short Fin Pilot Whales.

We were sailing out to sea for about 30 minutes before we encountered a pod of whales complete with mum, dad and several juvenile whales. The boat switched off it’s engine and we just drifted along side them taking in the majestic beauty of these amazing creatures. The company I’d booked with has a strict no-chase policy so when the whales eventually decided to head off further out into the strait the boat turned and headed slightly further along the coast to see if there were any other pods, or for sightings of the other local resident – Bottlenose Dolphins.

We did spot a couple of dolphins, but they were too far in the distance to be able to get clear photos of, and there were several other ships near them so the captain decided it was better to stay away from them.

Having seen the Pilot Whales and just about seeing the Dolphins we headed back into harbour ready for us to disembark and the 12:30 tour (which looked much fuller than our less than half-full boat load) to embark.

I had a wander back along the seafront, stopping off for a quick bite of lunch in a café, before heading back to the hotel and collecting my luggage.

If I’d learnt anything from the journey in it was to avoid the main busy points on the air bus route so rather then heading to the main bus stop in the centre of Los Cristianos, I, instead, headed the 500m or so back to the previous stop where I was able to board a mostly empty bus stow my luggage in the rack and get a comfortable seat before the bedlam at the next stop where the bus went from mostly empty to totally full in a couple of minutes.

Ignoring how busy it was I had a smooth journey back to the airport and waited for the crush to unload itself before grabbing my bag as one of the last off and then heading into the terminal to check-in for my flight that I already knew was going to be heavily delayed due to delays at Gatwick and very strong headwinds.

By the time we finally pushed back we were 50 minutes late, but the captain was optimistic of not being to late getting back to Gatwick, after all the strong headwinds on the way down meant we were looking at some very strong tailwinds on the way back. The inbound flight had taken over 4½ hours to make the journey down. Our pilot was predicting just 3½ hours to get back home.