The Yellow Submarine

We decided to take a trip to Peurto del Carmen and go on the underwater trip on the Yellow Submarine.  This was declared a brilliant success.  A coach picked us up at Rubicon and drove over some of the lunar landscape via one or two hotels collecting other people.  The scenery from the coach was fantastic, I like being up high and being able to look around and see over hedges.  My basic nosiness takes over very easily when in pastures new.

One thing that really struck me on this trip was the roundabouts.  There is very little green on the south of the island but two different colours of lava - some is rusty red coloured and some is black.  Some bright spark had designed the (very large) roundabouts most artistically using swirls of differently coloured lava to make lovely patterns.  There were odd cactuses planted here and there and some really interesting palm trees at one roundabout - they looked for all the world like a bunch of fat little pineapples with bulbous bottoms and wildly swaying fronds.

We had about an hour to wander around the port before our trip and it is very well laid out, some interesting shops and some very interesting looking restaurants.  Alas, we never had time to try the restaurants but did manage an absolutely delicious icecream.  The whole area was spotlessly clean (something I noted all over Lanzarote - it is quite the cleanest island I have ever visited), the sun was shining and it was a positive joy to walk around.  There were some pretty posh shops - the sort that never display prices so I know they are out of my price range.

The submarine trip itself was brilliant.    There is only room for about forty people on the submarine and everyone gets a seat (much more comfortable than the airline seats) and a porthole to look out and see the marine life.  The actual underwater bit takes about forty five minutes, during which we saw loads of different fish swimming around.  The submarine descends to the sea floor (which is only about a hundred feet at that place) and then toddles along, past a couple of wrecks on the bottom going along one and then turning round and coming back.  This ensures that everyone sees both sides of that particular bit of the Atlantic ocean.  The company which owns the submarine also employs a scuba diver to swim alongside the submarine clutching food fish to attract more fish to follow.  There was a massive stingray at one point, lots of barracuda and many other smaller fish.  By the portholes were charts with photographs and names to enable us to identify the different species.

My fifteen year old grand-daughter decided it was the best thing she had ever done - I call that a result.

That evening we got back to Rubicon around six thirty so decided to go out for supper and went to a Japanese restaurant.  We had a lovely seaweed salad, a miso and tofu soup, sushi, lovely fish with rice and then a sort of sweet dumpling filled with a spicy peanut thick sauce.  We thoroughly enjoyed it and both grand-daughters declared it a red letter day in their lives.