Friday 12th December - Manchester to Playa Bastian

This was a relatively last minute holiday for us.  Joan currently works at Bolsover Community and Voluntary Service where she gets limited holidays.  This has focused her mind on ensuring she takes them as opposed to the previous four years when she could take whatever leave she wanted, and didn't.

It's been a busy year, withe the election dominating our lives up till May.  And since then, a frantic summer with our holiday cottages as well as Joan landing a job with BCVS.

The winter months - December to February - are the quietest in our business, bar Christmas.  So we decided to use up some leave days for a short sojourn around Joan's birthday.

The lead up to the break was chaotic.  The house is half decorated, especially our bedroom -  We wanted it done for Xmas but bad colds stopped us in our tracks.  Also, since the election, Joan has had back problems which have limited her capacity to walk far, and more recently has turned into a debiltiating case of sciatica, which has made her miserable.

With planning for this holiday at a minimum, we left home on Thursday night with Joan still WhatsApping work about an event the day after.  Somewhere around Old Brampton, a decision was made to switch the phone off.

We stopped off at Smalldale to put away the bins, before reaching JetParks Ringway.

We parked the car easily enough but struggled to find a bus stop.  The car park is right on the flight path for the runway and some jets came in so low, you felt like ducking!

Bus stop located, the driver dropped us off at Tribe Hotel.
Dinner was Lebanese food which arrived late, cold and without cutlery.

Breakfast was leftover hummus and flatbread before a short walk over to the airport station to take the skywalk to terminal 2.

We're travelling light so no need for check in and security at Manchester was swift, friendly and efficient.
We stopped for the obligatory pre-flight drink, before heading off to the boarding gate.

We'd not prepaid for seats but still managed to get two together over the wing.  The plane was way out on the tarmac so took off late.  There's no in flight entertainment so it was crosswords and puzzles for the 4.5 hour flight.

Landing at Arecife, we had to do the new entry procedure post-Brexit.  Thanks Boris for taking away our European citizenship.

We had a driver waiting who led us to a minibus across a car park in the rain!

We were dropped off outside a complex on Calle de Rosa.  We found it difficult to locate our accommodation, and our attempts to ask for help in Spanish fell on British ears.

Our host, Magdelena, spotted us and showed us the way.  She also explained a named storm - Borrasca Emilia - was about to hit the island, with high winds, sea swell and heavy rain.  Not the warm sun we'd ordered. 

So we headed out to the nearest minimarket, and hunkered down for the night with pasta and wine.



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