On The Move, The Voyage

Ferry tickets – check.
Passports – check.
Seasickness pills – check.

La Rosaleda, Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife

I walked back up to the house which had been our happy home for over 13 years. The rooms weren’t empty, just emptier. I wandered from room to room, thanking each one for the memories it had helped to create and for keeping us safe, warm, cool and comfortable. As we drove out of the gate and up the lane the car felt heavy and sluggish, every inch of space occupied by our sundry, portable belongings; a TV with three pillows taped across its screen; three suitcases; two holdalls; our laptops; a box of groceries; an overnight bag; a continental quilt and towels.

When we got to the ferry port in Santa Cruz we parked up in line, collected our boarding passes and returned to the car to wait for the ferry. There was no cafeteria, no kiosk selling coffee, nothing to do but wait in the already-hot sun, weighing up our motley fellow passengers and keeping an eye out on the Gran Canaria horizon for the ship to appear. It all felt very surreal.

Naviera Armas ferry port, Santa Cruz, Tenerife

Just 10 days earlier we had returned from three weeks working in Crete, our heads filled with post-trip work commitments and just two, solitary packing boxes filled with photo albums and DVDs, stashed behind the settee in the living room. We had one-way ferry tickets to Huelva in Southern Spain, a hotel room for the night we docked, a holiday home in Portugal booked for the first two weeks in an area we thought we might like to live in for a while, and less than two weeks in which to pack or dispose of, all our worldly goods. When I think about ‘the move’ now, I don’t remember emptying the chest of drawers in the bedroom, or the contents of my bedside table, or the drawer in the coffee table where I kept Mum’s Death Certificate. I just remember endless brown sticky tape, heavy boxes that I worried wouldn’t survive a voyage, and a house filled with the furniture we had brought from England in 2003. We dispatched our boxes and a few items of furniture with the removals company on the Tuesday, and on Thursday morning we packed the last of the things we were taking with us into the car and left.

Naviera Armas ferry, Tenerife

As the ferry came into view I was pretty sure it wasn’t ours. Loud disco music was blaring from the upper deck and I could see a group of dancers performing a routine around the deck pool while a handful of staff and passengers leaned on the rails, watching as the vessel berthed. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, or if I’d been expecting anything at all. For the past few months my head had been bursting with the things I had to get done before boarding this ferry. My thoughts had not been given licence to go beyond this moment, until now.

Once we’d checked into our cabin, the very first on the starboard bow, we headed to the lounge where mercifully, the cafeteria was already open, and ordered two coffees and a Twix – breakfast.
By the time we sailed out of the harbour, we were already almost two hours behind schedule. The sun was shining, the dance troupe were once more into their routine around the edge of the pool and passengers were having their first beer and settling in for the voyage.

I am the worst sailor in the known universe. If I move too quickly in the bath I start to feel slightly queasy, so the prospect of 36 hours at sea in the Atlantic Ocean was not something I had been looking forward to. But as the ship sailed away from Tenerife, all was calm. A couple of hours later it was a very different story. Completely clear of the Canary Islands and in open waters, the sun had disappeared and the swell had risen to such an extent that no-one could walk anywhere without weaving from side to side with a strange little, mid-step pause each time the floor shifted direction. It made moving around a lengthy and comedic affair.

By early-afternoon, many of our fellow passengers had disappeared, presumably to their cabins. Most of them would not reappear until we docked. Half a dozen people were wandering around the lounge and decks with sick bags in their hands, doing passable impressions of the Living Dead. My pills were keeping me on the right side of throwing up but I could barely check the time on my phone without feeling slightly queasy. With two full days at sea, I had planned to work on the Crete project and claw back some of the time lost in preparing for the move. The laptop remained closed.

We wandered along to the self-service buffet where lunch was still being served. I can’t remember what we ate, it might have been something passing itself off as lasagna, I just remember that it was dreadful. Starchy, stodgy, tasteless junk food which was less than tepid. If the swell wasn’t going to get me, the food probably was. After lunch, a wave of tiredness came over us, cumulative days of stress combined with an early start, and we headed to our cabin for a nap. But every step closer to the bow we took, the ship rolled more steeply until, by the time we reached our door, the floor was rising and falling like we were riding an erratic elevator. We turned on our heels and weaved back to the lounge in the stern to doze on chairs instead.

This was going to be an exceedingly long voyage.

Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is a freelance travel writer and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites. Published in The Telegraph, The Independent, DK Guides, Wexas Traveller, Thomas Cook Travel Magazine, EasyJet Traveller Magazine, you can read her latest content on Google+

About Andy 227 Articles
Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is an author, freelance travel writer, award-winning blogger, and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites and travel guides. Author of The banana Road - It's Tenerife But Not As You Know It and Pocket Rough Guide Tenerife & La Gomera. Former Tenerife Expert for The Telegraph and Overseas Consultant for Inntravel. Published in The Independent, The Telegraph, Wexas Traveller, Thomas Cook Travel Magazine, EasyJet Traveller Magazine and Wizz.

10 Comments

  1. So you two have finally done it, all our love and best wishes for a successful move, but where are you going?? We don’t know whether to book flights to Portugal or Crete ( joke). Will miss you next year when we are in Tenerife for 3 weeks but we have got 2 bedrooms if you fancy a nostalgic weekend next March.keep in touch. LInda & Robert xx

    • Ha Ha! I know you’re not really joking…or at least, I hope you’re not 🙂 We’re doing some Slow travel in Portugal for a while and we’ll see where the fates take us. If we’re on the island next March, we’ll certainly drop in for a visit! In the meantime, we’ll keep you posted. Andy xx

  2. I just want to say thank you to you and jack for all the information you have provided about Tenerife over the past few years. It has certainly enhanced my trips there and appreciation for the place. Best wishes and good luck with your new adventure. I’ll look forward to reading about them.

    • Thank you, Martin, that’s really appreciated. Hopefully we’ll still be able to provide useful information about Tenerife from time to time as we will be returning on a regular basis to maintain our walking and driving routes and to indulge in the island’s burgeoning restaurant scene – it’s just too good to abandon! Andy 🙂

  3. Big good luck I hope you love your next home (wherever it may be!) as much as you have lived Tenerife
    Lots of love x

  4. I hope that you are both readjusting to your new horizons….judging by the posts, I think that will be a yes! Portugal’s gain is Tenerife’s loss however, and it’s a pity to lose people of your calibre from our shores. I’m sure you’ll be well missed by all who knew you here and I thank you from the heart for all that you have written in praise and promotion of this island we all call home. I wish you both the very best in your new location…you deserve nothing less you lovely people ?

    • When I read words like that I want to turn around and brave that voyage again to be back amongst the people who say such lovely things! In these days of social media, we’re never further than a keyboard away from anywhere and we will never be too far away from the island we called home for so long. Thank you, Colleen, your words are more appreciated than you can possibly imagine.

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