Archipelago: Noun - a collection of small islands in a large expanse of Water

The Ship!  

My Office

 Ahoy mates!  I am settling into the more routine life on board the "G. I. Jade"!  Right now we’re under “status yellow”,  the beginning of epidemic on board of acute gastroenteritis!  Apparently this ship the reputation for being the AGE queen of the fleet!  This is due to the time of the year, and the location of the cruises.  It is known to be much worse in the winter and a nonexistent problem in the summer.  Also it appears to be geographic is dependent on what countries we visit.  Which is why they do not go to Egypt at the moment.  I am learning a lot about epidemiology medicine!  Or maybe I should say public health!  It is interesting to see the security guards standing at the cafeteria lines enforcing mandatory hand washing, and whenever you return to the ship you’re met by a crewman armed with spray bottle filled with disinfectant solution to spray your hands, and follow up by someone else armed with the garden sprayer filled with disinfectant spray the gangplank after you walk up!  They also fumigate the ship every night with disinfectant after the guests have gone to sleep.  They told us that if we doubled the number of cases of AGE we would be in the status red level.  And then everyone is tasked with continuously cleaning everything that anybody can touch or will touch or has touched!

All the stairs have wonderful hand rails for hand to hand
transfer of "bugs"!

On another note,  I  am really glad I have no circadian rhythm!  The boat passes back and forth across the time zone every 4-5 days.  So on the way down we gain an hour, only to loose it 4 days later!  Talk about the “curse of daylight savings” this is it compacted and multiplied!  Fortunately the travel clock that Ryan got me for Christmas has an  easy adjust button for time adjustment.

I got off the boat yesterday for the first time in the Canary Islands, in the town of Santa Cruz in the island Tenerife would seem to be fairly typical for the other islands in this volcanic archipelago.   I will include some pictures I took around town along with some miscellaneous pictures to give a flavor of the town.

There are a lot of "Green"areas in the town, considering that the
island is a desert with volcanic rock and little fresh water.

I was impressed  by the variety of modern architectural design!