Arrecife; Friday, 13 March, 2020

My flight was at 7am so I’d stayed overnight at the airport. It was still an ungodly hour when I got up and made my way through security to the departures lounge for breakfast and to wait for boarding.

It was a smooth journey with the plane departing on time and eventually making it to Lanzarote 15 minutes early. I quickly got through the airport and was met by my transfer to the hotel.

I checked into the hotel, but as I was checking in the announcements were coming through that every cultural and tourist site – including all the museums and the volcanic parks – were to be closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak (despite their only being 2 cased on the island). This was confirmed a little later when I got an email from the tour companies that Id booked tours with to say that they had all been cancelled and they were going to issue me with refunds.

At least today the hop-on-hop-off land train was still running so I was able to take a tour of the city centre and get to see some of the sites. I was also able to have a bit of a wander around the centre of the town and walked out on the breakwater to the castle, though it was closed.

I had a bit more of a wander around the city before heading back to the hotel. I had originally intended on popping out for dinner, but it was soon obvious that most of the restaurants were going to be closed so instead I booked for the hotel restaurant.

I headed back to my room to plan what I was going to do the following day. It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to visit any attractions, but looking at the bus timetables it did look like I could explore a fair amount of the island – so with a notebook and the bus website I was able to plot out a route for the following day to explore at least a part of the island.

After completing my planning I headed up to the bar on the top, 17th, floor of the hotel to have a drink whilst watching the sun set behind the volcanoes.

I then headed down to the buffet restaurant for dinner before making my way back to my room for an early night given I was starting to feel the effect of the 4:30 wake-up