Sal; Friday, 17 March, 2023

It was for the best that I went to bed early as at about 05:40 the electricity on this end of the island failed and the backup generator kicked in, unfortunately the generator was located on the opposite side of a wall to my room and it was a very noisy affair, making getting any more sleep impossible.

Thankfully I had to be up relatively early as I was being picked up at 8am for an eBike tour so I only lost about an hours sleep, and it just meant I was down at breakfast as they were opening the doors.

Breakfast completed I grabbed my stuff and headed to reception where I was picked up for the transfer over to the eBike shop where our tour of Santa Maria and surrounding area was starting from. It turned out to be a really good value tour, with a knowledgeable and passionate local guide showing us many of the key sites in the area, including the dunes and the salt pans that had been the main economic driver of the island before tourism fully took over. The final stop of the tour, after a good 4 hours of lightly peddling aided by very powerful electric motors and chunky tires, was at a café bar on the Western coast of Santa Maria before we headed back to the bike shop to return the bikes and conclude the tour.

I was picked up again from the bike shop and dropped back at the hotel just in time for a late lunch, after which I had a nice long swim in the pool before grabbing a snack in the restaurant and then heading over to the spa for a full body massage.

By the time I’d finished the massage and got back to my room to was the remnants of the hot oil off it was almost dinner time so I headed back over to the restaurant for my fourth meal of the day, and then over to the bar for a quick night cap.

Back in my room the generator was still going at full force and it was pretty clear that sleep was going to be very difficult if not impossible, so I headed over to reception to enquire if it would be possible to change rooms.

The staff on reception couldn’t have been ruder or less helpful if they had tried – their general view was your tough, we’re not going to do anything. I decided trying to argue with them wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so instead I headed back to my room, went online and used the hotel WiFi to submit a formal complaint to TUI.

Thankfully, around 22:00 the power was restored to this part of the island and the generator was finally able to be shut down, which meant that I could actually get some sleep.