La Gomera is fast becoming a very popular cruise ship destination and this winter season more cruise ships are visiting the island than in previous years. It now regularly happens that two cruise ships are arriving in the harbour of San Sebastian de La Gomera, forcing one to anchor outside the port and having to bring guests ashore by ship's tender. This was the case yesterday when P&O's Aurora was occupying the cruise ship berth on the pier and the Ocean Majesty anchoring just outside the harbour's mouth in glorious weather.
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28/11/2017 arriving with the last Volcan de Taburiente at San Sebastián. Our intention was to leave San Sebastián with the Alborán at 20:30. However, the Aida Blue in the harbour messed it all up. The ship blocked the On arrival the Aida was ready to go. No last minute tourists hasting back to the part of the quay which is used by the Alborán. The passenger gangways have already been removed. Apparently the Aida had to give way to 3 ferries leaving the harbour at 20:30: Volcan de Taburiente, Benchijigua Express, Benchi Express. Because of the size of the Aida leaving the quay and finally the harbour takes a long time.
Therefore the Alborán arrived with a considerable delay of about half an hour at the quay. However, entering the ferry was further delay because the crew at the gangway needed the list of passengers. They were waiting in vain. Finally a superior crew member took the decision to let the passengers enter the ferry just with their tickets. A passport reader wasn't available either. Apparently the crew was confronted with manual handling of the tickets which apparently had not been trained very often before.
There seems to be a big lack in the coordination of the handling of the departure of cruise ships. If the Aida Blue had left the harbour of San Sebastián 1 hour earlier it wouldn't have been such a big mess.
What can we learn from such a chaos in the organisation: Taking the bus from the harbour to Valle Gan Rey is more reliable, it is cheaper, the bus leaves the harbour punctually and above all it is stress free!
kind regards
Bernd Hendel
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