The hiccup over the weekend of course cost us a bit of money (Air BnB's service charge for example is non refundable - swines) but the biggest hassle with delaying the start was the flight. The only direct flights to La Palma are on Tuesdays so to get here on a Thursday we had to fly to Gran Canaria (easy with Easyjet) and then catch a little local plane between the islands. This is also very easy but they charge 100 euros each for the 30 minute flight although unlike Easyjet you get refreshments, a chocolate bar and a glass of water. If we were residents of one of the islands it would be very much less, I did not think that sort of discrimination was allowed in the EU but the same arrangement applies on both ferries and planes between the islands (and the ferries are also very expensive).
So the journey over was quite a long one but we are now established in our hotel with 7 swimming pools and a nice view of the sea. Even better it is 23 degrees and sunny!
We are hiring a car from CiCar, a company we have used before, it may be famous last words but they have always been very good indeed, no sneaky extras, full insurance and two drivers included. Having said that they do have the silly, supply it empty and bring it back empty rule, we were in panic mode last night as having driven a mile out of the airport I realised the tank was empty and we could not get any sense out of the sat nav as all the displays are in Russian which we could not work out how to change to English. Fortunately we came across a petrol station just in time. The car is a Fiat Abarth, it looks good (picture above), sounds great but like all Fiats is very underpowered. Our fairly standard BMW would leave it standing but it is quite good for posing.
The hotel is "All Inclusive", in my mind the "All" indicates everything. I understand that they don't include any fancy drinks or wines but I did expect WiFi would be. It turns out that if I want WiFi anywhere but in the bar I have to pay 19 euros a week which is a con. This policy actually costs them money as instead of doing my daily blog update and emails in our room I walk to the bar for free beer whilst I log in.
Tomorrow we hope to climb our first volcano of the holiday, watch this space for news.