Tag: airport transfer

Baby and toddler destination guide: El Hierro, Canary Islands

On By jocairdwp

We took the baby girl with us to El Hierro, the smallest and most remote of the Canary Islands in January 2018. We were there for nearly three weeks, staying in a tiny village called La Restinga at the southernmost point of the island and splitting our time between diving (I was researching an article for Diver Magazine), exploring El Hierro and tag-teaming looking after the baby girl so we could both keep up with work while we were away.

It was a fantastic trip and I hope this post encourages you to visit El Hierro too. You might not have heard of it – I hadn’t – but it’s an extremely beautiful and peaceful place to spend some time. If you’ve ever been to El Hierro, please add your own tips in the comments.

A woman holds a baby in the afternoon sunshine. In the background is the beautiful view of the coastline of El Hierro from the visitor centre at El Julan © Steve Pretty
The astonishing view from the visitor centre at El Julan © Steve Pretty

Getting there

You can fly to El Hierro from Gran Canaria and Tenerife North with local airline Binter in around 40 minutes (most flights from the UK arrive at Tenerife South Airport so you’ll need to leave plenty of time for the transfer). Or there’s a ferry from Los Cristianos in Tenerife to Valverde on El Hierro (the port is a 15-minute drive from Tenerife South airport), operated by Navaria Armas. The crossing takes around two and a half hours and can be pretty choppy so remember to bring medication if you suffer from sea sickness. The chief benefit of the ferry is that you can take as much luggage as you want, while there’s a very stingy allowance on the tiny planes that operate on the inter-island flights. There’s a luggage pick up and drop up service for foot passengers on the ferry.

If you’re taking the ferry from Tenerife, hiring a car at the airport when you arrive is more convenient than waiting until you arrive in El Hierro (though there is a car hire company at the port in Valverde). There’s car hire at the airport in Valverde too, and in the centre of town. Car hire firms on El Hierro and Tenerife can supply child car seats but make sure you book in advance as numbers are limited. To feel completely secure, either bring your own from home or hire one from Hire4Baby Tenerife and they’ll have it waiting for you at the airport in Tenerife when you arrive (they also have pushchairs, cots and high chairs).

There is a taxi rank at the airport in Valverde or you can book an official El Hierro taxi in advance. They can’t provide child car seats so you’ll need to bring your own. Local buses run from Valverde port (numbers 7 and 11) and airport (number 10) to Valverde town every couple of hours, where you can transfer to other routes to reach your final destination.

El Hierro is small, so your transfer from the ferry port or airport will be under an hour, unless you’re doing it by bus, which takes longer because you have to change in Valverde town.

Getting about

While buses on El Hierro are inexpensive, clean and very punctual, there aren’t very many of them – most routes run 7am to 10pm on weekdays (earlier at weekends), with departures taking place only every couple of hours.

Hiring a car is a much more convenient way of getting around and works out relatively inexpensively. Not to mention the fact that there are some truly spectacular drives on El Hierro that you’d miss out on without your own vehicle. The roads are in excellent condition, so no worries on that front, but bear in mind that the island has only three petrol stations, so you need to plan ahead to avoid getting caught out.

Pavements are generally in good condition so walking with a pushchair is no problem in villages and towns all over the island. That said, almost everywhere is very hilly so be prepared for a workout. With the exception of Valverde and Frontera, the island’s biggest towns, there’s very little traffic on El Hierro – the baby girl wasn’t walking yet when we were there but I wouldn’t hesitate to let her toddle along on the pavement if we were to go back.

Eating out

A baby having its nappy change on a shelf next to a window with an amazing view of a shoreline
No baby change facilities at Mirador de La Peña restaurant but the view from the loos made up for it

The staff in every restaurant and café we went to were very happy to accommodate the baby girl, whether by providing a high chair or letting us park her out of the way when she was sleeping in the pushchair in the evening. None had baby change facilities.

Essentials

The supermarkets on El Hierro are all small and quite expensive, which isn’t surprising given that almost everything is brought in by boat from the mainland via Tenerife. That said, we were able to find a wide range of nappies and baby wipes in most supermarkets we visited. Supermarkets close for a few hours at lunchtime and are closed on Sunday afternoons.

Emergencies

The phone number for emergency services is 112 in the Canary Islands and there’s an accident and emergency department at Hospital Insular Ntra. Sra. de Los Reyes in Valverde. A European Health Insurance Card (this post tells you how to apply for one for yor child) will cover you for emergency treatment or treatment for existing conditions. More information on healthcare in the Canaries on the NHS’s website.

Things to do

A man hikes through a volcanic seaside landscape with a baby on his back on El Hierro in the Canary Islands
Hiking through the volcanic landscape east of the natural swimming pool at La Maceta

El Hierro has a handful of sandy beaches, including at Arenas Blancas, El Verodal, Las Playas, Tamaduste and La Restinga (the latter two are very little), but you won’t find much in the way of amenities. Some have an outdoor shower and public toilet, but that’s usually about it.

Much more common on the island are sea water swimming pools carved into the volcanic shoreline and accessed by the sort of ladders you find at actual swimming pools. While less convenient for families with small children than a sandy beach, these areas boast open access barbecues, shady picnic tables, showers and toilets, and usually a bar or restaurant (some of which are only open in high season).

When it comes to non-seaside pursuits, we found small playgrounds in La Restinga, Valverde, at the Pozo de La Salud spa hotel in Sabinosa (the restaurant is open to non-residents) and at the Hoya del Morcillo recreation area in the forested centre of the island. There’s lots of fantastic hiking on El Hierro, so you’ll want to bring a sling or backpack carrier. The visitor centre at El Julán, which is dedicated to the ancient people of the island and has the most incredible views, has an area of floor cushions that looks inviting for toddlers, while the Centro de Interpretación Vulcanológico outside La Restinga is immersive enough to be entertaining for little ones while the grown-ups learn about volcanic activity on the island.

Local village festivals, such as El Pinar’s celebration of its patron saint San Antonio Abad in January are exciting for small children, and families with babies and children of all ages come together to watch the local sports obsession, Canary Islands wrestling. Matches take place in the evening. It’s hard to find information about this sort of community event online so remember to ask in the local tourist office (only two offices are listed here but there are more than that on the island, I promise) if there are any festivals or wrestling matches taking place during your stay.

 

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Practical tips for a scuba diving holiday with a baby

On By jocairdwp

Published by Diver, May 2018, with the headline “Baby diver”.

Scuba divers come out of the sea while a baby watches on a beach
The baby girl watches while her diving parents emerge from the sea at Gozo’s Wied il-Ghasri gorge © Yoji Caird

Almost the moment my partner and I found out that I was pregnant, we started talking about the first dive trip we’d take with the baby. We had lost count of the number of times that people, on finding out that we were divers, told us wistfully how much they used to love diving too…before their kids were born and that phase of their life came to an end. We really didn’t want that to happen to us, but we knew that we would need to be proactive if we were going to continue diving as new parents.

When our daughter was three-months-old we booked a week’s diving at a Red Sea resort with some friends who have a baby around the same age. That trip, which took place when she was seven-months-old, was exhausting, but it was also an unqualified success and got us talking about where we could take her next. Two dive trips later – first to the Maltese island of Gozo, then to El Hierro, the most remote of the Canary Islands – this is what we’ve learned.

Choose your destination wisely

While in the past our choice of dive destination was informed mainly by what we could afford and whether we had the time to do it justice, these days there are more factors to consider. Babies and jet lag are a bad combination, so we try to avoid time differences greater than four hours unless we’re going away for at least 10 days. Flight time and transfers come into play too – long-haul flights are doable with a baby or toddler, but short-haul is certainly easier, and the smoother the transition from airport to accommodation the better. If you’re itching to visit a particular long-haul destination, however, there is definitely an argument for doing it sooner rather than later – most airlines charge a small fee for travelling with a baby, while toddlers two and up pay full fare.

All those considerations might seem limiting, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing: there’s a lot of world out there to dive and it can be helpful to have your options narrowed a bit. Being forced to shift the focus onto some of the excellent, but less glamorous, diving available closer to home can be positive too. We are UK-based, but had never thought to go the Canaries before, for example, because far flung spots like Sipadan and the Great Barrier Reef just seemed like more tempting options. But on our recent trip there, we dived on an underwater volcano, spotted bull rays for the first time and explored some of the prettiest shallow caves we had ever seen.

Family-friendly dive centres

A man and a woman in scuba gear stand at the seaside with their daughter in a pushchair
Before a dive at the Salt Pans on the Maltese island of Gozo © Yoji Caird

Dealing with staff who are willing to be a bit flexible about how they do things (within the bounds of safety and not negatively impacting other divers, of course) makes all the difference when it comes to diving with a baby in tow. We really fell on our feet with the staff at the dive centres we’ve visited since travelling with our daughter. The dive guides and RIB driver at Orca Dive Club Soma Bay in Egypt were extremely patient when we arrived a few minutes’ late for the scheduled departure time for almost every dive, for example, while those at Atlantis Dive Centre in Gozo let our daughter and my babysitting brother (see below for more on childcare on dive trips) come with us in the dive truck so they weren’t stuck in the apartment.

Let the dive centre know that you’ll be travelling with a baby when you first enquire about a trip. Or if you’re booking through an agent, ask them to sound out the dive centre on your behalf. If they appear uptight at this stage, look for an alternative – travelling with a little one is unpredictable enough with having to worry about dive centre staff throwing a hissy fit if you have to opt out of a dive at the last minute.

In addition to making the diving itself more relaxing, and therefore more enjoyable, a family-friendly dive centre can also be helpful when it comes to recommending baby-friendly restaurants or activities, and some will even arrange babysitting. At Atlantis our little one was delighted to find a huge pile of toys belonging to the daughter of the couple who own it; and we were delighted to be able to sort out our gear in peace after each dive.

Get informed about your accommodation

If having the dive centre close by was important before, it’s even more so now – babies take up a lot of time and you don’t want to spend any more of it in transit than strictly necessary.

Other factors to consider when you’re choosing accommodation are proximity to shops, bars and restaurants, availability of healthcare (more of an issue at remote destinations in the developing world than elsewhere) and the presence of a pool (ideally heated) or baby-friendly beach.

The biggest accommodation decision you need to make is between resort and self-catering. The latter is certainly easier as far as flexibility around meals and snacks for your little one, but grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning take up valuable time that you might otherwise be able to spend diving. Hotel buffets are also excellent if your little one is hard work at mealtimes, allowing you to tag team eating and childcare while not letting your dinner get cold.

Make the most of childcare

Two women in scuba dive gear hold babies wearing sun hats
Tag-teaming babysitting and diving © Steve Pretty

Couples where only one partner dives have it easier when it comes to travelling with a baby – just make sure the non-diving partner gets some relaxation time doing what they like, too.

If both dive, the simplest option is to tag team diving and childcare, but that can feel like a somewhat sad way to spend a vacation if part of what you love about scuba is sharing it with your other half.

Many resorts have a free or inexpensive kids’ club, some of which are open to children from the age of two. This can be an excellent – and fun – solution to your childcare problem, but won’t be right for all children. You need to be prepared for your child to take a while to settle in or refuse to go altogether.

Taking a non-diving friend or relative along to babysit is a good alternative; and offering to cover some of the costs might entice more candidates for the role, if your budget stretches that far. Or go with another pair of diving parents who will be happy to look after your little one while you dive and vice versa.

Be organized

Vacations are supposed to be about kicking back and going with the flow, right? Sadly not, if you’re talking about taking your baby away with you diving. Gone are the days when you can just roll up at the dive centre, do a day of diving and head straight to the bar afterwards. That doesn’t mean you won’t have a brilliant trip, it just means you need to do a bit more day-to-day planning than you used to.

On our trip to Egypt, my partner and I and the other couple all each squeezed in two dives a day every day by doing very efficient changeovers. After each dive the babysitting pair would be waiting at the dive centre with the babies, ready to hand them over the moment the diving pair were out of their wetsuits. As the new diving pair prepared for their dive, one of the new babysitters would take charge of the babies, while the other rinsed and hung up both sets of gear. We would also discuss at dinner each night who was diving and when on the following day, making use of both early morning and sunset dive options so we could pack in as much time underwater as possible.

For self-catering trips, meal planning will allow you to have as chilled out a surface interval as possible, especially if your accommodation is close to the dive centre. It’s not always easy pinning down exactly how long you’ll be out on a dive, so having something easy like sandwiches or leftovers that be quickly thrown together or heated up is a good route to go down.

Be prepared for a slower pace

A woman and a baby play on rocks, photographed from the water
Hanging out at El Tacarón natural swimming pool on El Hierro on a day off from diving © Steve Pretty

Unless you’re taking a babysitter along who’s happy to look after your little one all day every day, it’s unlikely that you will be able to do as much diving as you did on trips pre-parenthood. Chat with your partner (and whoever is helping with childcare, if applicable) before the trip about your expectations – all things considered, how many dives will you each be able to do per day? Getting into the right frame of mind – that you’re there not just for diving but also to spend some time together as a family – will ensure you have a more enjoyable experience.

With that in mind, it’s probably best to hold off on those bucket list dive destinations until your child is old enough to be left at home with a relative while you travel – or of an age to dive with you! You don’t want to fly half way round the world just to spend your trip seething with jealousy when you find out that you missed out on seeing the sardine run/marine iguanas/a shoal of manta rays because it was your turn looking after the baby.

Destinations that require long boat trips to reach the dive sites are best saved for another time too. Opt instead for a resort with an excellent house reef, or plenty of local dive sites, so you can dive a couple of times a day with a minimum of fuss. You may not see anything really earth shattering on this type of trip, but sometimes a slower pace can give new passions room to breathe, whether that’s observing fish behaviour, spotting rare nudibranchs or getting handy with a GoPro.

Remember that increased time topside is also an opportunity to immerse yourself in the cultural side of a destination, get to know a new cuisine or explore the great outdoors, all elements that might have played second fiddle to the diving before your little one came along.

Don’t be intimidated

If all this sounds like hard work, don’t worry…I promise that it will be worth it. A dive vacation with your baby in tow is a very different beast to the dive vacations you took before you became parents but different doesn’t mean inferior – go into the experience with your eyes open and you never know what adventures you might be letting yourself in for.

How to do airport transfers with a baby or toddler

On By jocairdwp
A man with a baby in a sling eats a salad on a train.
On the train on our way home from the baby girl’s first trip abroad, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, when she was six-weeks-old.

Public transport used to be my go-to method for getting to and from the airport but that’s all changed since the arrival of the baby girl. Unless our trip is a super short one, these days we travel with too much stuff to mess around with trains and buses for airport transfers.

On the couple of occasions that we used public transport for transfers when the baby girl was still very little, we carried her in her sling, having packed the pushchair away before leaving the house, ready to be checked in with the rest of the luggage. Doing so meant there was one fewer thing to manoeuvre on and off trains and up and down escalators.

Now that she’s too big for the sling but not big enough to go without a pushchair, we make sure that we’ve packed in such a way that we’re able to manage both suitcases and pushchair. (When it comes to the practicalities of these journeys with pushchairs, my posts on train travel and navigating public transport might come in handy.)

Taxis are the easiest option, but can be very expensive once you’ve factored in a car big enough for all your luggage and your baby’s car seat. More often than not, therefore, we drive our van and leave it in a car park near the airport, then take a shuttle bus to the terminal. If you’re willing to pay a little more, but still less than forking out for cabs, there’s always onsite parking, or valet services where your car is parked for you – usually available for car parks both on and off site.

When it comes to getting to your final destination from the airport, I highly recommend booking a transfer in advance, particularly if you’re arriving late at night, don’t speak the language or are visiting for the first time. You can request a car seat when you book your transfer, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get one, so it’s usually safer to bring your own. (Most airlines won’t charge you for checking in a child car seat, but do check before you book.) It’s worth checking the laws around child car seats in your destination before you travel though, to ensure that your car seat meets the requirements. Here’s a very helpful list of the rules in different popular holiday destinations from the consumer group Which?

If you can’t bring your own car seat and end up having to take your baby in a taxi or private car without one, make sure you have a sling with you. The adult who will be carrying the baby sits in the back seat, straps himself in and then puts on the sling so the baby is held by the sling and not the seat belt. To be clear, I’m not advocating that you do this: it’s a safer option than having your baby loose on your lap or strapping her in with your seat belt, but it’s not a safe way to travel.

Hiring a car can be a very convenient way of doing things, if it suits the rest of your holiday plans. Car seats can be an issue here too, with some parents reporting having booked a car seat but finding none available on arrival. This doesn’t happen very often, but again, you can avoid worrying about it by bringing your own.

Baby and toddler destination guide: Gozo

On By jocairdwp

We took the baby girl with us to the Maltese island of Gozo in November 2017, when the baby girl was around 14-months-old, and had a brilliant time. We only spent a week there, so this guide is by no means exhaustive – if you’ve been to Gozo with a baby or toddler, please add your own tips in the comments.

Getting there

Gozo doesn’t have its own airport, so you need to fly to Malta International Airport, then transfer by hire car, taxi or bus to the ferry terminal at Cirkewwa. It’s a 40-minute drive and the ferry crossing takes around 25 minutes. You buy tickets on the journey back to Malta. Gozo itself is very small, so your transfer the other end is unlikely to be more than 20 minutes.

If you don’t want to hire a car at the airport (local options are available on Gozo itself), the most convenient way of getting to your accommodation is to book a taxi to transfer straight through to Gozo on the ferry. The cheaper option to have a Maltese taxi drop you at the ferry terminal and a Gozitan one pick you up the other end.

On our recent trip I just assumed that the transfer we had booked would take us direct to our accommodation, and was initially dismayed when it turned out we had to unload at the terminal, board as foot passengers and go from there. In the end, though, it all worked out fine – there’s an efficient luggage pick-up and drop-off service for foot passengers on the ferry which meant we only had to deal with the pushchair and hand luggage.

Getting about

It’s a legal requirement for children under the age of three to use a car seat in Malta, and children up to the age of 10 can only sit in the front seat if they have one. Some taxi companies will be able to supply a car seat, so it’s possible to book one for your airport transfers. If you’ll be using taxis a lot to get around the island though (which I don’t recommend as they’re expensive compared to both buses and car hire), you should bring your own. If you’re hiring a car, you can hire a car seat with it.

Buses on Malta and Gozo (which run 5:30am-11pm daily, plus overnight on Fridays, Saturdays and public holidays) can accommodate up to two unfolded pushchairs. We found drivers and fellow passengers very helpful when it came to getting on and off, even when the bus was totally packed. Gozo bus routes radiate from a central terminus in Victoria, the main town at the centre of the island, which means you have to change buses if you want to get from one seaside place to another, or to tourist spots like the Ġgantija Temples.

High, narrow, uneven pavements make getting around with the pushchair a little perilous, but traffic mainly moves slowly enough in the villages that it doesn’t feel too unsafe in those moments when you have to walk in the road.

Eating out

The staff in every restaurant and café we went to were very happy to accommodate the baby girl, whether by providing a high chair and a bowl of plain pasta or letting us park her out of the way when she was sleeping in the pushchair in the evening. Most also had baby change facilities and several had child menus.

Essentials

You can buy nappies and wipes in the mini markets in the various small resort towns, but for anything else (baby toothbrushes, etc), and for more choice, you’ll need to go to one of the proper supermarkets in Victoria. Supermarkets are open all day, every day – the smaller ones have restricted hours in the off season. Chemists also sell baby supplies – they are usually open Monday-Saturday, though at least one on the island is always open on Sunday morning.

In terms of baby food and formula, small supermarkets have a very limited range, but the big supermarkets are better equipped. Small supermarkets all sell fresh milk.

Healthcare

The phone number for emergency services is 112 and there’s an accident and emergency department at Gozo General Hospital in Victoria. A European Health Insurance Card (I give you the lowdown on how to apply for an EHIC for your child here) will cover you for emergency treatment or treatment for existing conditions. More information on healthcare in Malta and Gozo on the NHS’s website here.

Things to do

There are sandy beaches at Ramla and its much less accessible neighbour, San Blas (don’t try taking a pushchair). San Blas is entirely undeveloped, while Ramla has a small kiosk selling snacks and drinks, so you’ll need to bring everything with you. There’s no shade at either beach, though you can hire umbrellas at Ramla.

There are smaller sandy beaches in the resort towns of Marsalforn and Xlendi, and lovely stony bays all over the place. Our favourites were Mgarr ix-Xini and the gorge at Wied l-Għasri, a secret spot you reach via 100 steps cut into the cliff.

There is a playground in Marsalforn and one right by the bus terminal in Victoria. Here is a handy list I found of lots more.

A woman and a man carrying a baby in a sling watch a sunset
Admiring the sunset at the mouth of Xlendi Bay, November 2017 © Yoji Caird