After 3 weeks of people asking me what that old ship is, moored up at Los Cristianos, I thought I better find out. No it’s not Roman Abramovich’s bath tub plaything, it’s the Lyubov Orlova, a Russian cruise ship, built in Yugoslavia in 1976, registered in Malta and specialising in trips from Argentina to Antarctica. Is that bizarre enough for you!

It may not look like much, but it has 4 decks and a bridge, and can carry 110 passengers at a top speed of 12 knots. Quite why it has stopped off here, I don’t know, the next cruise isn’t until November, when it will sail from Ushuaia, Argentina to Anvers Island in Antartica and back, a round trip of 1,700 nautical miles. The voyage lasts 11 days and the cost depends on what standard of accomodation you want, but starts at 3,500 dollars.

Maybe the crew came to Tenerife to get some sun and have now melted away, although I did see a few people working on deck through the lens of my camera. I didn’t think Russians liked Antartica, brings back memories of Lenin and that ice pick that did for him. Maybe they have come to liberate a few of the inmates at Planet Penquin in Loro Parque, but they always seem so happy there, so they would probably tell them to ppppp pick on someone else.

For the record, the name, Lyubov Orlova, refers to the first big screen star of Russia, she was a sort of early Marilyn Monroe, for the wild sex scenes she would undo one button on her trench coat – pretty risky stuff in Russia. An old Russian cruise ship, headed for the Antarctic,with lots of adventurous young people on board, sounds like the premise for a Ealing comedy – Carry On Comrade!