THE BEACHES OF TENERIFE

ACROSS THE DESERT SANDS

Without a car we were limited to the immediate areas of Golf del Sur on Tenerife where the Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Club was located.  The beaches here were not appealing. Rocky, black volcanic stones comprised the rugged “beaches” and though the water looked beautiful there were enough waves that threatened to dash us into the unforgiving rocks and so we hung around the pool. 

NO

Of course, because of the looming volcano Mt. Teide, which last erupted in 1909, all the natural beaches on Tenerife are black volcanic boulders, stones and pebbles. There are rare exceptions. One is at the town of El Medano, about 12 km away where there is a fine black sand beach, but we opted to go to a manmade beach in Los Cristianos. For €25 we were whisked to the sands of the Sahara Desert.

PLAYA TO PLAY

Tourism is a major industry on Tenerife and in an attempt to lure more travelers to this largest island in the Canarian archipelago beaches were created. The thinking was that tourists would prefer golden or white sand to the natural black coloring of the island. Starting in the 1970s some 270,000 tons of sand from the Sahara Desert was brought to Tenerife to create Las Teresitas Beach near the island’s capital of Santa Cruz.

 YES!   PLAYA LAS VISTAS LOS CRISTIANOS

It is perhaps the most popular beach in all of the Canary Islands, but we didn’t need to travel to the opposite end of the Tenerife to gain a similar experience. Instead, we took a 20-minute taxi to the party town of Los Cristianos and the twin manmade beaches located there. 

YOU WOULDN’T KNOW YOU’RE ON TENERIFE

Los Cristianos and the nearby Playa de las Americas are the main holiday resorts on Tenerife. It’s where much of the nightlife throbs until dawn and there are countless bars, restaurants, attractions like waterparks, and nightclubs that are found in this stretch of southwest Tenerife.  

Tourism has transformed the once sleepy fishing village of Los Cristianos making it a destination that now welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors yearly. There are two beaches, one on either side of the harbor where the ferries that service La Gomera, Gran Canaria and Valverde dock. 

Playa Los Cristianos

Playa de Los Cristianos is inside the harbor and has a long curving pedestrian promenade that can get wall-to-wall crowded with people milling about. Along this stretch there are lots of restaurants, bars and shops catering to the tourist trade. You can sit with a beer at watch a ferry dock at the pier.

LOS CRISTIANOS WEB CAM

Playa de la Vistas is on the other side of the bay. This wide beach is very popular About a kilometer long, the blue and green water is calm and shallow and very clear and very kid-friendly. There are a string of dining and drinking establishments along this stretch as well. Conveniently located just off the blisteringly hot sands is Supermarket Malibu where we went repeatedly to resupply our beers and sandwiches. My halting Spanish was greatly appreciated by the woman behind the counter, even after the third trip of me muttering ‘mas cerveza’.

Promenade Playa Los Cristianos

At both flat beaches there are showers and bathrooms, beach volleyball courts and access to watersports. It was a completely different beach experience than at Golf del Sur.

For €4.00 apiece we rented chaise lounges and an umbrella, and as we peered into the sun already fierce on that early April day, we could see the island of La Gomera. It  was an idyllic stay in Tenerife and a wonderful beach day. Had we not visited Playa Las Vistas, or any other beach on Tenerife our time there would not have been as memorable.

LAS VISTAS WEB CAM

If I am ever fortunate to return to Tenerife, I would rent a car to explore all the beaches of the island, manmade and natural.

Thanks for reading

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj

BEER ENCOUNTERS ON TENERIFE

I’LL HAVE ANOTHER or HOW I LEARNED TO LIVE WITH WHATEVER BEER THEY HANDED ME

The history and fame of wine from the Canary Islands is long. Written about by Shakespeare, and popular with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, the seven islands of the archipelago off the coast of Africa, but belonging to Spain, have been producing wine even before the Bard starting tapping at his word processor.

THE FORTUNATE ISLES

Because of its isolation the Canary Islands were spared the devastating phylloxera plague that destroyed nearly 90% of the vineyards of the world in the mid-1800’s and today wines are still produced from some vines dating back over 200 years. 

On Tenerife, the largest of the Canaries, with Mt. Teide rising dramatically the climate changes from hot beaches to alpine forests within a few short miles. Harvesting can start in August and continue through to October with the five different micro-climates of this “mini-continent”. 

Because of the trade winds, the Canary Islands were the first and last stop in sailing across the Atlantic, and the islands became very wealthy as a result, attracting merchants and missionaries and adventurers. Wine exports to England and the Americas helped and this “tourist’ trade flourished.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

The Canary Islands are still attracting “tourists”. Lured by the year-round sub-tropical weather, millions of visitors from all over Europe and the Americas visit the islands. Of course, one would think that the wine from this historical archipelago or the natural beauty like the looming Mt Teide on Tenerife would be a main attraction, but I have it on good authority (family members from England who have visited Tenerife and other Canary Islands several times), and they have never bothered to explore the islands beyond where the cheap beers are located. 

MAS CERVEZA

We did more than that as we poked around Tenerife for the first week, taking a tour of Mt. Teide and a wine tour to the Monje Bodega and a visit to the Casa del Vino a museum dedicated to wine, but much of the island’s visitors are more interested in finding modestly priced adult libations than they are negotiating the strenuous road to Masca.

Our family from England spoke fondly of the times when a pint was just €.75 cents, but on this current trip there was nothing less than €1.50, which is still damned cheap. And, the beer is very good, especially on a blisteringly hot day.

Mostly cold lagers, that weigh in around 4.5-5% ABV, the main beers of the Canary Islands are thirst quenchers that pair well with lots of different foods. Wine is great, but when it’s hot outside, a lager in a frosted glass (readily available) is best. It’s just that you don’t have a choice of what beer to drink, as you usually would with wine.

YOU TAKE IT AND YOU DRINK IT 

Often there is only one sort of beer served in bars and restaurants, maybe two, but basically what the establishment has is what you get. Places that cater to a more UK crowd will maybe have Guiness as well, and areas that cater to German tourists may carry ales or heavier beers like Paulaner, but that would not come from a tap, usually.

There was only one place that had a beer menu and that was at the Centro Comercial Pasarela shopping mall in Los Cristianos, and this place, located on the top floor near the food court and a children’s play area had an array of lagers, pilsners and ales from all over Spain and Germany and all of them on tap.

As the boys frolicked on their kinder apparatus, we quaffed Paulaner and Victory from Malaga and Cruzcampo from Seville.

CENTRO COMERCIAL PASARELA

Here’s a quick listing of beers we got to drink on our many pub crawls and dinners in the Tenerife Sud tourist areas.

Dorada

With Mt. Teide as its logo Dorada is everywhere. A pilsner with an ABV of 4.7% was on tap nearly everywhere we went. Dorada also makes “especial” beers that are about 5.5% but never ran into one of those… or never thought to ask for one.

Tropical

Brewed on Gran Canaria but available in many places on Tenerife, especially in Los Cristianos, this 4.7% pilsner has a slightly different, and more appealing, taste than Dorada. The logo features Perro de Presca a large Canarian Island pooch.

If you go to a supermarket to purchase a bottle of Tropical, the dog’s head will conveniently turn blue when it’s cold enough to drink.

Estrella Damm

Brewed in Barcelona, Estrella Damm was the only beer available in certain restaurants near the resort. At 5.4% ABV and stronger than the ubiquitous Dorada a pint usually went for just €1.5 with dinner and happy hour prices. 

Victoria 1928
Brewed in Malaga on the Costa del Sol, finding a place serving Victoria 1928 was in the Golf de Sur section of Tenerife was unexpected. It tastes different than the Dorada and Tropical with a slight bitterness to the golden colored lager. Victoria 1928 was excellent with my fish and chips and the logo, in deference to the tourists that have traveled to Spain for vacations for decades features a German tourist from the 1960s drying sweat from his forehead with his refreshing cerveza.

Cruzcampo Especial

Now part of the Heineken fanily, the brewery was first started in 1903 in Seville, Spain. The one and only time I had a chance to drink this pilsner was at the shopping mall in Los Cristianos. Slightly hoppy, it was a different tasting beer from the Dorada, Tropical and Estrella Damms I had been drinking up that point.

Store brands

Supermarkets in Tenerife will have a full selection of beers from Spain and Europe, and they also sometimes carry their own brand of beer made especially for the supermarket chain.  

Coviran Beer

Obviously cheaper than the rest and not that bad considering, the Coviran market down the road from our Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Club in Tenerife carried their beer called appropriately enough Coviran, and at €.65 cents I had to buy one! Evidently this is a thing in Spain and a lot of market chains carry their own brand and for the desperate cheapskates, a perfect elixir.

Craft Beer in the Canary Islands?  

With all the wine history of the archipelago and the desire to drink mass-produced beer as a way of slaking one’s thirst, you would think there’s no room for craft brewing, but craft brewing is increasingly more and more popular in the Canary Islands. Even the big beer labels like Dorada and Tropical offer their beer in different flavors like Tropical offering Lemon Shandy or beer infused with tequila, or Dorada offering a stronger “Especial” or the limited edition Roja that weighs in at 6.5% ABV! 

I was quite surprised that even the Monje Winery, that was part of our gastronomic tour of Tenerife and boasting a vineyard that is over 200 years old also makes a respectable craft brew. The Enoloca is an American Pale Ale at 5.5%ABV, but much more expensive than the €1.5 beers found throughout the islands at €8.75!

Two other craft brewers of note in the northern part of Tenerife are Tacoa and Tierra de Perros. These two microbreweries produce APAs, IPAs, Bocks, Witbiers and Saisons, but we are really writing about drinking cheap beer on hot days in Spain here. I quickly fell into not really caring what beer they handed me as long as it was cold and refreshing...and cheap. The novelty of craft brewers and their hefty prices would have been short-lived at best, and I never bothered trying to push our English family fellow travelers into exploring beyond the nearby and plentiful watering holes. 

Hopefully we won't ever make the same mistake twice.  

Thanks for reading

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj

VACATIONING ON TENERIFE

WHICH WAY TO THE BEACH?

Good morning Tenerife

So, we recently visited Tenerife, Spain, the largest island in the Canary Islands archipelago and stayed at the appropriately named Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Resort. It is a vast piece of multi-tiered property in the town of San Miquel de Abona on Tenerife, and more specifically in the holiday village section called Golf del Sur down by the coast. There are plenty of other resorts and vacation rental properties in the immediate area and there are plenty of golf courses in the area, as well as a marina and a hilly promenade that edges the cliffs for those hale and hearty enough to want to brave the incessant wind which is probably welcome in the heat of summer, but in this early spring time of our visit was somewhat chilling. It is a short cab ride to the airport Tenerife South and the final approach is behind the resort.

Sunbed numbering system

Santa Barbara is massive with 8 floors brimming with suites, villas and rooms. Despite the sprawling resort there is sadly just one pool. There is a hot tub and a children’s pool of the same size next to it and there are lots of rules about their chaise lounges. Called “sunbeds”, one needs to reserve them with the pool guy by number and sometimes you only get them until 2 pm, or an afternoon shift from 2 pm on. Sometimes you can reserve for the entire day, but if you’re not in the chair by 10 am they give it away. As the days progressed and more and more people descended on the resort; Tenerife is a very very popular resort destination for a lot of Europeans, including Spaniards, and a lot of Americans; the chase for the chaise became more and more a project. 

By the summer the place must be swelling beyond capacity!

Happy Hour Sangrias

There are two outdoor bars on the premises. One is by the pool and serves breakfast lunch and dinner as well. It is the only restaurant on the resort currently open. An indoor restaurant remains closed due to covid restrictions. The other bar is open from 4 to 11 pm and it hosts musical acts nightly. 

The happy hour prices here are two drinks for the price of one, which makes for a lot of sangria in one sitting!

There is a supermarket on one of the lower floors and there is another one just down the road where the prices are better. 

You can use a gym if you reserve in advance after first signing a waiver that you will not drink and use the equipment.

Just across the street is another resort, the Bahia Principe Fantasia Tenerife. Like the Diamond Resorts, Bahia Principe is a chain, but all-inclusive and kid-friendly Bahia Principe Tenerife boasts 7 pools and a water park. Compared especially to the Santa Barbara it is sprawling.

It's possible to get a full or half-day pass in case you're wanting to take the kiddies so they can flounce about as you drink and eat for the 50 Euro (half-day) price. 100 Euros for a full day! Half day goes from 11 am to 6 pm.

Bahia Principe Tenerife

 BAHIA PRINCIPE TENERIFE

ROCKY SHORES

There’s not really a lot to do in the area, unless you plan excursions. Though the Santa Barbara is right at the ocean’s edge, there is no appreciable beach. You can pick your way down to a rocky, volcanic black beach, where the water is colored in beautiful blues and greens, but the water is rough and uninviting. For the two weeks we stayed at the resort the only time we ventured onto the “beach” was to fetch some stones for our collection and to let the English grandchildren toss rocks into the Atlantic. 

The "beach" at Santa Barbara

Throughout our stay, construction was going on to shape the shoreline into a more sloping and accommodating “beach” and a back hoe worked the rocks daily. 

Perhaps they are attempting to mimic what was done in Playa de Las Americas and Los Christianos, where beaches were created in this very touristed area and fine lighter colored sand was imported from the Sahara Desert to form a more appealing holiday beach.

GOOD EATING

There are three areas that have restaurants in the immediate area of the Santa Barbara. Several are just down the promenade from the resort and we took meals at three different ones several times over the two weeks, Volcanic Islands is a tapas bar that has live music on Sunday afternoons. We ate Paella and surprisingly good Mexican food at the Queen Mary, and at the highly regarded Alecrim Restaurante we went full American and ate gourmet hamburgers.

ALECRIM RESTARANTE 

BELLOQUINAS AT BISTRO 27

Another place, just down the road from the resort is Bistro 27, where Janet and I had a hearty breakfast with the best Belloquina, a Canary Island specialty coffee, during our stay in Tenerife and later a family dinner with all 8 of our party served perfectly.

BISTRO 27 TENERIFE

VOLCANIC ISLAND TAPAS 

Remember to make reservations. All are nothing to look at, but all are accommodating and offer great food.

WAIT THERE'S MORE!

There are several restaurants up the hill from us across from the Bahia Principe. The one I recommend is the British fish and chips place called the Reef Fish & Chip Shop, especially on Wednesdays when they have their 5 Euro basket meals…Mushy peas are another 1 Euro though!!! 

It was the only place that served Victoria out of Malaga. Mostly Dorado, from Tenerife, Estrella Damm from the mainland or the occasional Tropical beer, also from the Canaries was poured. 

THE REEF FISH & CHIPS TENERIFE 

After a leisurely walk along Calle San Miquel there is another cluster of restaurants all surrounding a neat plaza. We had one meal at Kiosko a Spanish restaurant and another at Tapas Pata de Oro.

TAPAS PATA DE ORO

As there is much competition for your Euro, every place we ate was reasonably priced and delicious and the service was cheery.

Prices for drinks usually were around 1.50 euros with dinner, including beer and sangria by the glass.   

In the couple of pubs that we happened upon like the Wild Geese Irish Pub, where we went a couple of times to watch English Premier League Football matches, beer was about 2.50 euros.

Thanks for reading

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj

.

GASTRONOMIC ROAD TRIP

WINE NOT!

MONJE WINERY

Sage words of advice: Never pass up an opportunity to drink wine, or beer, or sangria.

Here on the party island of Tenerife your Traveling Teetotalers have fallen off the wagon, between generous happy hours, and generally cheap drinks, with a pint of beer going for €1.50, which is roughly $1.66 today. Even at the resort where one would expect to pay a bit more, the Happy Hour deal of two drinks for the price of one makes two-fisted drinking a reality. The sangria served at the Ocean Breeze Bar at the Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Resort, comes in large glasses and costs just €5.00.

Thirsting to see more of Tenerife, but now hesitant about renting a car for fear of similar roads like those around the hilly switchback terrain of Masca, we booked an “Enogastronomic Tour” that would take us to the north eastern part of Tenerife to a winery, a wine museum and then lunch at a typical Canarian restaurant.   

Janet booked the tour through Trip Advisor and the tour operator was Glomar.

Our guide was an enthusiastic young father who had emigrated to Tenerife from Venezuela. His family had emigrated from Tenerife after WWII like many others to seek a better life there, but with the recent strife in that country he decided to move back to Tenerife with his Venezuelan wife and two children, aged 10 and 5.

AUDITORIO,
SANTA CRUZ de TENERIFE

We learned all that within the first 10 minutes of the tour, which is a typical way to work the tip. It was about a half hour drive to the lovely city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to pick up the other four gentlemen on this tour. This was an added plus as we got to see a bit of the leafy streets of the capital as well as the Auditorio, the opera house whose design is similar to the Sydney Opera house. 

AUDITORIO VIDEO

The other four gentlemen on our tour spoke no English, but through wine and some whiskey and Janet’s ability to speak some Spanish, by the tour’s end we were all the best of friends.

The extent of my Spanish is Mas Cerveza!

That’s what we think

The men were from Lanzorate, the easternmost and northernmost Canary Island, and just 80 miles off the coast of Africa. They were on a boy’s vacation to Tenerife, sent here by their wives.…at least that’s what we think we heard.

Anyway, they were amateur winemakers themselves and they showed us a video of how the vines on Lanzorate need to be set in shallow ditches to protect them from the damaging winds on the island.

WINE

The 4 hour tour was somewhat expensive at nearly $228, but included a tour of the Monje Winery in El Sauzal on the north of Tenerife. Other than our van load there were several Spanish speaking tourists and two pairs of Americans who came separately in their rental vehicles. The tour started with some coffee in the restaurant on the premises and then we walked onto a cold wind-swept lanai to view the vineyards that were 200 years old, a spin through the cellars and then into a “wine club” where Monje offers some odd burlesque show called: “Wine and Sex”, we ignored the creep factor and the for-sale manacles in the tasting room and drank our wine quickly, trying to make light conversation with our Lanzorate friends and the Americans. Truthfully the wine was good, and we purchased some bottles, but the burlesque show, with the logo plastered everywhere was not.

NOT CREEPY

To go on the tour at Monje was free, but to attend a tasting which offered three different wines and savory crackers between courses and chocolates at the end were available for purchase. It was included in our tour package.
MONJE WINERY 

WINE AND SEX

MORE WINE

One American couple at Monje had an AirBnB near our next stop and they said they went to the Museum of Wine daily for their bottles and recommended a number of vintners. They said the staff at the museum was knowledgeable about all the wines from Tenerife.

Set in an old hacienda, there were self-guided displays of the different parts of the wine making process and outside there was an old wine press, but we had already seen much of this at Monje so we breezed through and took a table with the 4 guys from Lanzorate and had more wine and then bought more wine to take home.

JANET AND
HER DRINKING BUDDIES

On the grounds there was also a museum of honey and a restaurant. The museums were free, except for the tastings which were part of the tour package.

WINE MUSEUM TENERIFE

LUNCH and more wine

The best part of tours is that they take you places you would never find on your own if not familiar with the land or haven’t done a lot of research to support your travels.

We had a traditional Canary Island lunch at Guachinche Como en Casa in San Cristobal de La Laguna. It was a popular local restaurant that we would not have found on our own. 

Lively and noisy and open to the elements, except for a canopy, roosters strutted around the grounds and in among the tables, presumably looking for the hens, but they were part of the menu. 

Served family style we had expansive platters of grilled chicken, beef, pork and sausages and goat served in a stew with Canarian potatoes, small and sprinkled with salt. Several carafes of red wine were placed on the long table we were seated at as well as several plates of grilled goat cheese wedges. Each wedge had either a red or green mojo sauce on it or a blackberry jam. Mojo is the ubiquitous condiment served with all meals, made with green or red chilies, sort of like a salsa.

At the end I purchased a round of drinks for everyone and we drove our new Lanzorate friends back to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

COMO en CASA

Thanks for reading

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj

MOJO RECIPES

FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWD

MT. TEIDE AND BEYOND

MASCA ROOF

Mt. Teide last erupted in 1909 and the tour guide assured her busload of patrons the magma entrails of this massive volcano were still empty and we would survive the day. It’s the third tallest volcano in the world, trailing only Moana Loa and Moana Kea on the Big Island. If measured from the ocean floor Mt. Teide rises over 24,000 feet in elevation.

The mountain is hard to miss, it looms menacingly behind our resort, catching clouds, and casting a shadow in the afternoon far enough to reach the island of Gran Caneria, roughly 40 km away, in the afternoon, and the Mt. Teide National Park is a major tourist attraction. Estimates say 3 million people visit the park yearly.

Mt Teide from Las Canadas Caldera

GET US OUTTA HERE!

Janet found a day-long bus tour that took us to see Mt. Teide and several small villages on the north of Tenerife. It was a very welcome diversion from the crass commercial tourism of Tenerife Sud, where our resort is located. Tenerife has so much more to offer than time shares and bars and nightclubs.

But before we could begin the ascent to Mt. Teide, the bus tour had to pick up several other passengers in the Playa de las Americas area. This is where most of the raucous nightlife is and the area swells with bars and nightclubs and attractions and hotels. It is much busier than our area and it took a long time to pick up everyone, and it was good to finally get on the road again.

Vilaflor

By the time we reached Vilaflor, at 1,400 meters elevation the highest village in Tenerife, we had been on the road for nearly two hours and the Cafeteria la Paz was a welcome rest stop. There we had a Canarian coffee specialty drink, a Barraquito. In the thin cold air, we enjoyed our espresso with condensed and whole milk, cinnamon, lemon zest and Tia Maria all floated to form different layers in the glass. After admiring this Canarian drink, you’re supposed to then stir all the flavors together, but we didn’t have much time to savor our Barraquito for long because we had to get back on the bus.  As we were on a tight schedule and had much to see this day, there was no time to admire a local coffee drink or to explore the old growth pine tree forest found at this elevation. Although many cars were stopped by the local attraction a monstrous pine tree called El Pino Gordo, our bus only drove by it slowly on the way to Mt. Teide.  

BARRAQUITOS

WHAT'S A BARRIQUITO?

Snow on top – Fire below / Mt. Teide

The road to Las Canadas Caldera of Mt. Teide (you never actually reach the summit unless you take a cable car to the snow-covered peak) steadily climbed along countless switchbacks passing through the tree line to a barren landscape of older and newer lava flows. The black lava is newer, the reddish tinted lava from the older iron-rich lava has oxidized over time.

We were stopped for awhile along with several buses and cars because the road was closed due to ice, so we were allowed out to take pictures of the mountain peak, before road crews finally gave the all clear. This cut into our time at the prescribed stop, halfway between a hotel and a viewing area for the Tree of Rock and we had all of 20 minutes to chose between dashing to the hotel for a coffee or a bathroom break or to admire what is perhaps the most photographed features on all of Tenerife. 

TREE OF ROCK

The Tree of Rock is a precariously looking spire that formed when different layers of rock eroded, its structure reminiscent of Arches National Park in Utah.

We chose the Tree of Rock.

Drago Milenario / Dragon Tree

We descended the north side of Mt. Teide into a more fertile wet climate. Generally, Tenerife Sud is hotter and dryer than the north where it rains more often.  

Our next stop was the village of Icod de los Vinos. First settled in the early 1500s this pleasant historical village is home to vineyards, orchards, banana plantations and the Dragon Tree, listed with UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Purported to be 1,000 years old, the Dragon Tree is a majestic massive tree that yields a red resin called Dragon’s Blood when cut.    

DRAGON TREE, ICOD de los VINOS

The bus dropped us off at one end of the historical district and picked up at the other end. Along the way we stopped to admire the town square and the Dragon Tree, mindful of “long fingers” or pickpockets known to work in the area.

Again, there was no time to linger and we could only view the tree from a distance in the Plaza de La Pila. There was no time to stroll in the Parque del Drago, although the Plaza de La Pila was beautiful and surrounded by grand old homes dating from the earliest times of the village.

We took our lunch at Restaurante Carmen for a serviceable meal at 15 Euros a piece. They offered a glass of red or white wine, soups, Janet had a very good Canarian soup, with beans and smoked ham, Pink Bream, pork chops or chicken as the main, and either a coffee or flan for dessert… oh and a roll.

Going to Garachicco

Though we didn’t have a lot of time in any one place while on this tour, we did get to see quite a bit and we got to experience a bit of Spain, rather than the tumult of a tourist area. Our original thoughts were to see what was out there on Tenerife and afterwards consider renting a car to revisit some areas that we would have enjoyed lingering at for a while longer than the tour allowed.

Garachicco was yet another village that was so enchanting, but we only got a quick twirl around the historic quarter by the tour guide who told us the city was mostly destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 1706. It had been the island’s main fishing and trade port until then.   

GARACHICCO

She twirled us past the new marina with the swimming holes formed by the old lava flows, she twirled us past a picturesque square and stated that the lifestyle of the Canarian would be to linger beneath the trees in the park to drink coffee and linger with friends. She twirled us past a fort built to protect Garachicco from pirates as Tenerife was often the first island treasure-laden ships from the Americas would hit on their return voyages.

So much to see and so little time. Janet and I strongly considered renting a car to return to the area and explore further. But we changed our mind after visiting the small mountain village of Masca, the last stop on our tour

Masca Mountain Hop

There wasn’t even a road to this tiny hamlet until the 1970s. Originally a Guanche, the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, settlement was previously only accessible by climbing the deep ravines from the ocean.

MASCA TENERIFE

It is really nothing more than a collection of rural houses connected by rough hewn stone walkways, but it is one of the top tourist attractions on Tenerife. There is a trail that goes down to the Atlantic Ocean, but the strenuous hike takes hours and typical of the day we had but a half hour to explore, just enough time to find a quiet leafy spot for a coffee.  

MASCA

Being in a tour bus was a blessing and a curse. Because we were on a “schedule” we could not linger if something caught our interest, which would be the case if we were driving around on our own. But, being on a tour bus meant we would did not have to negotiate the road into and out of Masca on our own. Treacherous, narrow and with every switchback threatening to hurtle us into the deep chasm if we took it wrong, all we had to do was put on our seat belts and somehow enjoy the majestic scenery.

ROAD TO MASCA

More than once the bus would have to back up a bit to make nearly 360 degrees turns and when passenger cars approached you could almost feel the panic as they swerved to allow the relative behemoth to pass. White knuckled, Janet and I decided right then to leave the driving to them!

When we descended out of the Masca Gorge with everyone still alive the bus erupted into applause for our driver Pedro.

As the bus made its way back to Playa de las Americas to drop off passengers, the swirling, rush-hour traffic seemed calm in comparison.

GOOGLE EARTH MASCA GORGE

PARTICULARS

Janet booked the $40 USD trip with Tenerife Sunshine Excursions through TripAdvisor.

Thanks for reading 

Leave the driving to them

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj