Tenerife Canary Islands

We took a break from the hustle and bustle of city and desert exploring to get some real R&R. Enter Tenerife. Tenerife is one of the Canary Islands off of the west coast of Africa and is owned by Spain. Apparently it is pretty popular among Europeans to vacation, especially Brits as we’ve noticed. We decided to go here for multiple reasons: 1) it was close to Morocco and Portugal (our next stop), 2) Drew could use his timeshare so lodging was already paid, and 3) it was convenient for my parents to join us for their anniversary.

When we arrived at the hotel (El Marques Palace) in Puerto de Santiago, dad was already there and bearing flowers (good job, dad!). We got situated in our hotel and went to dinner up the street to celebrate their anniversary.

Saturday was mostly a pool day, groceries, and rental car. We decided it would be cheaper and more convenient to rent a car to explore than to take several of the different types of tours offered. Sunday we set out to explore the island. We based our itinerary from one of the jeep tours we decided not to use. We stopped briefly in the town of Vilaflor which is the highest elevation town in Tenerife and also their local wine region. The view from the town was limited to the cloud cover surrounding the island.

We continued to climb higher up the mountain and were impressed by the views. We stopped when we got to the edge of the Teide National Park to read the signs and take in the views of Mt. Teide. The different types of rock combinations from the volcanic activity were neat to see. We drove by the mountain and stopped at a place for lunch that had a bunch of lizards entertaining us (one was brave enough to climb on dad’s foot).

On the way down the backside of the mountain we were given another visual treat with the mountain surrounded by a thick layer of clouds.

Once at the bottom we stopped at the village of San Cristobal de la Laguna which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site to look around for a while.

On Monday we took mom and dad to the airport and bought a new suitcase since my handle broke off. In the afternoon we went to Playa Los Guios which was a black sand beach from the volcanic rock and was very hot. The water had large rocks as well that we needed to maneuver over just to get in the water.

Tuesday we took a jog along the coast and saw the other two beaches. All of them are pretty small for a resort town. We cooled off afterwards at the pool and went out for a nice dinner on the water later in the evening.