Back in January 2020 we came back from a trip in Brazil. Little did we then know that we would not be travelling abroad any more that year or the next. Well, we have visited Tallinn twice, but that doesnt really count as travelling abroad. In these two years we have done plenty travelling in Sweden and we have enjoyed that immensely. But weve missed going to foreign destinations.
Fast forward to spring 2022. Finally we felt that things were returning to almost normal again we booked a trip to Rhodes in Greece. But we got ourselves a quick reminder that things still arent normal. About three weeks before we were scheduled to leave we booked with cancelled all their trips to Rhodes for April and May. In a rush we had book a new trip. Since we were late we had to change destination. We ended up in Tenerife in the Canary Islands in Spain instead. Thankfully it didnt matter much to us if we ended up on a Greek or a Spanish island. After two years of not being able to go abroad
The town Puerto de la Cruz on the north coast is where we stayed. It was a good place to have as a base for us. Many tourists stay there so in the town there are plenty of restaurants, shops, car rental agencies etc. But apart from that we found Puerto de la Cruz to be a bit boring, uninteresting and artificial.
We let other on how good the beaches are. We are not beach goers and cant really tell. All we noticed was that the swell from the Atlantic Ocean made swimming impossible in many places. But in sheltered coves we saw people swimming, so it is possible to bathe safely.
The city Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the capital of the Canary Islands. We found this city to be far more interesting than Puerto de la Cruz and ended up spending the better part of a day there.
One of the more visible and memorable buildings in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the Auditorio de Tenerife. It
is an auditorium/concert hall down by the waterfront. From one side the auditorium looks like a weirdly shaped sculpture thats started to melt, from another side it resembles a bird with a very large beak and from yet another side it very much looks like a naked upturned arse.
When we walked around in Santa Cruz de Tenerife we also found some historical buildings, one or two interesting parks, some public art such as statues and sculptures worth taking a look at and so on. Nothing fancy or spectacular but still enough for us to enjoy our walk.
Since most of Tenerife is difficult to reach with public transport we decided to rent a car for a few days. The first of these days we went to Macizo de Anaga, a low mountain range in the north east. The main reason we went there is that we wanted to hike.
Before we set off on the hike we were warned that some sections of the trail were steep and slippery and that we should be careful. We walked the trail and came out in the other
At the park headquarters they also us to visit a hamlet named Chinamada. In Chinamada there is a viewpoint with good views over the ocean and there are cave houses. Cave houses have a front wall, and sometimes a porch, like any other house. But the rooms are dug into the mountain and the back of the house is the rock face. It is impossible to say from just looking at these houses how large they really are. They can easily have five or six rooms dug into the mountain side that are not visible from the outside.
Mount Teide is an active volcano. With a height of just over 3,700 meters it is the highest point in all of Spain. Mount Teide and the surrounding area is a national park and has also been included on the UNESCO world heritage list. We have added photo, showing parts of the national park, and we have also recorded a short video. If you look carefully you can see that it
is a huge caldera, a stratovolcano that has collapsed into itself. The signs to look for are a relatively flat area surrounded by a rim.
It is possible to go up on Teide by cable car.
