Travel - 4

As promised in 2007 we went to the Canary Islands again. This holiday however got a little delayed due to moving into and furnishing our new home. That’s why our “summer” holidays couldn’t start before Christmas 2008. This travelogue however is only short and mainly for providing links to the photo gallery. We weren’t that keen on seeing that much that yields an interesting story, and I wasn’t that much into serious photography. Therefore, I didn’t go to the desert in the early morning or late evening, although I originally had planned to. We just enjoyed to relax, although the weather wasn’t that warm most of the time. And after all, Fuerteventura’s landscape doesn’t come up to the variety of Tenerife.

Saturday, December 27th
We had successfully finished the usual Christmas visiting marathon, checked in our luggage the evening before and stayed in a frugal hotel in Vienna overnight. Our flight went at 8.00am. After landing in Fuerteventura’s capital Puerto del Rosario we got our car and drove to our hotel in Corralejo in the north-east of the island; we had sunny 23°C. We had a snack at a beach bar and walked through the town until we had dinner in a neat restaurant close to the sea and the harbor.

As first part of this year’s holidays we decided for a 1-week travel to Mallorca to escape the European soccer championships in Vienna a little bit.

Sunday, June 15th
We checked our luggage in in the evening before, as we had to get up early at 4.00am to get the taxi at 4.30am. Due to the soccer whoopee and the early hour we had to pay €30 to the driver in a lump sum; probably we were just stupid enough to believe him. We had clouds over Vienna when the flight started at 5.30am, but they disappeared when we passed Corsica. The airport in Palma de Mallorca is huge, we got our luggage and went to the car rental service to get our Smart. After the usual but this time only little odyssey we reached our hotel in Can Pastilla. We took a walk at the beach, because we had to wait for our room to be finished at 11.30am. We had lunch at one of the Balnearios at the beach promenade. As dinner we had a great buffet at our hotel every evening; I enjoyed the Paella so much, and the fine wine. Later we took a walk to the harbor nearby.

Today we wanted to visit a different beach by car. We finally decided to go to the Playa de la Arena at the west coast, as it consisted of black lava sand. The bay was only about 200 meters long, but very neat. We had nice waves, and the water was warm and clear. An advantage of the black sand is that the grains are larger and thus not that clingy, but a drawback is its stronger heat that is hard to bear without slippers. We had ice cream and coffee at a beach bar. In the evening we returned our vehicle.

The next day was our last full day in Tenerife, and we spent it at our beach. One last time we enjoyed the sun and the sea—that’s what I call a November weather! In the evening we said goodbye at a paella with seafood.

Saturday finally was our day of departure. We had to leave our room, but were allowed to stay at the hotel pool. We had a final walk at the beach and shopped some souvenirs. A van brought us to the airport, and the flight started punctually; we were seated in row 13. Unfortunately, it was already dark when we came over the Sahara Desert. We arrived in Vienna at 2.10 in the morning. It wasn’t as cold as expected, and at 3.30 we fell into our bed exhausted.

All in all, it was a fabulous holiday that I really had needed after the weeks and months writing at my Master’s thesis. I had found time to proof-read it, and I was looking forward to finish it. Regarding the Canary Islands, we agreed on getting to know the other islands as well. The next one will probably be Lanzarote in fall 2008.

Today we wanted to discover the Esperanza forest northeast to El Teide. We headed to Santa Cruz de Tenerife at 9.30. It was cloudy. The traffic near the city was chaotic, but thanks to Doris we didn’t take a single wrong turn. When we got on the TF-24 at La Laguna, all of a sudden we were in secluded nature. We had our first stop at a viewpoint and admired the red forest soil and the long green needles of the pine trees. The higher we got, the more clouds came into our way. Although we were looking attentively for the miradores (viewpoints), we missed them. Probably our first stop was at the Mirador Pico de las Flores anyway? However, it was fascinating to watch the wandering clouds, changing the face of the landscape from minute to minute. At Mirador Ortuño we took a short walk.

We entered the area of the Teide National Park and had a ride through the thick fog of permanent clouds. Exiting the cloud layer we met pure sunshine and had an overwhelming view onto the cloud ocean. The peak of El Teide poked out of a sea of batting. We stopped at a viewpoint and watched how the clouds slowly sneaked up on us. Other cars stopped as well, and it was fascinating to see how the clouds finally enshrouded us and made the sunshine almost disappear. In this foggy moment we were able to see a circular rainbow right in front of us. One minute later the clouds dropped back and freed the sun again. I was able to capture this sequence of moments in a movie.

During our journey we came past the Observatorio del Teide. We entered the cloud layer again, where it started to drizzle. At La Caldera del Pedro Gil we wanted to see the stone formations called Organos, but as we didn’t know what turn to take at a fork, we turned back. We took a snack in our car and drove on. We came past the Piedra de la Rosa that is located right besides the road, but we didn’t find a space to park our vehicle, so we moved on.

We headed for Orotava. As the weather was still hazy, we didn’t have a nice view anymore. The Mirador Humboldt would have interested me, but it was closed and a building site, and the weather wasn’t suitable anyway. So we finally decided to drive home again. Doris managed the traffic hell near Santa Cruz de Tenerife with excellence for another time. We stopped for a coffee in between and reached Adeje at 17.30.

As the next day was a public holiday, we went shopping to the supermercado. Several other people had the same idea. We overlooked the Halloween whoopee. Later we had dinner at “our” BBQ restaurant again. From our balcony we could watch the fireworks that celebrated the end of the summer season.

The car rental guy fetched us from our hotel at 8.30 and brought us to his rental store. We got a red VW Fox. We fueled the vehicle and headed northwards, with Icod de los Vinos as first target.

We parked our Fox in a parking garage and went to the famous “1000 year old” dragon tree. We thought that the Casa del Drago was the entry, but it turned out the be the exit of the dragon tree’s park. We were heavily impressed by the dignified appearance of the ancient tree. It was downright breathing the history of centuries. It was also interesting to see some younger dragon trees at that site. Once again we saw bizarre plants that are typical for the Canary Islands. There’s also a volcano cave in that garden.

Whenever there was a rustling in the grass, one could be sure that it was caused by geckos. I somehow fell in love with those animals. Their grand population on this island made the gecko an icon for Tenerife. By the way, the largest feral animals on the Canary Islands (and probably at the same time the most dangerous ones) are—bunnies.

Our journey led us to Garachico, where we were absolutely overwhelmed by the 300 year old black lava formations at the coast. A volcanic eruption buried the ancient harbor beneath it. The pristine cliffs are still visible at the water, and they were partially formed into seawater pools. The crystal clear water surged at the rocks. We saw crabs, living as well as dead ones. After a snack we took a walk to the ancient harbor gate that was obsoleted by the volcanic eruption. It is located in the town at a significant distance to the coast.

We proceeded to the headland Punta de Teno in the northwest of Tenerife. Near Buenavista del Norte the road became narrow, and large signs warned us to not take that way during rain or wind. They also said something about access to a building site for authorized personnel only. But other cars just continued going that way, and we did as well. We soon noticed that those warnings haven’t been put up for fun: The road was a real adventure. Small stones were scattered over the narrow and winding road, warning us to bargain for larger pieces to come down. We didn’t feel too relaxed, because we didn’t see anyone else driving there. But as we finally approached the lighthouse after the mountains, we were relieved when we saw that several other people had already discovered that place. There was a strong wind, but it was sunny. We went to the coast and enjoyed the view. Slowly it became cloudy, and finally it started to rain. But the rain didn’t last long, and we were rewarded by a beautiful rainbow. Watching the sunset might be really romantic there, but one shouldn’t think of the drive back in darkness.

The rainy drive to Masca was accompanied by several narrow serpentines. The sun was breaking through the clouds, but it kept being cold. The sunset threw light on the town Masca through the canyon, and we saw another rainbow. Driving homewards it was getting dark slowly, and then quickly. I had another photo DVD-ROM burnt, and once again we went to the La Gran Paella for dinner.

This day we had our visit to Tenerife’s western neighbor island, La Gomera. When we were picked up at 7.55, we were the first ones in the bus. We were brought to the ferry in Los Cristianos, where we cast off at 9.30. Reaching La Gomera about one hour later, the ferry docked in San Sebastian, where another bus was already awaiting us.

La Gomera is still a pristine island. The road that lead us through the country was only a few years old; there was none before. The higher our tour took us, the colder it got. Gitti warned us to wear warm clothes, but we, being stupid tourists, simply forgot about that and went in shorts and sandales. But it wasn’t too hard to bear the temperature when we watched La Gomera’s fascinating nature. The climate literally changed within only a few kilometers of drive, due to the mountainous landscape that only allowed dedicated paths for the clouds to go. We stopped at the famous La Roque de Agando that was partly shrouded by quickly wandering clouds. Pines with long needles were fishing the moisture out of the air.

We had another stop at the Laguna Grande, where we took a short walk through the misty wood. Due to the permanent presence of clouds the trunks and branches of the trees were covered with moss. Later we visited a botanic garden, and after that we stopped at a restaurant where we had lunch. After the meal we were presented the local whistle language, but as usual at such presentations with tourists as target audience, one cannot be sure about the originality.

Before we returned to the harbor, we had a stop at a banana plantation. I was fascinated, as I never had seen such trees before. Back at the harbor we were impressed by the crystal clear water, where lots of fishes were cavorting in the blue sea. On the ferry back to Tenerife we had some coffee indoors.

In the evening we had dinner at the restaurant La Brasserie that had a good-looking appearance, but it turned out that the waiters were rather unobservant, mixed up the checks, and also charged drinks to our account that we didn’t order.

Although Europe got one hour of extra sleep due to the clock change to winter time, we had breakfast a little later than usual. We were staying at the pool instead of going to the beach, as we didn’t have too much time until the ship tour.

We arrived at the harbor at 13.15. A group of chicks was allowed to enter the Freebird One before the other guests, and we wondered whether they were part of an on-board entertainment program, but they weren’t. They just teetered with high heels over the boardwalk and occupied the best seats. So, the male guests weren’t quite sure if they should appreciate their company. The women probably didn’t. It seems that those chicks were part of some kind of local TV production, as they had their own camera guy with them and had to pose for him. However, we soon set sail and enjoyed the tottering ride through the waves.

And indeed, as we approached a small group of other boats after some time, we had the chance to watch some pilot whales. The motors were all switched off to not disturb them. However, I had the impression that the boats actually came far too close to the animals. We didn’t see any dolphins, but I guess we had already been lucky enough. A little later the boat continued its ride.

Some of the chicks and some guests started the usual barfing. Luckily, Doris and I weren’t feeling bad at all. The catamaran stopped at a bathing bay, where we were served something to eat. Some guests went for a swim, some for a barf. The Caribbean music that was playing all the time became more and more boring. Finally, the journey lead us back to Adeje. When we had entered the boat at the beginning, a photo gal made pictures of the guests that came on board. Now we were offered to buy them for €10. But just like a few other guests I made a picture of the picture in an unwatched moment. Those chicks, however, were offered those pictures for free.

Later I had another CD-ROM burnt, and the evening ended with pizza.

The clock alarm went off at 7.15, and after breakfast we went to the bus stop waiting for the tour bus to pick us up. Other buses stopped by in the meantime to pick up other guests. All of them were going to the Loro Parque! We finally were picked up too, and the 1.5 hours of drive went by quickly.

The weather was cloudy. Right at the beginning we were queued for a picture with two large parrots. We went to the gorillas first, but the penguinarium fascinated me much more: They had built an artificial (or arcticficial) iceberg island for the penguins, surrounded by a glass cylinder, outside of which the visitors could stand on a treadmill that slowly drove them around the island. Some animals stood right below artificial snowfall that came down from dedicated holes in the ceiling, and they really seemed to enjoy it. They didn’t mind the workers in their water that cleaned the large windows from the inside.

We attended the entertaining orca show, as some visitors didn’t seem to have noticed the warning signs indicating the “splash zone”. Generally, we noticed that the name of the park doesn’t reflect the current situation anymore, as it is more a family entertainment zoo today, rather than just a bird park. However, there are still lots of colorful birds in many aviaries all around the place. The signs read that some of them only have a tiniest natural habitat left. You really fall in love with those beautiful birds, more than ever when you see them babbling in their cages or when they fly over your heads in the loro show.

The park also shows a variety of local vegetation, tropical plants and alien cacti. We had a snack, and at the exit we attended a poll. However, I think that the visit of such a place is just more fun if you have children at your side. The drive back to the hotel went by quickly again, but the air conditioning in the buses is much too strong for the feel of a European.

Back to Adeje I had the pictures burnt on CD, and we went out for dinner to the La Gran Paella again. We noticed that this restaurant was rather popular, as the guests were waiting in groups for the next table to be cleared.