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Published: August 23rd 2022
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Iglesia de la Concepcion
Iglesia de la Concepcion in Santa Cruz de Tenerife The nature on Tenerife is far more interesting than the towns
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 doesn't really count as "travelling abroad". In these two years we have done plenty travelling in Sweden and we have enjoyed that immensely. But we’ve 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 aren't normal. About three weeks before we were scheduled to leave the company 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 didn't 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
at all we were happy as long as we could go anywhere.
Puerto de la Cruz 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 people comment on how good the beaches are. We are not beach goers and can't 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.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife 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
Street art
This piece of street art we found inside a pedestrian tunnel is an auditorium/concert hall down by the waterfront. From one side the auditorium looks like a weirdly shaped ice-cream sculpture that's 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.
Macizo de Anaga 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
Auditorio de Tenerife
From this side the auditorium looks like a weirdly shaped ice-cream sculpture that's started to melt end having no idea what they were talking about. The trail was wide and easy to follow everywhere.
At the park headquarters they also recommended 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.
Teide National Park 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 a composite photo, showing parts of the national park, and we have also recorded a short video. If you look carefully you can see that it
Auditorio de Tenerife
From this side the auditorium looks like a bird with a very large beak 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. When we two days before we went there went online looking for tickets it turned out that we were too late. So we had to settle with only walking a bit in the park.
The Teide cable car was not the only site we wanted to visit that we missed out on due to limited tickets available. The
Barranco del Inferno trail was another. For safety reasons they only allow a maximum of 300 hikers a day onto the trail. Another place Ake wanted to visit was
Cueva del Viento. Here the number of visitors was restricted mainly due to pandemic regulations. Cueva del Viento is a system of lava tubes and that is a typical Ake site. Emma was quite relieved that we couldn't get tickets there.
Paisaje Lunar After Teide we went to a site called Paisaje Lunar, which means Lunar Landscape. The name of the site sounded spectacular to us and in books
But that looks like an arse
From this side the auditorium looks like a naked upturned arse and on websites it was also described as spectacular. It wasn't spectacular. Far from it actually. Paisaje Lunar is a relatively small area with some slightly unusual rock formations created by volcanic activity followed by erosion. The hike to get there was very nice though, so we are still happy we went. The hike was far better than the site.
By this we end this, the first of two blog entries from our trip to Tenerife, an island we would like to describe as one where the nature is more interesting than the towns.
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fer de lance
Stef
Canary Islands
Hi, it really looks like a beautiful place with a great diversity, nature's wise! I am also a big fan of all volcanic landscapes.