Celestial Canary island cruise - Day 7 - Tenerife

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Day 7 - Santa Cruz - Tenerife



No alarm this morning but we were awake early as we docked alongside a huge cruise ship, after checking with my friend Miss Google the Aida vessel can hold a capacity of over 6,000 passengers! Not for us we prefer our smaller ship.



Enjoyed the morning sitting in the sunshine on the Verandah where we also had our snack lunch before joining the afternoon tour to the orchid gardens.



A different landscape again as we took a scenic drive through North Tenerife stopping at the Humboldt Viewpoint in Oratava Valley. The viewpoint is named after the explorer and naturist who visited the island in 1799 and also visited the gardens we will be visiting later.

Unfortunately the cloud cover meant we could not see Mount Tiede.



We continued our journey to Puerto de La Cruz and arrived at the Sitio Litre orchid garden where we were greeted by the owner.

Afternoon tea was served and we listened intently as the owner explained the history of the gardens.



The mansion of Sitio Litre was built in the 1730s and bought by John Paisley, a Scottish wine merchant from Dumfries, in 1756. John Paisley was a successful businessman living in Lisbon exporting wine from Portugal, but when Lisbon was totally destroyed by the 'Great Lisbon Earthquake' of 1755, he decided to leave and moved to Tenerife. He worked exporting wines from Tenerife for many years.

In 1774 John Paisley's two nephews, Archibald and James Little, came to Tenerife to help with the wine export business and moved into the house. The house then passed to Archibald Little, where the name of the place comes from. The locals had problems pronouncing 'Little'; it was a bit of a tongue twister, so they changed it to 'litre'. Sitio Litre, Little's Place. The Little family held on to the house throughout the French revolutionary wars when England and Spain were at war. Archibald and James returned to Dumfries in Scotland in 1820.



The house was sold to Charles Smythe in 1856; the garden and was added to by the Smythe family, who owned the house for the next 140 years until 1996.



The house is still privately owned. In 1996 the current owner, John Lucas, bought the house opening the garden to the public the same year. After someone researched his family tree, John discovered his great, great, great, great grandmother, Jane Little, was the niece of Archibald Little. It was a great surprise, as he had bought the house without realising he was directly related to the original owners, the Little family.

The orchid garden of Puerto de la Cruz is the oldest surviving garden in Tenerife at over 240 years old and has been owned by British families continuously since 1730.



The garden has had many famous visitors over the years, such as Agatha Christie, William Wilde, the father of Oscar and Marianne North, botany artist, who lived in the house for a couple of months towards the end of the 19th century. Some of her paintings can be seen in the garden and, if you visit Kew Gardens in London, you'll see over 800 examples of her work.



We have seen better orchid gardens over the years in Singapore & the Caribbean, where the orchids are growing more naturally by the displays at these gardens were still beautiful. The 600 year old Dragon Tree was pretty impressive too.



An enjoyable few hours for sure.

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