Friday 19 April 2002, 6 pm. Exeter Airport
We are in the departure lounge and our flight leaves in one hour. We caught the bus from Exeter bus station, travelling via Woodbury, being driven at breakneck speed through the little Devon country lanes lined with bluebells and stitchwort, the sunlight sparkling on the fresh bright golden foliage of poplar trees and hawthorn hedgerows, the fields full of young lambs and healthy cattle - a complete contrast to last year with the foot and mouth crisis. For £1.60 each we have had our own personal taxi to the airport as frequently we were the only passengers. A wonderful way to start our holiday, and we've also done a full day's work before we start. Exeter is so much easier than Gatwick. It's a pity there's not a greater choice of destinations. Check-in has been so straightforward, despite the need for such enormous security precautions following 11th September last year.
[Later]
We are now flying across the English Channel. It looks as if we will pass across Brittany and touch the coast of Portugal. The journey time is two and a half hours and the distance 2,700 kilometers.
Take-off was wonderful with the Devon countryside spread out below in shades of green and brown, with patches of bright yellow oil seed rape and the deep red soil of recently sown fields of arable crops and vegetables. Through it flowed the sinuous curves of the little River Clyst which joined the wide ribbon of the Exe Estuary as we flew over Topsham and turned seaward with Exmouth and the coast to our left and wonderful views of Dawlish Warren and the sandspit below us. I've always wanted to see Devon from the air and it surpassed all expectations. It's truly beautiful; even the motorway and Exeter Services looked wonderful with the tiny toy cars speeding along.
Then we were in the cloud cover until we came into bright sunshine above. We have just crossed Brittany far below, glimpsed through wisps of cotton clouds. We are six miles high and the south coast of Brittany is immediately below. The town of Lorient can be seen but it's all too small to identify much more. It's funny to think that we were down there last September. It seemed so far from home then, but now it's only twenty minutes since we left Exeter. I'm really excited, it's all such fun! Who cares where we are going, it's the joy of leaving from our local airport that is the making of this holiday!
We've just bought a couple of little bottles of Merlot wine, and some Pringle chips. At £6.00 it may be a high price to pay, but at six miles up it's pretty high anyway, so is to be expected. The wine is very powerful on an empty stomach and I'm feeling very woozy and relaxed. A video is showing and folk around are plugged into their earphones. It seems so surreal, drinking red wine before being served chicken fricassé and profiteroles while a western is shown on the in-flight video system, the sun shines outside with billowing clouds below, and below that traffic jams of Portugese commuters return home for the weekend after a hard day in the office.
Saturday 20 April 2002. Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife.
After a safe landing at Reina Sofia airport last night we were told that we would be staying on the other side of the island. A car was arranged for us and, together with a pleasant retired couple who had decided that morning to take a last-minute trip, we were whisked at 120 km an hour along the excellent dual carriageway round the edge of the island, bypassing the centre of Santa Cruz. In the dark the whole island seemed to be a long ribbon of sparkling, glittering lights. It seems to be very heavily populated and active all night. So far we have seen nothing inland, but assume that everything is concentrated around the edge. Our fellow travellers were left at a different hotel in the town, which seems big and most definitely noisy. Our self-catering accommodation in the Parc Plaza is well appointed with Spanish style heavy wooden furniture and pale flagged marble floors, a fully equipped bathroom with shower and bidet and a wooden balcony over the side of the hotel just off one of the busy squares. Not a pleasant outlook at all though perfectly clean with large pineapple palms growing nearby.
This morning is sunny with a gentle breeze, perfect for us and much cooler than Crete. However we are feeling a little jaded after a night of perpetual noise from the busy streets: dustcarts, street sweepers, drainage people and delivery vans throughout the night. The drone of machinery and roar of motorbikes - it's awful! Even with the windows closed the sound penetrates and it becomes stuffy. We found ourselves starving at about half past midnight, by the time we had reached our room and sorted out. We went out on the town, wondering if it was too late to find anything to eat. Too late? It was too early! We sat on a street terrace with a superb large beer and a pizza each, also excellent with pineapple and plenty of banana among the meat and peppers, watching mainly local people out to enjoy a Friday night with no work the following day. A lively unthreatening atmosphere, although hardly interesting architecturally. A pleasant square with geranium beds and palm trees surrounded by bars and street restaurants. It was perfectly comfortable at one in the morning sitting on the street with our beers.
Then we explored the side streets or pedestrianised calles down by the port. They were busy with couples and groups of young people, with tremendous noise coming from the night clubs. On some steeps steps lined with flowering shrubs and small palms we watched a small group of young local folk with lutes, acoustic guitars and some sort of rasping instrument, singing and playing lively Spanish music for their own entertainment. Their friends danced around and one in a wheelchair tapped out the rhythm. A happy local scene, innocuous, unthreatening behaviour by a group of youngsters in a town backstreet at 2 a.m. - I would not have objected to that outside our window. Then back to our room for a few hours fitful sleep, disturbed throughout by street noise.
This morning, after a shower we discovered we could purchase breakfast here in the hotel. It looked nice but, despite the range of food on offer it was, every bit of it, second-rate: horrid diluted orange juice, weak instant coffee, dry hard rolls or dry cotton-wool rolls, ham that was really reconstituted spam, flaccid cheese and the inevitable sugar-coated jam-filled pastries that form a part of any Spanish breakfast, as I desayuno if you travel in that part of the world. The ambiance was pleasant though with a nice waiter and spotless white damask cloths. The cost was eight Euros, which we reckon is about £5.00 for both of us, so cheap enough anyway.
Later
We've spent the morning around the town and are currently back in our room where we've had rolls and wine on our cramped balcony. Ian is making coffee while we await the arrival of the First Choice tours representative who will let us know details for our return to the airport next week. Once that is sorted, I can contact the car hire people so that we can explore more of the island.
Our morning has been well spent, and we are quite taken with the vibrant streets around our hotel. It does seem very different in daylight, thronged with people shopping, strolling, chatting in groups or taking drinks on the bright terraces of the many bars and restaurants. Many areas are completely pedestrianised, clean and bright with flowers and palm trees and lots of seats to relax in the shade. Not that shade is needed today; it is fresh and comfortable for walking without a jacket, but rather chill to sit around for long. We wandered around an open-air book fair selling Spanish literature. Nearby a group of schoolchildren had set up a little bookbinding group using frames and presses to stitch sections of books onto tapes and to make separate cases to bind them into. A very pleasant scene.
We were accosted, obviously green, by a young man from Sheffield, eager to talk us into attending a timeshare presentation. It is astonishing how plausible arguments can be, assuring you of free prizes and fantastic value. You have won the only lucky scratchcard of the day and won his fortune for him as well. It seemed we would need a wheelie basket to lug away the huge pile of Euros waiting for us just around the corner. We even found ourselves dragged there and seated with our own advisor before we realised what was happening. Why they do it, I don't know and it is a waste of everybody's time. We insisted we did not want to spend our holiday learning how we could have another one completely free. In the end we just got up and left, foregoing all those lovely free Euros, bottles of champagne and free holidays. Instead we wandered by the sea front, watching huge white breakers rolling in across the Atlantic, crashing in foaming cascades upon the huge square, tumbling blocks of basalt placed as a defence for the newly constructed promenade. Down by the harbour we watched a fisherman deftly gutting squid, removing the cuttlefish bone and trowing back into the sea the ink sacs, eyes and intestines. He had a huge bucket of them to work through. I am not sure whether I could eat squid, but I ought to give it a try. There were many fish stalls selling huge arrays of squid, sardines, hake and many other varieties I have never encountered before.
Our first purchase was at a pharmacy, where we stocked up on earplugs in the hope of ensuring a good night's sleep tonight. According to the local paper Ian is just reading 75% of the population of Tenerife suffer intolerable levels of noise pollution. I can well believe it!
Instead of lighting candles to represent prayers, this church had moved with the times and introduced new technology. For twenty Euro cents your candle would light up with an electric flame for a certain number of minutes. Then the light would go out until you fed the meter again. Astonishing, and it had Ian, for the first time in his life, fumbling to find twenty cents in his purse, just so that he could see the red light flicker on his chosen candle at the feet of the bewigged Barbie-doll Madonna.
We returned to our apartment, stopping to purchase essential supplies (wine and water) at a little supermarket - apparently the water is not safe to drink.
It is now evening. We attended the lunchtime meeting with our tour rep but didn't really fancy any of the organised visits to aquaparks and zoos. Those to Mount Teide we can sort out for ourselves. We rang the car hire company, Niza, with whom I had sorted a
deal on the internet before we left
So we set off in the little car […] along the coast in the
direction of San Marco. I got used to
the little car quite quickly and we passed through a number of little tunnels
cut through the various lava flows that cascaded down the mountainside when
We turned off and parked at San Juan de la Rambla, a non-touristy little village where a funeral was taking place at the little red tiled whitewashed church. The funeral car was covered in a mass of rather garish wreaths and mourners stood around outside the church doors, weeping into their handkerchiefs.
We walked through the little town that appears to have no shops, but lots of streets of old residential houses, many in terraces staggering up the mountainside. It seemed a genuine non-tourist village with a powerful community atmosphere. The whitewashed little houses in peach, lemon, orange or white all had dark wooden doors and little balconies. Front doorsteps frequently sported pots of cactuses or geraniums.
The most interesting thing though was that almost every house had a bright red banner from the balcony with white painted accusations against the local mayor and council, accusing them of betraying the inhabitants and selling their heritage. It appears there are definite plans to construct a huge bridge or viaduct above the village the carry the main circular road that will soon encircle the entire island. But I doubt they'll succeed in preventing the next link in the chain being constructed, but they are most definitely making their feelings heard, and not without justification. It will quite destroy the little town little town, which is currently a pretty little place with palm trees growing along its cobbled streets and delightful views down on to the black volcanic beach below or along the coast to las Roques, high mounds rising from the sea some way off. Is such a pity that progress is to destroy of the beauty of the countryside and the peaceful way of life that has existed in the village like this for generations.
We continued along the coast before turning inland to visit the
town of
The town is full of narrow paved streets of local basalt stone. The buildings are white rendered with volcanic stone used for facings around the doors and windows, with strong use made of massive wooden doors and balconies. It is a style common throughout Tenerife and similar to mainland Spain, except for the strong use of dark volcanic stone. Houses are frequently very large, constructed around a central courtyard open to the sky, and filled with cactuses and palm trees, frequently with an ornate heavy wooden balcony running around all four sides of the upper floor level with wooden doors leading off to huge wooden-floored rooms with dark wooden shutters. These often have little flaps in the shutters that can be propped open to permit a limited amount of light and air into a room while maintaining the dark, cool shade within.
We bought a piece of chocolate cake from a stallholder as by now we were both very hungry. We returned to Puerto de la Cruz along the tortuous mountain road rather than along the fast coastal route. This took us through a number of little hill towns such as La Guancha. The route was fairly narrow and twisting but very reasonable compared to Corsica or even Crete. There were a number of buses we had to manoeuver around on bends on the road or little bridges across deep narrow gorges. The hills were dark volcanic rock sticking out from the green of the woods and shrubs and with many wild flowers around. We climbed up and up, not quite realising how far or how steeply until we stopped at the mirador at the top of the pass and looked down at the coast, the coast road and the endless banana plantations far below. So steep and far away did it all look that it caused a wriggling sensation in the pit of the stomach, whist above us the mountainside disappeared into the mists of cloud cover.
There was then a steady descent through towns and villages, twisting and turning until we reached Puerto. As we went down into Puerto along steep back streets, we came upon a little square surrounded by houses. There were several palm trees and beneath was a rich crop of some green plant being browsed by what seemed like hundreds of black and brown goats. Many of them were clambering on their hind legs up the trunks of the trees and the walls of the houses. We simply had to drive slowly between them all, and on into the town's endless one-way systems. We wove our way around the town, making for the sea front and then along until we found the area we had walked this morning, along the new promenade which will eventually form a botanic garden.
Currently the circus is in town, but parking around there is free. We left the car there with thousands of others, emptied out all our belongings, and walked back to our hotel. The streets are all lined with cars; the town is densely populated and everyone seems to own a vehicle.
We have been sitting drinking wine while I write this. Ian has dozed off, so I will wake him now at 10.30 and we'll go out to find supper. We have been told that, as it is the weekend, the night clubs will all run until six tomorrow morning. I hope those earplugs work!
Sunday 21 April 2002
We found a pleasant-looking restaurant on the local square last night. By the time we arrived it was 11.30. I've wanted to try paella ever since we arrived, but our request was met with horror - at this time of night! Apparently we were far too late for seafood paella, but were offered seafood spaghetti instead. I went for that, while Ian erred on the side of caution and chose spaghetti carbonara and some German beer. Not much of a local feel to that! We were advised to go back tonight and they would cook us a special paella, but to go earlier. So, it seems that Spanish food is served from eight to nine and Italian food from the until two in the morning, which seems a little strange. The seafood spaghetti was perfectly acceptable, full of various seashells and round white chewy strips of what looked like rubber bands, and tasted somewhat similar - from my experience of eating such things. All was richly coated in a fresh herb and oil dressing and the spaghetti was delicious, if messy to eat. Good fun though, and I suspect that I have now eaten squid in the form of the elastic bands.
This morning we decided to give breakfast downstairs a miss as it's so awful. Instead we have made strong coffee which we are drinking on our balcony with banana cake and local bananas. The weather is dull, the sky grey, and the temperature requires a light jacket - just what you would expect off the coast of Africa toward the end of April. Ian wants us to drive up above the clouds and explore Mount Teida. It sounds a good plan, but I think I'll take my long trousers and pullover. There will probably be snow up there anyway.
Sunday evening.
Yes, there was snow, but in fact it was considerably warmer than down here. However, before recounting our adventures up on Teide, there is much else to tell. I think we will have to take more boring holidays as I'm always up half the night recalling the events of the day.
We drove first to La Orotava, not far from Puerto. We had heard that it was lovely, but nothing prepared us for just how beautiful a town it is. It has 36,000 inhabitants in two main areas but the special part of course is the old town. There were not too many people around on a Sunday morning, so we parked near the church at the foot of the very steep climb up into the old town. The streets are black basalt cobbled, staircase-steep with colour-rendered ancient houses on either side, interspersed with little chapels, sometimes only distinguishable from the houses because of a plain wooden cross beside the large brown wooden door.
The place was full of local people arriving for mass, dressed in their Sunday best. Large groups of children were led in single file, presumably to children's Sunday school. As they passed us they exuded a smell of clean soap and sweets.
The grandest and most spectacular house we saw was the House of the Balconies, a huge building with a vast decorated wooden door studded with brass. Inside is a magnificent old cobbled courtyard with an ornate balcony around, beautifully carved and with delicate tracery, giving anyone on the other side a chance to see out without being seen. All in brown painted wood and supported on thick wooden columns set into volcanic stone plinths. In the centre of the courtyard, a fountain played in a stone trough and tall palm trees reached high above, providing a green, cool, shady area below. Around the walls canaries sang in their cages, pots of green shrubs and old wooden tools provided immense visual interest. There was a grape crushing press, and on either side rooms led off into gift shops where lace and decorated table linen was sold along with demonstrations as to exactly how they were made. Personally I thought this part rather horrid, but I suppose it must be popular.
Across the road a mirador gave views down onto the Orotava Valley, or would have done if it hadn't been so hazy. Upwards the mountains disappeared into the cloud cover, but it was obvious that terraces had been created all the way up to sustain agriculture. Goats roamed everywhere, munching their way through purple thistles and endless acres of scarlet nasturtiums that grow wild everywhere here. Higher up the street was a roadside garden full of exotic plants, cactuses, drum lilies, money plants and palms, with a fountain of flowing water. Opposite was the church of St Francis with all the local people coming out from mass. They were typically Spanish in appearance, mainly middle-aged rather plump people - there seems no link with Tenerife's earlier indigenous population, the Guanches.
Once they left, we went in to see the interior. Our eyes became accustomed to the deep gloom and we saw the baroque side altars, heavy paintings and the usual dressed statues of the saints. This time the Virgin was in white silk with a high stand-up lace collar, lots of starch and tinsel with crescent moons around her feet.. She was holding an equally astonishing baby Jesus, also in white silk and lace. Ian couldn't resist popping a fifty cent coin into the meter to watch a whole row of candles suddenly flicker into life, little red flames flashing on and off. His delight was short-lived however as, mass over, the priest unplugged the holy candles, cutting Ian's prayers off in mid-flow. He then locked the outside door of the church before seeing us in the gloom, so ushered us out through the back way. This led into the Hospice of the Holy Trinity which is a sanatorium for the sick. We found ourselves in a large courtyard with three or four tall palm trees, while around the edge three or four wheelchair-bound invalids sat on the white marble flags with their backs to the white wall of the building. This was not normally open to the public but nobody seemed to mind us there. The priest just disappeared and left us.
One of the patients, disabled and elderly but able to walk, took us by the hand and led us to a door, not to let us out but to show us a tiny revolving drum in the door itself which, when he turned it inwards, revealed a small chamber with a pillow and soft duvet. It looked as if it ought to have a tiny baby inside. At the time we were mystified but have since discovered it is intended as a receptacle for foundling babies deposited at the church door. So that was an adventure most tourists would be unlikely to encounter. We left by the foundlings' door and climbed high along the steep streets, past the smaller residential houses of the local people, many at their windows, some of whom called ¡hola! to us as we passed. At the top there is a superb vista down onto the roofs of the town below, all large heavy red tiles and colour-rendered walls. Generally the town is in an excellent state of repair with some astonishingly well preserved 17th century houses built on a grand scale with ornate baroque or even rococo facades with much use made of local stone for facing around doors and windows. Many houses had their own wooden balconies and matching wooden shutters and doors. Anywhere they could, flowers, shrubs and plants with huge leaves in enormous tubs had been placed, giving colour and life to every corner.
Descending one of the side streets, we came across the
Leaving the church, we continued downhill along a side street. An inconspicuous doorway attracted our attention because of the stream of portly middle-aged gentlemen entering and then reappearing with large square boxes. Closer inspection showed it to be a baker's shop selling hot cakes like – well, hot cakes. Sticky mille-feuilles confections were being sold faster than they could leave the oven, with the shop packed. They were obviously a weekend speciality, and probably explained why so many husbands were leaving during the mass, their wives and children being collected later, after the cakes had been secured. Those wise husbands who had placed regular orders went to a special window to collect their boxes, and on the way out lifted the lids to lovingly admire the contents and show them to their foolish neighbours still queuing.
Ian brought out his best Spanish and asked if we could eat in - it looked as if it was also a cafe but with no room to eat. We were led through a doorway, out through the kitchens to a little, shaded, covered courtyard with a few other couples eating Sunday lunch. We sat among the palm trees and opted for the set meal of the day - vegetable and goat's meat soup with vermicelli followed by a huge plateful of beef roundels, vegetables and chips, and then apple pie, homemade but not as exciting as English apple pie, with cream. We were given a carafe of local red wine and added to it a bottle of mineral water and two espresso coffees that knocked you backwards. We had a lovely waiter who spoke the odd word of German but no English. Everyone else in the restaurant was local, and it felt so nice to be in what was most definitely a local venue undiscovered by visitors. A long table next to us had been taken by a three-generation family and we enjoyed watching them all in what was obviously a very familiar weekend activity. They were well known to all the staff and other customers.
Leaving a long queue of people still awaiting the endless stream of trays of sticky cakes emerging from the kitchens, we continued to a magnificent palatial building at the top of a flight of steps up through gardens full of exotic plants and flowers. The building is a club, Licio de Taoro, named after the former tribal area of the Guanches.
We were permitted inside, and it certainly has a club feel, with large rooms full of comfortable chairs and sofas, a bar, pool table and library. The was also an exhibition room with photographs of marine life. The long corridors are lined with photographs of Miss Orotava going back to the early 1950s and a poster advertising for entrants for the 2002 contest. All the girls were very pretty and very Spanish in appearance with scarves tied around their heads and straw hats at jaunty angles. They all wore national costume. Rather nice pictures for a gentleman's club!
Once a year there is a festival on the streets of Orotava and pictures are created on the flagstones of religious scenes or long carpet patterns, all made up from flowers, or frequently powdered pumice stone from the lava flows of Mount Teide, which come in an astonishing range of different colours. The streets are closed to traffic and roped off, the visiting crowds confined to the very edges. There were also photographs in the club of the range of pictures created over the years. The main area is the vast open space in front of the magnificent town hall with a different religious theme each year. The scale of the work and the quality of workmanship are both awe-inspiring, to judge from the photographs we saw.
We made our way back to the car. The weather was cold, and we were decidedly chilly without our jackets, which we had unwisely left in the car. The little town is wonderful, and we could easily have spent the whole day there but wanted to get above the clouds and visit Teidi.
Ian's map was not necessary. Just find a road going steeply upwards and follow it. As long as it's full of twists and climbing steadily it's bound to end up on the slopes of Teidi. We ascended some 2,300 meters in all (about 8,000 feet, twice the height of Ben Nevis). Teidi is the highest point in Spanish territory and probably the highest volcano in Europe. The road was quite reasonable but rather tight if coaches were encountered on any of the hundreds of bends. As we climbed, we ran into the cloud cover at around 500 meters to 900 meters. This was awful; thick fog requiring headlights on a perpetual series of twists and turns with only the dim glow of oncoming lights to warn you of the traffic descending. Being Sunday, it was busy with families out for post-lunch fun or picnics in the forests above the cloud cover.
Just as I thought we were mad to have come, and never going to reach the top, we emerged into bright sunshine among heathers the size of trees with a cotton-wool sea of cloud billowing below us. The road continued to twist upward for some 35 Km, the landscape changing as we went. Scrub land and heather gave way to Monterrey pines and the slopes of the surrounding hillsides and valleys were thickly forested, with families walking or playing in the woods. Higher up, the lava flows, full of holes and bubbles in a yellow-brown colour, showed where the road had been cut through. Vegetation became more sparse.
Woodland was replaced by low growing mountain plants, many with stems of purple flowers. Eventually even these disappeared and we found ourselves in a stunning, bare, volcanic landscape that must surely be the closest equivalent to the surface of the moon to be found on earth.
We parked and went for a mountain stroll, striking out across the pumice, which is rather like walking across the beach with it crunching and sliding beneath your feet. We walked to a ridge where the wind from the valley caught us full on and was quite chilling. Below was a wide valley of lava rocks in strange shapes with not a plant to be seen, just endless lava and pumice to the far wall of the caldera.
After a surreal game of snowballs we continued to the Roques de Garcia, a range of rocks which were formerly the chimneys of the volcano which were formed of harder rock than the surroundings and so now protruded above the floor of the volcano which had gradually worn away. Not being a geologist, I did not understand the process in detail but the harder cones and pipes have been eroded by the winds over time into incredible blocks of fractured stone, absolutely huge. One is very thin at the base where the rock is less tough than above. Presumably it will eventually be top-heavy but perhaps the top is of light stone, which is why it has survived - nature's polystyrene.
The rock I found most fascinating had worn away to reveal in cross-section the length of the chimney, still filled with solidified magma so that you could see exactly how it would have shot out from below the earth's crust.
And so we returned the way we had come. We decided, as it was getting late, not to continue across the island to come out near the airport where he had arrived as we would have to drive the route round the coast to Puerto de la Cruz in the dark. There were more than thirty kilometers of steep descent, twisting our way down through scrub, then woodland, then nature's giant rockery of beautiful flowers until we hit the wall of fog again and felt our way with headlights glued to the tail lights of the driver in front. Then we were out in the grey streets beneath the grey skies in the modern port of Orotava. Soon we were back in Puerto and parked by the seafront to the west of the town at around 7.30 p.m.
All along the front are very lovely gardens laid out by a landscape architect from Lanzarote called Manriques who is honoured here as a visionary. Not without cause; the seafront walk is so beautiful with paths passing among palms and gigantic plants of all sorts. Dragon trees, flowering or fruiting trees unknown to us with bright pink, orange or purple flowers. Geraniums and petunias fill the flower beds. Local families with children enjoyed the evening and played in the children's park. We watched a couple of lads aged about eleven jumping on trampolines attached to a harness of elastic, so combining trampolining with bungee jumping, shooting high into the air. It looked wonderful fun!
The beach is of black pumice, ground fine and looks rather peculiar when we are used to the golden sands of Exmouth. The sea though is something else; Newquay eat your heart out! I've never seen such enormous breakers come rolling in from the horizon, gathering strength and size as they approach to eventually hurl themselves in a steaming, foaming mass on the seashore. Looking up at a particularly large one approaching, black and glassy with a plume of white just beginning to show on its crest, it was easy to imagine how terrifying the force of a tsunami might be.
We continued home, parking on the disused site by the circus again. Wandering through the old fishermen's quarter, we found a lovely little restaurant where we ate outside in the still night air around 9 p.m. We were served my longed-for seafood paella which was slightly salt but an excellent experience, eaten at a little table with an oil lamp, accompanied by tapas and beer. All I need now is some sangria and I'll know that I've been on a package deal to a typical holiday resort for UK travellers.
Monday 22 April 2002 (written on Tuesday)
I was too weary and woozy to write up this diary last night. It was midnight before we fell exhausted into bed. Some folk may come on holiday for a rest, but we certainly don't! A change, certainly, which in it's way is good, but we tear around exploring and thrive on it all. We slept soundly through the noise of rubbish collection and motorbikes and woke at 8.30 feeling wonderfully refreshed and with the rubbish bins emptied.
Monday was hot and sticky, temperatures well up into the twenties. We decided to make our way along the minor roads to La Laguna, reputed to be well worth a visit. The motorway would have got us there more quickly but we wanted to see the little towns and villages bypassed by most tourists. Just finding our way out of Puerto de la Cruz on the one-way traffic system proved to be a daunting challenge. However, we eventually found our way out towards Santa Ursula, passing by the Mirador de Humboldt. The famous German scientist and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited Tenerife in 1799 on his way to South America and was bowled over by its landscape and plant life, and wrote effusively of his visit to the top of Teidi - without the convenience of motor cars and funiculars.
One thing we were impressed by is the quality of housing for the local population, rather than just for the tourists. Buildings are large, clean, spacious, well maintained and superbly finished. They are also constructed and painted to blend with neighbouring properties, frequently using the same colour for doors and shutters. The colour-washed walls add variety and are pleasing to the eye, and the red tiled roofs are most attractive. But most buildings are recent and the overall effect is a shame when viewing a huge vista of a hillside to see it smothered in continuous property development, however attractive and well-finished each individual habitation might be.
The north African palm tree is ubiquitous throughout the island. Large and magnificent, it is superb to look at and its jagged fronds against the walls and roofs of the buildings are so very attractive and impressive. They have large clusters of exciting looking fruits dangling at the top of their long straight grey trunks. We have since become very aware of dragon trees, which we now see everywhere in the little towns we pass through and even growing wild, clinging tenaciously to the cliff side near the sea. Perhaps they are a maritime plant. They are said to be related to the yucca and don't have growth rings as do normal trees.
At La Matanza we got chanelled onto the motorway. Despite the map indicating a route, there was no alternative, and we were forced on for a few miles before turning off and fighting our way through the endless one-way grid system of La Laguna. Eventually we gave up and went with the flow until we could exit the main town on what fortuitously turned out to be the side we wanted. Parking in a side street we then had a very pleasant interesting walk back through the residential area to the old part of the town. We arrived at the most beautiful square Plaza del Adelantada with a fountain and surrounded on all four sides by beautiful houses of enormous size, all different styles and periods but all well maintained, all colour rendered, and all using different coloured volcanic stones to superb effect. for lintels, architraves and cornerstones. The range of colours is truly amazing.
Our visit around the town was marred somewhat by the heat and our thirst, and the fact that everything, including the Cathedral shuts at 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. just when we wanted to visit. First we explored the market, which was just closing but still full of an enormous range of vegetables, including all sorts of gourds and pumpkins. There was a flower market and stalls for meat, cheese, and of course fish.
We walked up to the main part of the town and the cathedral. Strangely, the town has developed in one direction only from the historic main square. There is certainly a good range of beautifully restored and maintained historic buildings in this old university town of some 127,000 people, the largest town in Tenerife after Santa Cruz. We eventually found a bar near the cathedral to satisfy a number of our most urgent requirements, and sat crowded in among local people eating tapas - actually they were egg and bacon burgers, but described as tapas, which I suppose is really another term for snack - together with glasses of fresh orange juice and crushed ice. Unfortunately after that everywhere was closed and the streets too hot and glaring for much walking. So, we saw the main buildings from the outside only, but went to look inside the casino, which was open. We decided that casino means something different in Spain - no sign of gambling at all. It is again a beautiful baroque building in lime and white. Inside it is a gentlemen's club with cool, shady rooms, a library and dining room, comfortable lounges and the usual pin-ups of Miss Laguna through the years.
Nearly back at the car we went into a little bar buzzing with locals watching television. We felt very proud when we asked in impeccable Spanish for a couple of bottles of fizzy chilled water and were served without even a raised eyebrow. [...] We do appreciate how several shopkeepers and waiters have taken the trouble to correct our grammar for us. That way we remember Spanish more easily.
We visited the shady Santuario del Christo with a beautiful extravagant altar in silver, offset with dozens of flower arrangements in yellow and white, a huge silver Christ hanging in the middle. It was very ornate and beautiful and obviously gave solace to local people, several of whom were praying aloud but individually, while some sat sobbing as they gazed at the altar. The usual dressed and bewigged statues were to be found here with the life-size Madonna in silks and brocades.
We collected the car and drove up into the hills where it was not much cooler but we had a superb drive up a twisting road through a leafy woodland of laurels. We stopped at several miradors providing spectacular views down onto the town of La Laguna and over toward Tahodio on the south coast. Higher up we stopped at Cruz del Carmen and finally the Pico del Ingles with quite breathtaking views across the jagged spine of the Anaga Mountains and down to the sea on both the north and south coasts. This was only around 1,000 meters high, but a very different landscape from Teidi, truly beautiful and in its way just as dramatic. Everywhere is covered in green vegetation but still obviously volcanic, with cones and chimneys showing above the covering of shrubs and trees. The folds and ridges of the lava flows are very obvious, even when hidden beneath the greenery. It is the rugged spine of the Anaga that is so astonishing however. It looks as it the ground has been ripped up and stood on its side. This north-west corner is far less frequented than other parts of the island. It is really beautiful but, being less accessible and leading nowhere, has been largely ignored by tourists. For the first time on the overcrowded island we were able to drive for considerable distances without encountering other traffic. We stopped and walked down through shady laurels to attempt to take some photographs of the strange rocks of the Anaga. The peace was so strange and lovely; just the endless sound of birdsong, sunshine, shady trees, amazing views with the sea beyond, and repeated miniature cascades of falling stones as the thousands of lizards sunning themselves shot off at our approach, darting effortlessly across the vertical rocks in search of crevices in which to hide.
Having come so far, we decided to visit Taganana, almost at the furthest tip of the road. The quality of the roads in the mountains is excellent, well tarmacked and clearly marked, with safety barriers on the bends, regular passing places and the routes designed to give a fairly even gradient, speeding being limited only by the twists around the rocks with huge drops below if you miss the road. We saw several cars that had come off the road just abandoned to eventually decompose. The route along the spine of the Anaga mountains is a real credit to the highway engineers of Tenerife. It runs almost level until the breathtaking descent down to Taganana. We stopped at one point and clambered up the rock face to the top, where we had dizzy bird's eye views down onto the coast at either side, sitting on the actual ridge which here was just a few feet wide. We descended the contorted, twisting road between the spines of the mountains, the sea showing sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other as we steered our way through the rocks. There was no other traffic around and we parked beside the road into the village, which became no more than a cobbled track threading its way between houses built close together on a hillside with a 45 degrees slope. Local men tended their vines on terraces below their homes or watered the tubs by their doors, chatting to each other, looking at us with curiosity but responding cheerfully to our "hola". Most seemed to have their own little water reservoir, though a channel flowed through the street to the houses below, all of which seemed to have been abandoned now, despite having one of the most magnificent views to be found on earth. Still, you can't live on a view, I guess!
The village is divided by a valley or barranco, a rift between the lava flows, providing shelter for the cultivation of vines and vegetables. It is also the natural home for all kinds of wild flowers and cactuses, dragon trees and palms. From an outsider's point of view, a vision of Utopia for peace and beauty.
I had no wish to be caught in the mountains in the dark and as it was now 7.30 we headed back for home through the near deserted mountains. Again we were forced onto the motorway but reached Puerto de la Cruz about an hour later.
On parking we discovered that the casing around the headlamp of the car had been broken and part is missing. It is astonishing to see that it is no more than painted polystyrene. How it happened I have no idea. It is a bit worrying, but as nothing has hit it or been dropped on it, it remains a mystery. I hope it doesn't cause trouble in getting back our deposit on Thursday.
We returned to the same pleasant restaurant as last night and ate out on the warm street with an oil lamp on the table and live guitar music coming from the open door of the restaurant. We had tuna in piquant Canary sauce with Canary potatoes and a very large carafe of Canary wine, which was gently mellow. Our waiter told us in Spanish that red Canary wine by lamplight is very romantic. Everyone seems very friendly and it is good that we are able to understand the little that we do, but so very frustrating not to be able to communicate freely. However, after all that wine we fell fast asleep as soon as we got to our room, which is why I am writing up this account the following day.
...
