22 – Canary Islands – Tenerife

Lovely bay and crabs at hand’s reach

After the crossing from Lanzarote, we spent the first two days peacefully anchored in the bay of Antequeras, which is at the north-eastern tip of Tenerife. Knowing the arid landscape of Lanzarote, we admired the vegetation on our short hike up the steep hills surrounding the bay, along a tiny stream where a few frogs were struggling to survive.

Next, still on shore, the boys managed to catch two red canarian rock crabs and put them in a bucket. But, by the looks of it, they weren’t buddies as one of them bit off the other’s leg and was holding it in its claw, like a trophy! …hence we released them, before they could eat each other up (and before we had time to cook them – in fact, we had no internet connection in the bay, so we couldn’t find out how to cook them!).

The island’s capital

Our first evening in the port of Santa Cruz, the capital of Tenerife, was also the last evening of the second biggest carnival in the world. Not wanting to mingle with the crowd, we had a nice meal out with our friends from Naïa, one of the sailing families we met in Agadir. On our way back to the harbour we arrived just in time to see the last of the fireworks. Safety standards definitely don’t seem to be the same as in the continental EU: we could stand right under them. So close that we were showered with small pieces of rockets…

Tenerife’s green north and Mount Teide

During the week spent in the port of Santa Cruz, we hired a car for a few days to explore this exceptional island. Where as the south is dry, the north is so green that there are even mossy forests where we did another hike. The next day we took a stunning ridge road to the famous Teide, Pico del Teide being the highest mountain in Spain (3715 m!). This road leads you through large, beautiful forests, with glimpses of Teide all along and, alternately, at every turn, one or the other coast of the island. Amazing!

But the beautiful places on Earth are rarely reserved for just one person… Once we arrived at the “almost summit” of Teide, it was impossible to find parking spaces, with cars queuing to get one, and others parking randomly along the road (we were even blocked by film producers filming a Jaguar E-type “driving” on a trailer…). Eventually we had to continue to the last possible option for a hike and managed to park the car, legally. As a result, our walk (and downhill run!) between the volcanic dross and the few wooded areas was beautiful and not too busy 😉.

Beautiful northwest of Tenerife

The Canaries are known for their bananas, so we also visited a banana plantation and museum, which was very informative and interesting. Do you know how much a bunch of bananas weighs? (The question is not for the ones who grew up with bananas in their garden…)

In addition, the 19th century botanical gardens and the historic centre of Puerto de la Cruz in the north are worth a visit. But the most exciting part was the scenic drive through the Teno region at the northwest end of the island: it’s VERY, VERY twisty and absolutely breath-taking (a bit scary in the passenger seat though…)! It was clearly preferable to have the bus in front of us making the way, rather than a bus squeezing past us from the opposite direction, even if it was slow…

What to do next?

After a good week, we cast off at Santa Cruz, leaving our pontoon almost empty, and sailed south for 4.5 hours. There we found a nice bay, fairly sheltered from the swell, to relax after all these excitements. Well, …relax? Not really… More to the point: time to sort out our thoughts, rethink our plans, write our logbooks, catch up on school, sort out issues at home and at work, talk about the future… but we still took time to enjoy the sea, don’t worry! After all that, only one thing was clear: next stop La Gomera. Let’s hope we’ll find some answers there! ( ?)