Canary Islands: Tenerife.
25 November 2016
Photo: Cable car Mt Tiede
In Santa Cruz we continued to do the checks on the boat in readiness for the Atlantic crossing, including small fixes that Brian said needed doing. One such job was the door to the front cabin which Garry would be using when he arrives. As usual it was only going to take a couple of minutes, it ended up taking several hours and at one point saw Brian locked in the front cabin with a door that would not open, (the handle had been removed) and getting out the forward hatch was not going to be easy with the dinghy strapped onto the foredeck. Gail was sent up on deck to move the dinghy to allow Brian to climb out, an hour or so later the door was finally fixed. The day ended well as we had Klaus and Margaret, SV Starship, from Austria over for evening drinks.
Thursday 10th November we picked up a hire car and headed down to the south of the island to Los Gigantes, to stay at Gail’s brother and sister in laws apartment for 4 days. On the way down we drove through Los Cristianos and Los Americas, the tourist hub of the island. Apart from finding nowhere to park, both places were so crowded and over the top with resorts, shops and bars, we happily carried on and stopped at Playa San Juan for lunch. Los Gigantes is a lovely, small holiday area which nestles beneath spectacular cliffs, more our type of place, quiet enough to enjoy but with enough to do. Friday we booked a taxi and headed up to Masca village to do the walk down the Masca valley to the beach where we would catch a water taxi back to Los Gigantes. We were very glad we did not decide to drive to Masca village, the very mountain narrow road winds its way up the hillside to the village with very steep drop offs. The walk down took us approximately two and a bit hours although we did not time it. The track through the valley winds its way through impressive rock formations, gorges and streams, challenging on the knees as it is all downhill. You can do it in reverse, get the water taxi to the bay and then walk up, either way it is classified as “popular, though strenuous hike.” Sunday we headed off to the National Park which is centred on El Tiede, the volcano that dominates the island at 3,718 m. You can trek to the top if you apply for a permit, or do what we did and take the cable car to 3,555m, either way it is very cold at the top, you go from the heat of the park to -2 degrees celcius when we were up there. There are many walks and other interesting areas to look at in the park and we had an enjoyable day, meandering our way around.
On our return to Santa Cruz, we decided to drive along the west coast stopping at Garrachio for morning tea, again over mountain roads but not as bad a Masca. Garrachio was an interesting coastal town with natural rock swimming pools. Next stop was Icod de los Vinos to see the thousand year old Dragon Tree with a circumference of 20 meters and 16ms tall. Not much else to see, so we took the picture and moved on. Next on the visit list was La Oratava, a town with a beautiful historic centre. Unfortunately as we have found in Tenerife, getting a parking space was impossible, so we drove through and carried onto La Lagunna. The historic centre of La Lagunna was declared a World Heritage site in 1999, and we were lucky enough to find a park and wandered around looking at the cathedral, the tower of the Church of la Conception and the cobbled streets.
The marina at Santa Cruz has a buzz about it and is a hive of activity as most of the boats here are getting ready to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean, including the 20 or so boats in the Odyssey rally that leave on 19th November. After seeing the rally boats off we decided to take the bus into Los Cristianos to watch the All Blacks and Liverpool games, being tourist destinations we knew there would be lots of bars and cafes showing the games. After getting off the bus In Los Cristianos approximately j50 mins later and wandering down to the waterfront, we were surprised at how pleasant it was. On our previous visit by car we decided not to stop, however the waterfront is a traffic free zone, the boardwalks were wide and nicely landscaped, there were the usual hawkers and people trying to get you into their cafes or bar but it wasn’t the zoo we expected.
Back at Santa Cruz, Wind Pony and Scallywag arrived on Monday morning, 21st November from Lanzarote. We had a couple of days finalising preparation including shopping and the skippers seriously looked at the weather patterns. Scallywag decided to head south to the Cape Verde Islands on Thursday morning and we set up SSB schedules with them to keep in touch.
Garry arrives on Friday evening 25th November and our planned departure is Monday 28th, although it is now looking like it will be as early as Saturday as the guys are watching a weather system in the north Atlantic which is creating a less than ideal weather pattern just of the Cape Verdes later in the week . Bill, Wind Pony’s crew arrives Saturday morning and we may well clear out and leave as soon as he gets here, joining all the other boats that leave Santa Cruz daily.
This really will be farewell Europe as our next planned stop is the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast, then onto the Caribbean.