In Tenerife, we got Por Dos ready for the crossing: provisioning, minor repairs and maintenance, laundry, Christmas shopping, etc. We also tried to refill our American propane bottles and were unsuccessful for the third time (we had previously tried in La Linea and in Lanzarote). Luckily, our friends from Miss Behaving could spare a Camping Gas bottle, so with that and our Camping Gas bottle, we had spare cooking gas for the crossing.

We had enough time to do some tourism, although it rained – or more accurately poured for 6 out of the 8 days that we were in Tenerife. We visited Teide National Park where the Mount Teide volcano rises to 3,700 m, making it the highest mountain in Spain. The cable car took us from 2,300 m to 3,500 m just under the peak. From there we hiked around the peak to spectacular views of Tenerife, neighboring islands, and older volcanic peaks. Mark and I had climbed Teide 17 years ago during our previous sailing trip. Unfortunately, now one needs to book months in advance to do the final 200 m ascent to the Teide peak (only 200 people are allowed to climb to the top every day as a way of minimizing erosion), and, not knowing our exact dates of arrival, we could not book the peak climb. Nevertheless we enjoyed the scenery, and the only sunny day of the week.

We did a driving tour of the island, and visited the coastal town of Garachico and the mountain town of Masca, but left enough tourist attractions for a future visit, hopefully during drier and hotter days.

With a good weather forecast, we left the marina in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on Monday, November 24 for the start of our Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean.