Introduction
I had a wonderful holiday in Tenerife in January 2020, which was the first time that Julie and I had visited the island. The weather was warm, the food was excellent and we travelled all around the north of the island.
By February 2020 we had itchy feet again, and booked a holiday in Malta, to travel in March with our daughter Josie. Well we all know what happened in March 2020 don’t we? The world turned to …manure. After two days in Malta we had to make a quick (and expensive) escape back to London.
We flew out with EasyJet, and back with Air Malta. So we were a return leg of the trip in credit with EasyJet. Later in the year we changed it to a trip to Majorca and bought a return journey. That was moved several times in 2020 and 2021, and more manure kept hitting the fan.
By Autumn 2021 the Covid 19 situation had calmed down enough to rebook, and we decided to go back to Tenerife, which we know would be warm in November. So on November 3rd we flew out to Tenerife South on an orange Airbus A320
Puerto de la Cruz 2021 Wednesday 3 November 2021
Having been to Tenerife before, we know how it works and decided that we didn’t need a car. The buses are fine, and we can walk almost everywhere in Puerto de la Cruz (which I will abbreviate to PDLC).
So Julie pre-booked a coach from the airport to take us to PDLC. We were dropped off at the amusingly named “Be Live Adults Only Hotel”, which sound like an old style Soho strip club, but is a respectable hotel. We pulled our trolly bags a hundred metres to the Anatolia Apartments where we had rented apartment 401.
It was a modern studio flat, which very clean with good furniture and fittings and only a few minuted from Castle Beach. But the WiFi wouldn’t work, which was going to limit our entertainment possibilities.
But first we needed some basic supplies. I rapidly found the nearest Lidl supermarket, which didn’t look far on the map. But of course it was up a big hill. PDLC is on the coast, and there isn’t much flat land, so most of the town is up a hill. Julie was very grumpy by the time we got to the supermarket, but we got some milk, fruit, wine, beer and olives. It was all food that Moses would have recognised (apart from the packaging).
Because I am Mr Organised (a status that has so-far taken 65 years to achieve), I had already book a table at Baraka Cafe and Grill for dinner. The restaurant was twenty minutes walk away near near Plaza del Charco, the central square in the oldest part of tow. We sat in the outdoor eating area and after some debate ordered the mixed fish and seafood platter. A gargantuan dish of squid, whitebait, prawns, baby squid, limpits and Sea Bass was brought to us and we set about it with relish. I’ve never had limit before and they just taste chewy, not much flavour, but not unpleasant. So it was love at first sight for Baraka, and we did return!
Thursday 4 November 2021
After much swearing and fiddling about Julie discovered the WiFi router behind sofa which was not plugged in properly. So we could now watch Netflix if we wanted to, hurrah!
Having been on holiday before just once or twice, we know that it’s possible to put on a few grams around the waist. So we brought our own breakfast in a bag all the way from Twickenham.
Allbran
Already I know you are judging me and thinking “why on earth do you want to carry that tasteless crap for four hours on an aeroplane when there are delicious Spanish pastries to be eaten”.
Actually I have got used to it as part of my bonkers high fibre healthy diet, and I really like it. Honestly.
Then we walked east through the town centre to Lago Martinez. These are massive outdoor swimming pools right next to the sea which look like big lakes. They are huge and magnificent, and almost deserted in November.
We got some recliners and an umbrella (being very pale English persons), it was simply gorgeous. Huge waves were bashing the sea wall behind us, and we gazed beautiful pools and palm trees . I swam round the island in the middle on the big pool, and wore myself out enough to deserve a beer. There are several huge pools, and I guess there is room for thousands of holiday makers. The proper beaches in PDLC are quite small, so the Lagos provide a safe palce for families to go.
The main book I was reading was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Its a very thoughtful and thrilling story about an astronaut who is on a mission to save the Earth who makes a relationship with a very alien alien.
I a cheap bocadillo for lunch from a little cabin, served by a grumpy lady. It was OK.
After relaxing very hard for a few hours we went back to flat for a snooze, because that what you do on holiday. That was followed by aperitivos, snacks and beer from Lidl on our tiny balcony.
In the evening we walked to Vinoteca Con Passion, a very classy tapas bar. There are many many restaurants to choose from, and Julie had found a few which we highly recommended. We had a table on the street which was lively, and only occasionally noisy with traffic. The waiter was really good and helped us choose our tapas and a selection of four different wines. We tried out some local wine from the Orotava valley, and they were all good.
On the way home I felt the need for pudding, so we stopped for churros on the same place we visited last year, Churreria Perdamo. Its a simple place that serves dangerously tasty churros with ridiculously sweet and thick hot chocolate. They are the polar-opposite of Allbran.
Friday 5 November 2021
Getting back into the swing of Tenerife and the layout of PDLC. We went to Loro Parque zoo again, because it’s only 15 minutes walk away and we really enjoyed it last time.
Once again we enjoyed all the performing animal shows, which are quite remarkable. Once again I felt a bit bad about it for all the reasons you can read about in the Guardian. I think the most wondrous creatures were the jellyfish slowly pulsing their way around the big glass tanks, such beautiful profoundly alien looking creatures.
I saw a huge number of parrots (it started out as a parrot park) and then had chicken and chips for lunch, which is wrong in many ways. We stopped for a beer at Playa del Castillo (Castle beach) on the way back and had a beer. The only cafe shuts at 5pm, and starts packing up at 4.30, when there were still loads of customers, a bit strange. The sand is black and coarse, and the sea quite rough.
The castle is a 16th century fortification that protected the harbour that was a fishing port and also shipped a lot of very good wine to Europe. No doubt their were plenty of English pirates who would have like to steal some their wine and brandy.
In the evening went to La Carta, an old fashioned place run by a couple called German lady called Cornelia and husband Juan. I had rabbit, becasue you don’t often see it on a menu and it was very tasty but the only vegetables were three small potatoes. The Aurotava local red wine was very good.
On the way back in Calle Mequinez we spotted Elements cocktail bar, which look kinda nice. So we had a Long Island Ice Tea for 6 € and then repeated the order.
Further on towards our flat there was another little cafe snappily called Bar Cafe Tropic Burger selling two mojitos for 6€. Well, it would have been rude not to wouldn’t it?
We wuz quite pissed by then.
Saturday 6 November 2021
I was a bit hungover on Saturday morning due to an over-abundance of fun. Needing to shake off the cobwebs we decided to walk to the nearby town of La Oratava using an app called Kamoot.
La Oratava was the main town in the area, and PDLC was its harbour. Then the tourist industry kicked off, and PDLC grew much much larger. PDLC is squeezed in between the slopes leading up to Mount Teide and the sea. So the hotels and apartment blocks are packed in quite densely, and in the main it is not a beautiful town. There are some pretty parts of the town, but it isn’t Nice (or Cannes).
Julie downloaded an app called Kamoot which had walking routes, and it worked out a (mostly) off-road route from Anatolia Apartments to La Oratava (LO) , which is only about three miles. The route took us up side-streets, stairways and paths up hill towards our destination. Sometimes it was hard to follow, but we did OK until we got to a very off-road section. We were directed along a dried up river bed locally called a barranca, which would probably be a raging torrent in the winter.
The route was a bit rough and not easy to negotiate, and then Kamoot directed us out of it to a road. To get out of the gorge we had to climb a steep bank made of volcanic cinder, which was a bit slippery and no fun at all. But we got to the road and then to LO.
By chance we walked past the Teide National Park Museum which was very good. It has lots of information and displays all about the mighty volcano. I’m a big fan of volcanos, and have visited Mount Vesuvius in Naples, Mount Merapi in Java and Montana Roja in Lanzarote. The latter is a baby volcano about two hundred metres high, but an excellent walk nonetheless.
A park ranger in the museum told us a much better way to walk home. We had lunch in Restaurante Violeta, I had Paid Thai made with tofu and Julie had some deep fried aubergine with a sweet dressing which made her feel sick. I’m sure they are lovely people, but the food wasn’t.
Blah!
It was warm T-shirt weather in PDLC, but by the time we had climbed uphill to LA it was much cooler, so we walked back down hill again, along a much better route back past the Botanic Gardens.
Considering how densely the hotels and apartment blocks are packed in PDLC is relatively quiet, a combination of the pandemic and the time of year. I don’t think I would like to be there at the height of a normal season.
We saw a house with a statue of a gorilla in LA, which I though was brilliant!
In the evening we walked back to Baraka again and had Paella for dinner, which they cooked for us cooked from scratch. The people at the restaurant are from Venezuela and are very welcoming.
Sunday 7 November 2021
We walked east through town to the Jardin Botanico via the La Paz Mirador. Miradors are look-out points which are common in Tenerife because the island is so mountainous. La Paz is the district of PDLC we stayed in when we last visited in 2020, but it is up a bloody great hill, which is why we didn’t stay there again!
The mirador looks west over the town from the top of a cliff, and gives a wonderful view of the Lago Martinez. The black beach next to the Lago is a surfing beach, and has a surf-school full of teenagers learning the art.
The Jardin Botanico was free to get because it was Sunday, result! We really enjoyed it especially the very strange looking Lord Howe Island Fig and the giant Norfolk Island Pine. The pine tree was huge, it least a metre across and the top was literally out of site.
The gardens recently featured in an episode of the Sci Fi TV Series Foundation on Apple TV Plus, I recognised it when the Emperor of the Galaxy was having a walk (B.T.W. it was Day, not Dusk or Dawn).
On the way home we stopped at a restaurant called Mini Golf Club that actually had a mini golf course behind the dining area, a very strange combination. I had chicken and chips and Julie had Grouper and chips.
Later in the afternoon we went to the Playa Castello and sat on a bench near the beach looking at the sea. After a while of looking at it I decided to go for a swim. The water was surprisingly warm and the waves were big without being hazardous so I enjoyed it.
After I dried out we went to the little bar again and had two more mojitos for 6€.
In the evening we went to Compostelana at in Plaza del Charco for dinner , which was fine with out being memorable.
In the evening we went to Compostelana at in Plaza del Charco for dinner , and had pizza, which was fine with out being memorable. On the way home we walked to through the small grid of old streets around Playa Mequinez which is the nicest part of Puerto, with many old houses and appealing restaurants.
There are murals painted on the buildings which are very colourful.
Monday 8 November 2021
We decided to take a trip to the capitol of the island, Santa Cruz. It was only five minutes walk from our flat to the central bus station, and we took the 103 bus at 9.30. It cost €8 each for a return ticket, quite reasonable for a fifty mile return trip . The bus takes the motorway across to the eastern side of island. it goes over the mountains, and my smart watch (a Huawei, thanks for asking) said we went up to sixteen hundred feet.
Santa Cruz is a big bustling Spanish city, and we didn’t get to see the city centre
The bus took us to the main bus station by the sea front, and the impressive concert hall that looks like a Spartan helmet.
We walked straight to the Parque Cesar Manrique, which is a very similar group of pools like the Lago Martinez. There were about three elderly ladies there when we arrived, but gradually more people arrived and enjoyed the sun loungers. I continued reading The Hail Mary Project, which is very good “hard” Sci Fi with lots of physics in it.
Cesar Manrique was a very influential architect in the Canaries, especially on Lanzarote. He created a building design code for Lanzarote and many of the buildings a less than three stories and painted white so the the have a consistent appearance which is attractive.
On our arrival we immediately had breakfast, two coffees and a bocadillo, very tasty. Then we found a good spot and stayed there for about four hours! It was a bit windy and cool when the sun went behind the clouds, but mostly OK. I went for a swim, it wasn’t warm but was warmer than at Exmouth where I lost the feeling in my fingers!
In the afternoon we got a bit restless and moved on to the Palmetum which is very close by. I knew it was a collection of palm trees, but nothing more. It turned out to be quite an amazing place!
It was built on a hill in the nineties that used to be a municipal dump. It was amazing, a huge collection of hundreds of different types of palms from all over the world. There are also ponds, streams and small waterfalls on top of the hill, it was quite beautiful! There are wonderful views over the city, the harbour and the unlovely oil refinery.
Surprisingly there was no cafe, something which would be unthinkable in Britain! so we got a bit hungry and to to thirsty.
We walked back to the bus station and didn’t have to wait long for a bus back Puerto, which took about 50 minutes.
Back at the flat we ate last night’s pizza and had a tin of beer and watched a French film about a group of people in the same block of flats in lockdown.
Tuesday 9 November
Our alarms went off at 7 and we leapt out of bed to get ready for our Teide trip.
We went to a hotel round the corner at 8am to be picked up by the excursion company in a comfortable coach.
The guide spoke Spanish English and German and was called Jose. We did a tour of hotels picking up other passengers and then headed up hill through La Oratava. The vegetation changed as we climbed up. Bananas at the lower levels, then vines and potatoes, then laurasilva forest with heather trees and laurels. At 1000 metres the Canarian Pine trees started up until 2000 metres, after that it was high altitude scrubby desert.
We stopped near El Portillo for a coffee and shared a doughnut. Then we drive on past a film crew, maybe making the next Dune film in the desert.
We drove up to the cable car station, and all the coach passengers got into the same car, I noticed the capacity was 44 people. It took 10 minutes to get up to the upper station which is at 3,555 metres, 11,663 feet.
It was beautifully sunny and actually quite warm up there, not a cloud and very quiet.
We could see the island of La Palma, but not the eruption on the island.
We took a path around to see a different view, walking on irregular lumps of rock, it was quite difficult.
The view was awesome, the best I have seen I last went to Teide in 1988.
After an hour we went back down on the cable car. I took loads of photos and video, I want to make a film of the excursion.
We got back to the flat at about 2.30 and had a cup of tea and read our books for a while.
Then we walked down to the nearby black beach. I had a swim, very nice but hard to get in and out because of the stones.
We walked to the cafe for a beer, but they start packing up at 4, so we had to be quick. Near the castle there was a lady busker called Clara who was very good, I liked all of her songs especially Torn and Creep.
We had dinner at Rosa Negra, a tapas place Julie found online. The waiters were very jolly, but the food was a bit average. I thinks tapas is overrated food. The local red House wine was good.
We enjoyed walking through the old part of town, there are a few streets of old houses decorated with colourful murals. It’s the most attractive part of PdlC, which is mostly built of ugly blocks of flats and hotels.
Wednesday 10 Nov
The sun was shining when we got up, and stayed shining for most of the day!
We walked down the pretty street with palm trees lining it, down to the little harbour when there are some small fishing boats bobbing around and a few swimmers on the beach.
We had breakfast in a cafe, croissant paninis and coffee.
Then we walked along the sea front through an old fort with bronze cannons pointing out to sea.
We paid €5 each to go into Lago Martinez and found a good spot near a palm tree, so we could get some shade. Thus enthroned on loungers, we spent the day there soaking up the sun.
I had a couple of dips in the pool, which was cool but not freezing. It really is a pleasant way to spend the day, and was quite busy. This time I put plenty of sun lotion on so I didn’t get burnt like I did last week.
I had a beer, and a bad hamburger and chips for lunch. I read lots more of Project Hail Mary, which is a very clever book.
We left at about 4 when it was turning cool, and walked back to the flat.
We then filled in the UK Passenger Locator Form which was a real pain!
In the evening we went to La Baraka again. They gave us some free Venezuelan corn-bread sandwiches and potatoes. We ate the giant fish platter again, and got really stuffed!
It contained:
Limpits
Prawns
Mussels
Fish Goujons
Baby squid
Calamari
Whitebait
Sea Bass
Phew!
We waddled home and packed our bags to go back to Gatwick.
Thursday 12 Nov
We got up at 7 and finished packing and sorted out all the paperwork.
We ate the remaining breakfast yoghurt and cereal and had a cup of tea.
At 8 we walked about 50 yards to the BeLive Hotel, and could see Teide and the Observatory quite clearly.
The bus came at 8.20 on time, and then took until almost 10 to pick up people from other hotels.