La Orotava and Los Cristianos

Sadly, I decided to skip El Teide, the volcanic peak in the national park in the centre of Tenerife. There was only one public bus in each direction per day to the trailhead, and then it's a cable car ride to not quite the summit, from which one has to have a permit to go higher. Also the elevation is around 3700 m, the air is rarefied and cold and I didn't have the necessary clothing. The attractions are the lunar-like landscape and being able to see the other islands of the archipelago from the peak, if the atmosphere permits. Incidentally El Teide is Spain's highest mountain.

Instead, I did a morning tour of La Orotava, a pretty little old town about 5 km inland from Puerto de la Cruz and, of course, at a higher elevation, about 400 m. Along the way one can see the fertile dark volcanic soil that plants flourish in.

La Orotava was indeed a pleasant change from the ugly holiday apartments cluttering the coast around Puerto de la Cruz. There are some advantages to being away from the ocean.

I'm pretty hopeless where appreciation of architecture is concerned but even I could see that the wooden balconies are special.

Then it was back to Puerto de la Cruz to catch a bus to the resort town of Los Cristianos, in the south of the island. Due to the terrain, the fastest route was clockwise via La Laguna, just outside of the capital, Santa Cruz. On Tenerife and Gran Canaria, due to the direction of the trade winds, the north of the islands receive more rainfall, so the sun and sand resorts are in the south.

The Canary Islands are also trying to tap wind power.

I found my selected pension with no problems. I had been given a few prospects from an Internet forum. The guide should have been more diligent in searching out accommodation. There were many British tourists in town, some red as lobsters, whereas Puerto de la Cruz had more German tourists.

I went to look for a day excursion to La Gomera, the next island. Because I spoke Spanish with the tour agency, they said that they had no tour for me, but I saw from the notice board that there was one in English the next day. ¡Hablo ingles!, I cried, to dispel their preconception. They said to return later in the afternoon to confirm that they had enough passengers. And it turned out that they did.

Walking around that afternoon, I passed a locutorio (page in Spanish), a phone centre catering for people with no landline or not wanting to pay the high cost of mobile calls, and saw a distraught woman wailing. An ambulance soon arrived. I never found out the reason. Perhaps she had received some distressing news by phone.

A reminder of home far away. Notice it's one word. I wondered if they knew what the name was. I should have asked.

Los Cristianos retained traces of its fishing village origins, though that's fast disappearing under the onslaught of tourism. I liked this pattern of light and dark paving stones, very common in Spain.