We woke up early in our somewhat questionable AirBnB (though for $35 a night I don’t ask many questions), hopped into the car we’d rented for the weekend, and got on the road out of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the largest city on this particular Canary Island.
Our first stop of the day was breakfast at a gas station restaurant/bar/café (in America we’d call this a diner) that I’d researched in advance to make sure it was open before 8am on a Sunday (Spain is not a county of early mornings). Two cappuccinos and two ham and cheese croissants por favor! (I’m sorry to say that Spanish continues to be abysmal.) Spain, being Spain, came in strong with the pork.
Now you might be wondering, Weren’t you just in Spain?!? Indeed we were! But that was November-December, and it is now February [as of writing]. We finished out our main Spain right before Christmas, and then spent almost a month back in the DC area catching up with family and friends. We headed out again at the end of January: first to Austria for a little friends’ ski week, and second to Tenerife, the southernmost point in “Europe.”1
For those counting, that was our fifth trip back to America during our travels. And this time out, our modus operendi is a little different. Chris is working full time and I’m consulting part-time, so our pace has slowed significantly and our daily itineraries (on weekdays at least) are much less thing-to-thing-to-thing. We pay a little extra for an apartment so we have a kitchen to cook and space to be on calls. We wake up at a reasonable hour—love that for me—have some breakfast, go for a run, and start working around 2pm GMT (9am DC time). Weekdays are relatively uneventful, so we’re back to living for weekends. Overall, it’s not bad!
So anyway, back to this specific Tenerife Sunday. After breakfast we, in our little rental car, immediately started climbing up up up on the windiest of roads. The wild thing about Tenerife is all its microclimates (up to 28!). The day before we’d been coastal hiking in Anaga Rural Park, where steep valleys down to the Atlantic are alternately super-green and somewhat arid, hiking over 10 miles up from black sand beaches lined with cacti to green moss-covered archways of trees and back down again.
Today was the opposite. We drove up through pine forests and eventually broke through the cloud layer to a moonscape of red rocks and lava flows and volcanoes: Tiede National Park, the highest point in Spain.
The day’s first adventure was a trail run. I mentioned in an earlier newsletter that we’re training for a marathon, so running has been a priority. BUT we still want to do other activities! What’s a person to do? It all. We parked at the base of Teide, a 12,000-foot volcano, and set out for a nine-mile jaunt across the desert. Sidenote: trail running is truly the best, iykyk.
The day’s second adventure, of course, was a hike straight up a mountain. We’d researched the best Teide views and settled on 8,900-feet-tall Mt. Guajara, a dormant volcano and Spain’s second highest peak, just across the valley from Teide. Though big, the hike was short: just 5 miles total, just up and down from our starting point at 7,000 feet.
By the time we returned to our car it was 3pm and we were tired. We celebrated our accomplishments with another coffee and a peanut butter tortilla (exactly what it sounds like; hiking food of champions!). On our way out of the park we watched the clouds creep over the crater rim and drove down through heavy mist before reemerging in the sunny-sky city.
You’d think that would be all, but the day wasn’t over yet! First we had to stop by the airport to return our car and get a bus to another bus back to our apartment. (There is always so much process involved in the travel process!) A shower and some cheese and olives later we were as ready as we’d ever be to head back out into the world. Normally, I would opt to stay in on the Sunday night of a big weekend hiking…BUT you’re only in Tenerife for Carnival once so you gotta experience the experience!
Santa Cruz is proud to host the biggest Carnival celebration in Europe. Activities happen over the course of a month, but get really big starting the Friday night before Mardi Gras and grow from there. Earlier in the week we’d watched the city prepare: first the stands on the parade route went up, then the port-a-potties, then the statues were all fenced off (no drunk climbing!), then the stages were staged, then the temporary mojito stands were erected, and finally the carnival rides and potato stalls appeared.
I don’t know what I expected, but I know that I did not expect Carnival to be basically a multi-day street party Halloween. Everyone was in costume! But not Carnival type costumes, just…normal costumes? Kids dressed as Spiderman and Elsa, adults as hippies and policemen (lots of policemen?) and clowns, and way more group costumes than you’d normally see in America (e.g., a group of dudes all dressed as fishermen and one of them a giant fish). Bands played at every stage, youths roamed the streets, we ate huge baked potatoes topped with olives and corn and cheese and chicken, and everyone had a great time.
What am I reading?
Just finished: The Magician (Colm Toibin)
Currently reading: Washington Black (Esi Edugyan)
Up next: She Who Became the Sun (Shelly Parker-Chan)
Tenerife is in fact in Europe — the Canary Islands are part of Spain. But for the geographically curious, look on a map! They’re just off the coast of southern Morocco/Western Sahara!