Tenerife Day 1

What an excellent day and overnight we had in Tenerife. We are not scheduled to leave until after 4:30 this afternoon, so we will go ashore again and go to McDonald’s to try to Skype family. McDonald’s now offers free wi-fi in most of their restaurants around the world and is a very popular place now with cruise passengers and crew. The way to find the nearest wi-fi spot is to ask a crew member, so at dinner last night, I asked our waiter who told me that he had spent a long time using Skype to talk with his wife and son at McDonald’s.

The ship is docked about 100 yards from a main street making it easy to get on and off as often as we wish to, but yesterday we walked right out to the tour bus waiting for our group from Cruise Critic to board. There were around 20 of us in the group organized by Ken for an 8-hour tour of the island. The bus was large, new and comfortable and we had lots of room, giving everyone a window without a post interfering with the view.

We road through the town of Santa Cruz and began our climb into the mountains. Along the way there were spectacular views of many different kinds of lave, each with an interesting color and shape. The island is volcanic like Hawaii and reminds a little bit of features there. At over 6000 feet, we had a view of Mount Tiede, at an even higher elevation than we were. There was still snow along the side of the road (looked like Syracuse in late March, except that there was very little snow there.)

As the bus made its way around the hairpins and switchbacks on a two-lane road, I was sitting on the side with the drop-off. It looked to me as if the bus was about four inches from the edge, with an occasional 6-inch high flimsy barricade. I looked down to the bottom a couple times and decided that was not a good idea. The driver seemed to have it all under control and I relaxed, comforted by the idea that on the return I would be on the other side. But we didn’t return via the route up. We crossed over the mountain ridge to the other side and I had the drop off most of the time on the way down as well.

We stopped for a break just in time for a very much needed toilet break. There are several restaurants around the National Park so people had Spanish coffee and sweet bread. Tenerife is very connected to Spain and seem to think of themselves as Spaniards and Tenerifenos the way we think of ourselves as Americans and whichever state we are from.

The landscapes are spectacular and I wish I could post lots of photos. After I am home I will put some on Facebook. For now, I will try upload a few at McDonald’s.

From the park we descended to a black volcanic beach at Laguna, a charming area of shops, resorts and restaurants. For lunch I had papas con mojo and gazpacho de Andalusia, not the gazpacho I expected, but that is why we travel – to have new experiences. The potatoes were cooked in salt just like the salt potatoes from Syracuse, the Salt City, but were served with a red sauce and a green sauce rather than butter.

The cultural differences made us about 5 minutes late returning to the bus, and I hate to keep other people waiting. The unanticipated leisurely pace caught us off guard and we were making a made dash to get back to the meeting point after waiting for each course, waiting for the sauces for the potatoes, waiting, waiting, waiting. We made such a mad dash through town that we overheard someone comment, “They must be from the States.”

Yes, we are.