Tenerife and Arrecife, They're All Canaries to Me

Saturday, 3 March 2013 - Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

In 2002 I visited Tenerife. The memory of the double 747 crash at the International Airport here was still fresh in people's minds. The tour guide on the visit to the Mount Teide National Park ("Home of the highest volcano in Europe if you measure it from the bottom of the ocean") talked at length on how the airport should never have been built in such a fog prone area but anyway that airport was now closed. I also remembered that the volcano itself was breathtakingly beautiful and very wild. That, too, has changed since there's a cable car up it. Oh well. So we chose to do something else on this visit.

We just got back from a wonderful morning, not at the National Park but in the old colonial capital of La Laguna. We heard that there was a new light rail train from the port here at Santa Cruz. We walked to the tram stop from the Tourist "i" place near the port and took the very modern cars for almost 10 miles and 2000 feet up to the lovely town up on the slope of the volcano. La Laguna has a number of buildings dating back to 1500 and a bunch of lovely churches and monuments. We walked about three miles up and down the streets after getting a map and orientation from the very serious Tourist Bureau guy. (I knew he was serious when I asked, "I hope your English is better than my Spanish", and he said, "I'm sure it is.") La Laguna was touristy: a sign advertised "Parros Calientes" and the street life there was a bit strange. But for 2.50 euros round trip each, this morning's self excursion was much better than a tour bus ride and very much cheaper. The port at Santa Cruz here is quite busy with a huge German cruise ship--the one with kissy lips and a cartoon of a whale with a gigantic single eyeball on it, those whimsical Germans--and a very posh little cruise ship that looks like a converted riverboat. The long walk from the town around the port which has its own charms back to the ship when we missed the last shuttle bus wasn't all that scenic, but at least we could take pictures of Silver Wind and the big and little ships as we followed the "Linea Azul". See, I'm having fun.

We returned to Silver Wind and observed that a number of the jet lagged new guests seemed to be having the time of their lives. We sail at 6 pm for Arrecife in Lanzarote, the major eastern island of the Canary chain of islands where we hope to book the "Fire Mountains & Dromedaries" tour. I'm excited to see the spectacular more or less active volcano and less excited about having anything to do with a dromedary.