Tenerife east island tour

We were up early as expected but didn't set off until after 9am as we had an easy time reading, relaxing and eating our boiled egg breakfast before showering and setting off. There is a new motorway about 4km from where we live that goes all the way to Santa Cruz. When I say new, it wasn't here in 1978 when I was here last. I thought that I had come in 1979 but I was in Cyprus that year so it must have been 1978 or even earlier. I didn't take long to get to the capital on a modern road but there wasn't much for us to want to stop for when we arrived. Just another city full of traffic lights. We never even got out the car, deciding instead to travel on and have a walk around Puerto De La Cruz instead. Although we didn't even get out the car, we spent about 90 minutes stuck in lights and finding our way around. Maybe we had bad luck but we didn't like it. I remember going there last time because they had imported sand from the Sahara desert instead of the sharp black volcanic stuff everywhere else. I didn't care for it much then either; I guess that's why they don't do package tours there.

The roads are so much better than in the old days, it didn't take long once we were out of the town to reach Puerto where we parked up about a quarter of a mile from the coast and walked down. It suited us better with lots of choice for lunch and bars for drinks; trouble is we had too much choice and couldn't make our minds up where to sit. Claire liked the look of the fun fair but I thought that the big wheel looked like it had passed its “sell by date”. We ended up walking around them all twice before stopping at the closest one to where we were as Claire needed the toilet. Good choice though; it seemed a little more up market than some of the others as it had proper white cloth table cloths over the tables. The toilets were really nice too and they had a very posh restaurant inside. They had a very extensive menu but we decided to try the daily special 3 course for 6.95 Euros. It was great, Claire had seafood soup with king prawns, mussels and other unrecognisable shells in it, while I played safe on the tuna salad. Excellent all freshly prepared. We both had steak and chips followed by ice cream which was rum barba. Great price really and we treated ourselves to a carafe of red wine that turned out to be a bottle of Reoja for another 6.95 Euros.

We decided to walk off our lunch with a walk along the sea front past what used to be called the “LIDO”. I have no idea what they call it now but its still there. I guess that they must have done it up a few times since I got heat stroke there. They still have lots of Germans but we hardly saw any Asian people all day; and not a Russian in sight. Things were looking up here and Claire even started to talk about getting an apartment here so she must like it. It really is a nice climate here at this time of year and if this is the coldest month it can't be bad. Also the food prices are reasonable and the drinks are very cheap if you buy them in the supermarket; we paid between 3 and 4 Euros a bottle but some are around 2 Euros. We got talking to a couple at the airport that were staying here for 2 weeks before doing a bit of island hopping around the canaries. Never thought of that but the prices here seem just about the cheapest we have seen anywhere with the Euro. We need to check out accommodation prices next. I did see a sign for one at E250 but not sure if it was for a week or a month. If its a month, we will be back next winter.

Time to head off for the highlight of the day, the drive over the volcano past mount Teide. We didn't intend to go up today just to drive past on the way back to avoid travelling the same road as we had come on. Its a long torturous windy steep road up, especially if you get stuck behind someone doing around 20mph the whole way. We finally went through the clouds and decided to stop for a photo to get away from the slow drivers. I love it on the plateau of the original volcano with all the rock formations and unusual landscape. Claire wasn't so keen an said that she hadn't “been so bored since we were at the Grand Canyon”.

It's really great when you get the chance to drive on these sort of roads without anyone in front of you. It reminded me of the “Top Gear Christmas special” where they drove around the middle east. I thought I should put a picture of the car in but its such an awful colour. I asked the guy at the rental place for a nice black one and I wondered why he had that stupid grin on his face when he handed the keys over. Mind you, I do like that classic photo of Mt Teide and our car in the background. There is only one thing missing from it, ------------- Clarkson!