Tenerife - the land that time forgot

Tenerife is the largest of the severn Canary Islands and also has the most people living on it at almost 1 million. We found out on Wednesday night that the island group was named after dogs rather than our yellow feathered freinds. Tenerife also has over 5 million tourists visit each year so at any one time it always feels a little more crowded than it should. It seems to have a constant spring climate at around 20C in winter rising to around 28C in summer but its easy to escape the heat by going inland up the mountain where its quite cool. There are two main airports in Tenerife, north and south. The only time I have ever been here before was in 1979 and it only had the north airport then but the south one was "under construction". Everybody knew that it would take off as a tourist destination as the north of the island where the main tourism was at the time collected clouds and had rainfall most days and was very green whereas the south of the island was desert with little rain. Green scenery comes at a price and when most people have a only a few weeks a year holiday they prefer garanteed sunshine. The normal winds from the north, bring the clouds to the island, rise up the mountain which reduces their dew point and it rains. For this reason the north of the island gets most of the rain leaving little for the south.
The capital is Santa Cruz de Tenerife and it used to be the sole capital of all the islands until 1927. The highest point in Spain is El Teide in Tenerife which is also the third tallest volcano in the world. Mt Teides peak is about 12000 feet and the highest point that I have climbed to and I found it difficult to catch my breath. It was like you wanted to yawn all the time but couldn't quite catch it.
The earliest known human settlement in the islands date to around 200 BC, by people known as the Guanches. They had little technology, even by Stone age comparison and dressed in animal hides and lived in caves on the island. Just like Australia, once the Europeans came these people were either killed, enslaved or succumbed to disease. Being close to the African coast, I guess that they had their fair share of African slaves on the islands too until fairly recently.
Our flight left around 45 minutes late but when we arrived on time they played a fanfare over the speaker system to say that we were on time and that so far this year over 90% of Ryanair flights had been on time. I queued up to get the hire car while Claire waited for the luggage and we ended up with both at about the same time. Trouble is it was getting dark and we had to find our way to the apartment. We had directions but couldn't find the starting place and drove around for ages asking occasionally. Eventually we got on a motorway, headed towards the capital, got off and turned up any street just so we could ask at the fuel station. By pure luck we were on the starting road for the instructions. What should have taken us 5 minutes actually took us 90 minutes because of stupid instructions that didn't start from where they should have. Never mind, our apartment is great with lots of facilities but more about that tomorrow. We are right next to a restaurant so we shot straight in there for a meal and a couple of thirst quenchers. My phone doesn't seem to work here and we have no wifi as yet but I will have found something for you to be able to read this.
The whole island is sloping towards the centre and was originally a giant volcano with a flat topped crater or plateau with newer smaller volcanoes around its rim. Mt Teide is the largest of them. The plateau has a very ancient looking terrain, a little like Magnetic island off Townsville in Queensland Australia but without so much plant life. Large boulders and rock structures are the norm and so lots of films have been made here over the years including the classic "1 million years BC" with Raquel Welch.