Teneriffe, central Canaries
Wednesday, December 28th, 200519 Dec – 22 Dec, 2005
Teneriffe. One of the two big islands of the Canaries. After our dreadfully early start, our two hour ferry crossing had us at Los Cristianos, southern Teneriffe, still in time for breakfast. And still in time to catch a boat out to see the resident pilot whales. Beautiful creatures. Unfortunately, the weather was not so hot today, and the whales tended to stay just below the surface so as to avoid being exposed to the (relatively) chilly wind. So our encounter was short, but beautiful, and we did pick up some dolphins on the return trip to land.
Pilot whale
With only two days left, and this worsening weather reported to be hanging around for a couple of days, we realised we could not plan according to what the weather may or may not do. So, with hopes that “surely it can’t be as bad as it looks”, we took the morning bus up to the national park around El Teide, Spain’s highest peak. We set off on our walk, in medium rain, with our gear on. Intention – walk an hour or so, and if it is looking like it is getting better, persist. If not, turn back. After an hour, we both decided that the short breaks (i.e. rain going light) were encouraging, and so we continued. Well, the rain got worse and worse, and we spent the entire rest of the walk in heavy, and at times pelting, rain. The peak itself got snow, and we were spared that (although it felt like hail for a few minutes). 16 km in wet boots. We waited with lunch until the end of the walk, and ate at the cafeteria by the road where the bus left from, while enjoying a hot chocolate. Guy at the cafeteria said we couldn’t eat in there, and we may have understood if there were people waiting for tables, but as there were plenty free (not many people coming to the park in the rain) and as we had bought our hot chocolates, we thought him a tad mean. We asked where he suggested we should eat, and he just suggested outside. Since they provided the only shelter within cooee, we just ignored him and finished our lunches. As if we were going to move out on to the rocks in the rain to eat our bread and cheese.
Our last night before returning to Australia. We really did not feel like a tourist haunt, and found a local bar, where we sat on bar stools with a pub style meal and watched Real Madrid lose to Racing, 2-1.
Independent traveller impressions, 4, after Teneriffe: Well, here it is. The southern part of the island is full of everything we warned about. Rows and rows of Irish bars, British bars, German bars, and Swedish bars. German food, English food, everything but Canarian food. Rows of apartments, people selling tourist trinkets, touts offering tours, theme parks, bleah…. Hard to avoid this totally, as the ferries to western islands come and go from here, but we were in and out within a few hours. Our base in Puerto de la Cruz was pretty good, but still obviously geared to short term visitors. Again, good bus network helps the independent traveller, and doing your day treks in pouring rain helps to thin the crowds out a lot. Although, the groups would probably have not have strayed too far from the paths. If we had not been flying out from this island, we may have skipped it in preference for La Gomera or El Hierro. In the end, those two islands will have to remain for a return visit, if we ever make it back here. But it seemed better to do that than to just rush in there for a day or so.
Before sunrise.
We got up insanely early (you kind of feel you should be making a sacrifice for these things) at 5.00 (impressed?). That got us up there in time to watch the sunrise ... 
Richard and Jo