Tenerife 2011

DAY 1: 2011-09-02

So, the "chill-out and de-stress" week in Tenerife started well. I got to bed at 02h00 on Friday morning and rose two hours later for the taxi ride to Luton. The Monarch flight was half full, so we had space to stretch out and sleep.

The view from the port side of the aircraft on our approach to landing was excellent. At 3,718m (12,195ft) the Pico del Teide is the highest mountain in Spain. Its peak was formed a million years ago inside the crater of a collapsed volcano, the Circo de Canades.

The final approach to Aeropuerto Tenerife Sur provided a bird's eye view of some stark volcanic vistas, from pyroclastic rock through to this wonderfully austere pumice field.

At Tenerife airport, it was above 30°C and uncomfortably stifling. We had a rental car reserved with a company called Avia (arranged by our time share people), and could not find them anywhere. The Information desk said that they would be in the arrivals area with a board. So we waited and wondered around looking for them for 90 minutes. Frustrated, I got onto the phone to the UK and was referred to a number in Spain. We eventually tracked down the car in an obscure "meeting point" about three-quarters of a kilometer away. It was then that we realised that we'd lost Debra's brand new Blackberry in the chaos of luggage, trollies, sweat and fatigue.

The car was a Ford Ka, and there was no way that we were going to be able to fit in it with all our luggage. So the guy told me to come with him, and we drove to a secluded gravel patch where he parked his cars, about 5 kilometres away. He literally operated his business from a boot of a car as that's where he kept the keys, documentation and all associated car rental paraphernalia. He gave me a new Renault Clio - bigger, clean, but with an empty tank. It was now over two hours since we had landed and I drove back to the airport, picked up Debs, Karl and luggage, and headed out towards Club La Costa - Paradise. Less than a kilometre later, we spotted a Texaco filling station and pulled over to fill up. The petrol jockey filled the tank - 39 lites at EUR 40.00. The stench of unleaded was overwhelming, and the petrol attendant dropped to the ground and then sprung to his feet, wide-eyed. There was a major leak under the car, and we watched helplessly as 39 litres of fuel gushed from a ruptured fuel line onto the concrete. Jockey tried to get a bucket under the car to catch the juice, but to no avail; it was too tall.

Half a dozen phone calls later (with the petrol attendant explaining the situation in Spanish, as the people I was speaking with had no idea what I was talking about), the car rental man was back, with one of his mates. All of us drove back to the gravel patch, and from the boot of his office, the rental man produced another set of keys, this time for a Seat of some sort or anther. Unfortunately it only had half a tank of juice, but I'd had enough, and wasn't going to make an issue. We loaded up our crap and, three hours after we had landed, finally hit the road for our resort in Los Cristianos on the south coast.

I couldn't find my sat nav, so we navigated old-school with map and directions. We missed one turn-off, but found the place without too much difficulty. At Club La Costa - Paradise, our apartment was not ready. Hoo-boy! Sensing our frustration they found an alternative unit for us. We drove around the back of the resort, eventually found the place and schlepped all our luggage indoors. No air-conditioning. Just ceiling fans. Ouch. Debs had to join a conference call with work colleagues in the US, but she'd lost her Blackberry with all the details. SO I set up an Android tether, connected my Acer netbook to the internet, and she was able to email her colleagues and get the dial-in numbers. We then rigged up my Palm Treo (with headset) in the bathroom, and Debs did her call. That was followed by a handful of calls to the UK to cancel Debs' SIM card and to bar her Blackberry. Finally, time to relax, four and a half hours after landing in Tenerife.

All Karl wanted to do was swim, So we dragged ourselves down to one of the pools, caught some rays, and turned into raisins and prunes. We couldn't face cooking in our apartment and so so walked into the resort, finding a place called Janice's. Thus far and no further. Incredible - the place was geared to Pom package tourists, and there wasn't a single Spanish dish on the menu. Options included fish & chips with mushy peas, Steak & kidney pie with gravy and other British "delicacies". Charming. Debs had felt sick since the airport, and I felt like shit after the meal. Nevertheless, the litre of sangria went down well and we got back to our apartment, shattered. Soon thereafter Karl kicked his beach ball off of the balcony, and it disappeared into another unit below us in the terraced complex. I went knocking on doors, met some really unfriendly Russians, and gave up my quest to recover the ball.

Debs and Karl went to sleep, and I vegetated in front of the TV, watching a BBC documentary on the role of the Cabinet Office...the highlight of my first day on a sunny Spanish island, off the west coast of Africa. I succumbed to a severe case of sleep at midnight. Long day. Are we having fun yet?

DAY 2: 2011-09-03

We all slept in late and, after a light breakfast, made our way to the main pool complex where Karl spent most of the day in the pool. I found a nice patch of shade, downloaded my photos to my Acer Aspire One netbook and wrote up our experiences of the day before. I also arranges to do two scuba dives on Monday. The first would be a deep dive and the second a dive with turtles. Debs and Karl are going to snorkel with me on the second. Debs attended the Club La Costa briefing session, and won an excursion on the "Submarine Safari". So I guess I know what's on the cards later this week.

We all took a 90 minute siesta in the afternoon - Debs and Karl catching up on sleep, and me saving photos to my computer, and uploading to Flickr. In the late afternoon we got into the car and drove east on the Autopista Del Sur (TF1) to the town of Candelaria, 45 kilometres away. Its fifty year old basilica dominates the settlement.

Lining the sea side of the square alongside the basilica are statues of the seven Guanche "menceys", or chiefs, who were in power at the time of the Lugo conquest. Hmmm...poor guys...they didn't have too much to be thankful for when Christianity arrived!

On the pedestrian street off of basilica square (Calle Obispo Pérez Cáceres), Debs and I drew some cash, Karl and I bought a couple of pocket knives, we squashed a 5c coin into a medallion and I took a few shots of my boy standing at the mural of the Black Madonna that decorated a wall by a vacant lot.

Back on the square we also found a great little tapas bar, overlooking the sea and the basilica. The local Dorada beer was wonderful, and the selection of tapas dishes that we ordered were most satisfying. Spanish omelet, shrimp, olives, bread, jamon and octopus. Lovely...and Karl flattened a pile of shrimp almost single handedly. A fine meal that I followed with coffee. The bill came to EUR 38.00.

Before we left Candelaria, we bought three ice creams in cones, and sat on a bench in the square, people watching. We drove back to Los Cristianos, arrived at about 21h30 and grabbed a litre of sangria at the pool side. Back in apartment F802 Debs crashed, and Karl and I watched a B-movie on TV. The six year old got to sleep at about 23h30 and I followed a couple of hours later. Not a bad day, I must say! It's slowly starting to feel like a holiday.

DAY 3: 2011-09-04

The day began at 10h00, on a sour note. Being trial members of Club La Costa, we were obliged to attend a marketing meeting with a sales representative and one of his trainees. He picked us up and drove us to another La Costa resort where we had breakfast, made small talk and we required to view one of their cookie cutter units. We then caught the bus back to their sales office, just off of Club La Costa - Paradise. That's when the "hard sell" began. And we weren't buying! Repetition after painstaking repetition. The superficial attempts to put words in your mouth and get agreement. The leading questions to get you to say what they want you to say. The attacking, regrouping and attacking. The bringing in of more senior associates to sweet-talk the client. Hawk and dove tactics. Whenever I said anything a little controversial, Debs gave me a kick in the shins. But eventually at 13h30, after three and a half hours of torture, she could take it no more and exploded like I've never seen before. She went ballistic with the Scottish sales rep, challenging him to cut to the chase, to tell us the deal they were offering, or we were out of there. The man retreated, conferred with his superiors, came back, sprouted weasel-words and couldn't give us the bottom line, so we called time, told them we clearly made a mistake with our trial membership, and left the sales suite. It was a wonderfully satisfying conclusion to the part of the holiday I was not looking forward to. The walk back to Paradise was a sweet one :-)

The rest of the day was an absolute pleasure, and we experienced a little of what we'd hoped to see in Tenerife. We got into the Seat and drove north-west from Los Cristianos on TF-82 and took a lollipop shaped drive that took in the following places: El Retamal, Santiago del Teide...

A great view of Mount Teide, the third highest volcano in the world...

Playa San Marcos at Icod de los Vinos (where we had tapas and beer, and Karl took a dip in the sea)...

Garachico...

The Barranco de Masca, a beautiful deep canyon on the road between Garachico and Santiago del Teide...

Masca and back to Santiago del Teide before the drive back to Los Cristianos...

The volcanic landscapes and mountain passes were out of this world and I was really envious of all the motorcyclist out there enjoying an exhilarating Sunday ride. Some of the roads - especially the twisty (and newly resurfaced) downhill from Santiago del Teide to San Marcos - were prime Ferrari territory, and I wished I'd had my car here.

The afternoon was good for another reason. I love vintage film cameras, but have not been able to make the time to shoot any of my medium format cameras for a number of years now. But I lugged two of them down to Ternerife on Friday - one of my huge Pentacon Six TL's and my Fujifilm GA645Zi. Today I loaded them up and although a bit rusty, soon got back into the swing of things and shot off three twelve exposure 120 roll-films through the course of the afternoon. It was wonderful to be back in the saddle, to once again experience the thrill and alchemy of tactile, analogue photography. I had a grin from ear to ear! OK - so I was shooting old film-stock that's years beyond its "use by" date, but I had to get rid of the stuff that's been clogging up my fridge at home for the past decade! Let's see how they turn out. Not sure where I'm going to have them developed and scanned...maybe I'll take the films back to South Africa in December and get them done at the Q-Photo Pro-Lab in Pretoria.

Back at La Costa Paradise (at about 20h30), Karl took a swim in the main pool while mommy and daddy slaughtered a liter of fresh Sangria before returning to our apartment with a take-away spaghetti bolognese. Just enough time to download photos and write up the days events before retiring at about 01h00. Big day tomorrow - two scuba dives and snorkeling with Karl and Debs...hopefully seeing turtles.

DAY 4: 2011-09-05

This morning I rose at 07h15, got my act together and was waiting at the reception at 08h20. The dive dudes picked me up and we went down to the Travel Sub scuba diving centre at Puerto Colon. I rented full kit, arranged insurance and was ready for my two dive excursion. My dive partner was a guy by the name of Mark Chandler from Baldock, Hertfordshire, just up the road from St. Albans. Small world. We loaded ourselves and all the scuba gear onto the large, grey Zodiac and took the 20 minute ride to the Playa Paraiso (Paradise Beach) site where we laid anchor. We were soon overboard and and spent the next half an hour enjoying the crystal clear water off of Tenerife.

The volcanic features continue below the waves and I enjoyed floating through the overhangs, crags and clefts in the lava.

Very beautiful and very relaxing.

We maxed out at 24.1 metres, saw soft corals and an array of small reef fish, and had a bottom time of 30 minutes (at the end of which I still had 100 bars of air left in my 12 litre cylinder.

We got back to Puerto Colon just after 11h00, and at 12h00 I was joined by Debs and Karl who were going to be snorkeling with me in the afternoon.

The second dive was also about 20 minutes away (at a site called El Puertito) but much closer to shore. After we'd dropped anchor, the scuba divers rolled-off and were followed by Karl and Debs in their snorkel gear. Bottom time was 45 minutes and 16 seconds, the maximum depth was 9 metres, and the visibility was outstanding. Mark Chandler and I spotted two cuttlefish that were either mating or fighting, but it was fascinating nevertheless. I also got to see my first spider crab ever; a pretty but very delicate creature. Highlight of the day was a close encounter with two Green Turtles that lasted at least 20 minutes.

They clearly knew the dive master, who fed them tidbits of fresh fish, and were all over us. It was my first up close and personal experience with turtles in a quarter of century of diving, and I lapped it up. Our dive leader shot some great digital pictures and a video clip of the whole experience, and they are now proud additions to my photo collection. Debs and Karl also saw the turtles, and the boy seemed to enjoy his first deep water experience. The high speed boat ride was also right up Karl's alley, and his face said it all.

It was 15h30 by the time we got back to the La Costa - Paradise, and it was as hot as hell! We made our way down to the main pool, grabbed a salad and an ice cold beer, and watched Karl playing with his new friends in the pool. The beer was followed by a large jug of Sangria, and I felt a deep fatigue setting in! Nevertheless, we needed to eat and I could not face the slop the restaurants at Club La Costa served. So we went back to room F802, had a shower and drove down to Puerto Colon here we'd seen a string of restaurants en route to the dive centre earlier in the day.

What a disappointment - every one if these places was geared to "Brits Abroad". Sleazy, grimy, nasty places, frequented by the great unwashed (and tattooed, pierced, lobster-tanned and shaven-headed) serving unacceptably poor food and drink at astronomical prices. But Karl had already fallen asleep in the car on the short drive from our apartment, and so we closed our eyes, chose a place, and grinned and bared it. I can list on one hand the best meals I've had in my life, and can safely say that this was one of the very, very worst. How can you possibly screw up seafood if your restaurant is right on the sea? Not only was the food total crap, but the coffee immediately flashed me back to that "blue stone" chicory toxic brew they served us in the South African Defence Force in the 1970's! Really - it tasted just like military issue, and was that bad. A very sad end to a fairly good day.

Footnote: the late Freddy Mercury of Queen would have been 65 years old today.

DAY 5: 2011-09-06

A very good day. At about 09h00 we drove to El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain (3,718 metres). The road from the coast rises rapidly and then flattens our on a barren plain at about 2,200 metres above sea level. El Teide itself rises from a great hollow in the centre of the island - a caldera that is the remnants of an earlier, much larger volcano of around 4,800 metres. The rocks in the the Parque Nacional de las Canadas del Teide are varied in texture and colour as they come from a series of eruptions at different times. Some lava and ash cooled quickly into jagged formations, while others cooled slowly into smoother, more liquid shapes. Suffice it to say it's a hot, challenging and ruggedly beautiful place to visit. Interestingly enough, El Teide is considered by experts to be still active!

Today I lugged a ton of photographic equipment up the Teleferico (cable car) at El Teide. I had my Pentax SLR, my Casio point-and-shoot, a Sony point-and-shoot, a Kodak HD video camera, my Fujifilm 645 medium format camera, a Pentacon 6x6 medium format camera (and three lenses), a Minolta spot meter and two camera phones!

Visitors alight from the cable car at 3,555 metres above sea level, and with three camera bags, blazing sun, razor-sharp volcanic rock and little oxygen, the going was tough! Sadly, in the scramble to get the Pentacon out of its bag, I hooked open the latch for the camera back, and exposed a film or beautiful B&W portraits that I'd taken of Karl earlier in the day. Such is the frustration and loss that sometimes accompanies the magic of film photography. I had to load the camera in the unforgiving sun at about 3,600 metres! Let's see if that one comes out OK! There's just no place to hide in a high altitude desert.

At the top of El Teide we were about 2,000 metres above the clouds, and it was a wonderful opportunity to tech Karl about geography and climate. Also, with all the gear I was carrying, he became my photographic assistant for the day, and did a fine job. I also gave him the Casio, and he took some excellent photographs through the course of the afternoon. Debra did not cope that well with the altitude, and felt nauseous. So she took it easy while Karl and I gallivanted around :-) When he said to me "Daddy, my heart's beating faster", I also jumped on the opportunity to discuss with him the impact of altitude on the body. Yes, a fine day's learning, and the lad slept deeply when we finally got home after dinner.

Following last night's food fiasco, tonight we drove to the coastal settlement of La Caleta where we enjoyed wonderful seafood at the Masia Del Mar (at C/El Muelle No. 3). The Jarra Damm beer was cold and delicious, and hit the spot. Debs and I shared a Paella Marinera that ticked all the boxes, and Karl had the most expensive dish of the night, four langostinos (king prawns). The location - right on the sea - was perfect, the fish tanks kept Karl occupied, the local house wine was more than palatable, and the ambiance was just right. Good dining at last, a hundred Euros well spent, and the cherry on top of a fine day. But, holy Darwin, the sun chewed me up at the top of that volcano! Sleep...with pain killers!

DAY 6: 2011-09-07

First thing in the morning, Karl and I went for a swim in the big pool. The kid really enjoys being in the water and would probably spend the whole day in the pool if we did not drag him away! At about 10h30 we caught the bus to Submarine Safaris at San Miguel. We joined expedition number 4914 on "Sub Fun Cinco", cruising around the waters off of San Miguel at 27 metres. An accompanying scuba diver attracted giant manta rays to the sub, and Karl went into overdrive with excitement! We also saw a relatively rare trumpet fish, and an assortment of reef fish. Costly but great for Karl. Interestingly, the submarine was built in Finland and is registered in Belgium. It is licensed to take passengers down to a whopping 60 metres and without passengers is licensed to dive to 100 metres. So it's not a toy.

In the afternoon we returned to Parque Nacional de las Canadas Del Teide, but this time approached on the C-823 from Los Gigantes (where we failed to spot any whales). This was actually a much more interesting (and quieter) route than the C-821 we took through Barranco del Infierno the day before. The lava flows were astonishing in their scale and brutality and, in parts, the harsh terrain had an unworldly look and feel. This would be a perfect place to test remote vehicles for Martian landings. I shot off one 120 roll-film today and a fair amount of digital at Chinyero (where I collected rock samples), Samara and Las Narices del Teide. Good stuff.

On the road back to Los Cristianos, Karl whipped our butts playing "I spy with my little eye...", and we had a good laugh driving from 2,200 metres back down to sea level. Debra and I celebrated a big anniversary today. Twenty-eight years ago, we went on our first date in Pretoria. We celebrated with king prawns and Cava in our apartment - a fine family evening.

DAY 7: 2011-09-08

Our last full day in Tenerife and Debra and Karl went to Aqualand, Costa Adeje. They were there from 10h00 through 16h00 and , from the photos they came back with, seem to have had a great time. Dolphins, parrots and water-slides - what more could a six year old ask for!

I used the quiet time to do some writing, start packing and to write four postcards to Karl and one to my mom. I also received a call from one of Debs' colleagues saying that we had to get a Police Report from the local police to cover her lost Blackberry. I called the Tourist Police in Madrid, and made a full statement on my wife's behalf, and that was that. All we had to do was go down to our local Police Station, sign the statement and that would be that. Ha! We found the place quite easily, and then had to wait two hours to get the damn document. I had loaded up the Pentacon with Ilford HP5, hoping to catch the soft evening light...and then watched hopelessly as it faded away :-(

Nevertheless, we raced down to Los Abrigos to see the Montana Roja, a volcanic lump that punctuates the bleak acres of arid coast by the airport. It also sports the longest beach in Tenerife, stretching several kilometres around the rock. The light was crap, but the film was loaded, and I shot of 12 shots on the beach. QED.

Next stop was the port of Loss Abrigos where seafood restaurants lined the lane leading down to the water. We found an intimate little place, and enjoyed the last seafood of our trip - sole for Debra, sea bream for me and grilled fish for Karl. We made good time back to Los Cristianos and, back in our unit, Karl crashed almost immediately. Debs and I packed our bags before she retired, and I kicked back and watched some TV. Back to a cold UK tomorrow...

DAY 8: 2011-09-09

Time to go home. We made breakfast, watched the start of the first game of the Rugby World Cup from New Zealand, showered, packed up and vacated F802 by 10h30. We checked out and drove to the Tenerife Sul airport, dropping the car at the spot where we collected it. Check-in at the Monarch desk was seamless, and we sailed through Passport Control without a problem. Although we boarded a little late and were all seated in adjacent rows, the flight was fine and we landed at about 16h20. Our three suitcases were the first out on the conveyor belt, and Mohammed's son was there ten minutes later to whisk us home in his new Benz people carrier. Unpack, cook, relax. Caught the fist episode of season two of Dr. Alice Roberts' "Digging for Britain" - wonderful viewing. It was an OK holiday, but it was great to be back home.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©