Tenerife, Canary Islands

Today, we were docked in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. It is one of the larger, and more populated of the Canary Islands. The plan for today is to pick up our reserved rental car from Cicar, a local Canary Island rental car agency. There was an office near the port, based on the directions we obtained from their website. We took the free shuttle bus from the ship to the port entrance since it was about a mile to walk. Once there, we saw the main ferry boat terminal, which was where the Cicar rental desk was supposed to be located. We found it without any problems, and within about 5 minutes, the car was rented, and we were ready to go. The site we had chosen to visit while visiting here was the volcano called Mt. Teide, in the national park. It is about 12,000 ft high at the peak, and there is a cable car that takes you up to the cable car terminal, which is about 220 meters from the peak. You can hike on a trail up to the peak, but a special permit is required, and has to be obtained in advance from the Park Service.

We did have a little problem getting out of the city and onto their equivalent of the interstate. The Google Map directions were a little off, and street signs in general were hard to see or find. After a couple of wrong turns, we did manage to get onto the T-5, the interstate, and headed off to Mt. Teide. The rental car only had 1/4 of a tank of gas, so first priority was to find a gas station. We found one on our exit to the secondary road, but it was not accessible directly from the off-ramp. That required a couple of more turns and U-turns before we negotiated our way into the station. The stations are all attended, no self service, and you tell them how much you want in Euros. There is a button on the pump for 1 euro increments and 10 euro increments, and they push those according to the amount. Then it is all automatic. Since gas is sold in liters, we did not really have any idea how much to get, and it did not help that we had no idea what the car’s gas mileage would be on our journey. We got 10 euro of gas, and it filled the tank to about half.

We proceeded to take the secondary road up to Mt. Teide, it was about 56 kilometers away from the gas station. After thinking  more about the route, and the possible lack of gas stations out in the remote areas of the island, we decided that we should get a little more gas. The area we were going to is desolate, and we were concerned about having enough to make the trip there and back with what we had in the tank. We found another station and got an additional 10 euro of gas. This ended up being too much in the end, but we knew we would not have to worry about it anymore, and that we would not have to stop on the way in to return the car, which would help if we happened to be running short of time.

The drive to Mt. Tiede started out on winding, uphill roads through laurel forests and pine forests. We got up high enough in elevation to be driving in the clouds while in the forest.

It was very scenic. Then we got high enough so that we were above the clouds, and at times, we could see down to the coast. There were many scenic view stopping areas for taking pictures.

A little farther into the drive, the scenery changed from forests to rocky, volcanic formations, with very few trees. There were also fewer or no clouds, signifying we were on the drier side of the mountain range. In this area, you could see all the way down to the coast, the skies were clear and the air was clean.

As we got closer to the Mt. Teide volcano, we could see it in the background towering over all of the other mountains. It seemed to be close, but the signs said we still had over 20 km. to go to get there. On a lower peak, there were a couple of observatories containing some type of telescopes. We passed by the entrance to them on the way. We finally arrived at the parking area for the cable car that goes to the near top of the mountain. It was a complete zoo of people, cars and tour buses. I had never read in any online information about how crowded it could apparently get. We drove around looking for another car to leave so we could use their parking space since all of the spots were full. We actually lucked out, someone was leaving near the ticket booth, so we pulled in and parked, and then got in line for tickets. There are only two large cable cars, one going up and one going down, both at the same time on opposite sides. I guess that the ride is so steep, that they can’t use a continuous looping system like a typical gondola. The cars must counteract the weight of each other going up and down.

The cars appeared to hold about 25 people each, and the cycle time from loading the car going up, the ride, and unloading the car that came down was about 10 minutes. We estimated it would take about an hour to get up to the top with the number of people ahead of us in line, and it ended up being close to that estimate, about 50 minutes. However, the ride was spectacular, and so were the views from the top. From the station at near the peak, we could see several groups of people hiking to the summit. It appeared to just be a small hill until you could see the size of the people going up providing some overall size scale. It was still quite a distance to go up, about 200 meters. There were rough volcanic trails from the terminal building to several sides of the mountain, and we took some of these to get a better view of the surrounding scenery. It was very difficult to walk on in some places, the path consisted very rough lava, sort of formed into a trail. We took several photos, and then took one of ourselves with the tripod.

Since we did not have a lot of time, we only stayed at the top about 30 minutes. That was enough time at 11,000 ft. elevation. It did not seem too cold, but the temperature indicator at the top said 32 degrees, and thankfully, the wind was not very strong. Overall, for the altitude, it was very pleasant. We had overheard some people say that they knew of several trips others had made to the volcano, only to be told the cable car was closed due to bad weather. I guess that happens a lot, so that might have been a reason for the crowds today, it was such a nice day.

We decided to take a different route to drive back to the port, through the town of La Orotava. It was supposed to be a nice and scenic coastal town, and the original plan was to actually spend a little time there looking around. However, due to the amount of time it had taken to ascend the volcano, and the delays in getting there, we were just able to drive through La Orotava. The drive back was not as scenic as the route we took over to the volcano.   It had turned into a cloudy day on that side of the island, which was the wetter side. We did go through some nice forests, but it was so foggy, there was nothing we really could see. It was also a much more winding secondary road driving the route to La Orotava, but once in La Orotava, we were able to get back on the interstate, and were back in Santa Cruz de Tenerife very quickly.

We returned to the port and dropped off the rental car without incident. It was good to know we were back, and not worrying about missing the ship. It also gave us a little time to look around the town.

Once again, we were victims of the “siesta”, most of the stores were closed for their afternoon break between 1:30 and 4:30. We did look at a few things, and were able to find a small market, where we purchased some Canada Dry Ginger Ale (our favorite) and Diet Coke to take back onto the ship.

We were back aboard by about 5:00 pm, and the ship left port at its scheduled time, 6:00 pm. It was a nice sail away, the island is very majestic, with the town rising from the sea, and the high mountains in the background almost looked like a line if clouds. We could see the observatory from the port, and that was about the only way you could distinguish the mountains from the layer of clouds.

Once at sea, we spent some time in the hot tub before getting ready for dinner. Once again, we decided to do the buffet, we were tired from the day’s adventure, and did not want to get dressed up and spend that much time eating. We also decided, after consulting with the shipboard tour desk, that we would do a ship sponsored tour at our stop tomorrow on the island of La Palma. Although the rental car had been a great idea, we were just not sure we wanted to take that risk again in La Palma, something might happen, and we could potentially miss the ship as it was starting the actual transatlantic portion of the cruise. If something had happened today, we could have always taken a ferry or airline flight to La Palma, and catch up with the ship there. It would be a hassle, but doable. If we were to miss the ship tomorrow, for whatever reason, we would be stuck on La Palma, and have to fly home from there. Not really worth the risk. Therefore, we picked out a 6.5 hour tour that goes to two inactive volcanoes, and you actually hike about 7 km. from one to the other. We also found out it was not even half full, so we would not have to be fighting an entire bus load of people at every stop.

It had been a great day, we had seen something that neither of us had seen before, a volcanic mountain.

Tomorrow, we will be in La Palma, and are looking forward to our tour of the volcanoes there.