Tenerife

Day 4: July 15

Mesa del Mar-El Guincho

Tenerife

Itinerary

In the morning, it turned out there was no electricity. We really wanted coffee, but without power the stove didn’t work. We ate the leftover melon for breakfast. Our car was parked in the parking lot. The gate to the parking lot was opened by electricity. We sat on the balcony and watched as a car in the same parking lot couldn’t get out. After half an hour, someone came with a little key and opened the gate manually. We got ready and left. Our route led to a hotel in the south of Tenerife.

We chose the local road that runs through the center of the island, past Mount Teide.

Along the way, we saw thickets of our climbing plant, which we grow on the balcony in tubs. Here it had taken over the trees. It hung from them in whole blankets.

We stopped to take a closer look. The plant was thriving here. The flowers were huge, about twice as big as ours. And there were very, very many of them!

Our plant!

Then we drove into a very cool pine forest. It smelled wonderful there, the way it only smells in pine forests. We stopped at the nearest parking area and went for a little walk in the woods. The whole ground was covered with huge needles. These were not the same pines as we have in Kyiv, but different southern ones. Their crowns are like hats, and the needles and cones are large. I found one beautiful, large, undamaged cone; we’ll take it home with us.

We climbed up to the edge of the forest, sat right on the ground, and ate a delicious Canary banana each.

And then we set off on our way again.

The road was very scenic. We kept climbing higher and higher. The pines gave way to shrubs, and soon the vegetation disappeared altogether. At one of the parking areas there was a beautiful view of the volcano — it rose above the island, proudly, majestically. And below was a sea of clouds...

View of Teide

Soon we drove directly to the volcano area. Around us were yellow-orange mountains, resembling sand dunes. We stopped at another parking area and went for a short walk.

We’re walking around, everything here is orange everywhere

We were a little tired from so many impressions. It was already around 2 p.m., and we decided to head to the hotel. Besides, the way there was not close — Google promised it would take an hour.

Road past Teide

We arrived at the hotel around 3 p.m. It was a large hotel complex. At the entrance, our suitcase was disinfected. We had to wait an awful long time to check in. There were 4 men working at the reception desk, and they all seemed so slow. We waited for about an hour, and eventually we were checked in.

We got a room on the first floor, with no view (a view of the inner courtyard, which wasn’t visible because there was a high concrete wall at the balcony)

The room itself was beautiful. In the bedroom there was a wide bed. The window was small, high up near the ceiling, and it looked out onto the shared corridor, which made it noisy to sleep. Overall, this long check-in ruined my mood, and the room made it even worse (excessive expectations always ruin everything). We put the warm beer in the freezer. Volchiy was making scrambled eggs. We were hungry. I kept whining that I didn’t like the room.

Half an hour later we sat down to eat. After the beer and the food, things got better.

We went to Playa de La Tejita beach with a view of the red mountain.

It was very windy there, but swimming was pleasant.

Beach at Sunset

After the beach, we went to the supermarket. We needed to restock tortillas (yes, yes, burritos became our main dish on this trip :))

And tomorrow we were going hiking on Mount Teide, so we needed to stock up on water and food for the hike. We bought a tuna pie, a pack of cookies, and two 1.5-liter bottles of water for the mountains. And also chicken breast for burritos, Canary Island pineapple, and all sorts of other things.

In the evening we ate burritos with beer. It was delicious. We tried to fall asleep early, but it didn’t work out.