Festive greetings everyone! We decided to head south to check out Los Christianos, Playa de Las Americas and Costa Adeje, hoping to find somewhere to swim, eat and relax. Tenerife is shaped a bit like a pork chop, with the north side of the island being the thin end, Puerto de la Cruz sits on the west at 9:00 o’clock and all of the aforementioned points of interest all sit around 6:00 o’clock, but because the Teide mountain range snakes through the middle of the island, running north to south, you need to go clockwise around the top of the island to get there. So about an hour and a quarter later we arrived in Los Christianos, which was really busy, so we moved along the coastline from beach location to beach location and too be honest it really wasn’t our thing, so with a final stop at Costa Adeje, we decided to head back through the mountains, which ended up being the highlight of the day, with some great views, including that of Mt Teide. We finished off the day with a game of tennis on Parque Toscal’s excellent clay courts. The following day we discovered a really nice walk around the cove of “Los Roques’ and up through the banana plantations which was pretty stunning. Friday we played tennis again which was fun and did a little bit more exploring, determined to find a place to swim, but only to yet again, come up against the tempest of the Atlantic Ocean. Christmas day we had breakfast in the warm sunshine and after we’d spoken to family and friends, we decided to walk down to the port to see what happens in Puerto de la Cruz at Christmas time, if anything, we’d also read that the renowned Canarian architect/nature activist Cèsar Manrique had designed several salt water pools and an artificial lake the “Lago Martiànez” sat at the waters edge blended aesthetically with the sea and set against the back drop of the mountains, that looked incredible (we saw a really interesting hotel that he’d designed in Anfi, Gran Canaria) As we walked through what was a surprisingly busy town, we headed towards the “Lago Martiànez” and upon reaching it were pleased to see that it was open, so in we went (Christmas Eve & New Years Eve are the big celebratory days) It really was an impressive place and you could see that it was well looked after and also a great place to swim in a fantastic setting. We headed back through town and decided to stop at a fish restaurant that we’d read about and weren’t disappointed, it was a great end to our first week.
Dream Chasers 