Exploring Tenerife

Having a car made exploring the extremely scenic island of Tenerife very easy. The main highways are well signed and kept in great condition, and with typical European places, filled with roundabouts. The villages and smaller towns tend to have much narrower roads, something very common and you come to expect to see. Tenerife is the largest island within Spain’s Canary Islands and is located off Western Sahara, Africa. The island has a lot to offer with pristine beaches, mountain ranges inland, Mt. Teide - the dormant volcano and highest peak in Spain, wineries, numerous small towns and villages to explore, and banana plantations scattered all about the landscape. 

We took our arrival day as a day to get acclimatized and rest up from our long travel day. After settling in to our room, we took the hotel train down to the beach and spent the afternoon lounging and swimming in the bay. On our way back from our afternoon at the beach, we found the funicular that also serves as providing access to and from the beach and hotel. 

Driving in Tenerife was pretty straight forward and easy. One driving excursion took us on a breathtaking scenic drive along a very narrow road filled with massive turns and insane switchbacks to the small mountain village of Masca. The village is about 650m above sea level and has become a destination drive given the crazy roadway to get there and the hike down the gorge to the ocean. Masca has been nicknamed the “Machu Pichu” of the Canary Island because of one mountain peak that looks very similar to Peru’s Machu Pichu. Masca offers stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Teno Mountains that surround it. It is home to about 100 habitants and has a unique charm to it as it really is off the beaten track and not overrun by large numbers of tourists; while the road is very drivable to get there, it’s not for the faint of heart which likely deters enough from heading there. With the village built on the mountain there is a lot of walking up and down cobblestone roadways and stairs, which can be slippery even when not wet, in order to explore. 

We know Spain in general has really good wine and while researching what to do in Tenerife, we discovered they are the main producer and exporter of Canarian wines and so we had to include a wine tour of one of the local wineries. We had already tasted some local wine and really took a liking to it. We booked a tour and tasting at Bodega Ferreira, an organic winery situated 1000m above sea level and surrounded by volcanic lava on either side of its property. Throughout the tour we learned about their regenerative wine making process while walking around the grounds and stopping at several spots to taste the wine; all in all we sampled 4 wines and some port. Our tour was a small group, made up of us and three girlfriends travelling from Poland. It was nice to have a small, intimate group like this. 

Afterwards, we decided to drive to Teide National Park to explore the park and Mt. Teide, the island’s dormant volcano and the third highest volcanic structure in the world at 3,700m above sea level. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, you feel like you’re in another world driving through the park. The volcanic landscape and rock formations make you feel like you’re on the moon. The centre of the park is situated at 2,000m above sea level and at this height, we found ourselves well above the cloud line. The scenery is stunning, with a lot of mirador (viewpoint) stops and Mt. Teide’s peak peeking out above the clouds. You ca take a cable car to the summit, but we were there a bit too late for that and instead enjoyed the scenery and drive through the park. Besides the volcanic landscape, there are forested areas, some of which were clearly burned and scarred in the forest fire the last year. The park is known for its panoramic views, incredible sunset view points and stargazing. Since we were already here and about an hour drive away from our hotel, we decided to head into, Vilaflor, a quaint nearby town for supper at Los Cipreses de la Casa Inglesa. As with many little villages and towns we drove through, the place looked deserted and we thought that perhaps the restaurant was closed, because there was no one around. Lucky for us, the restaurant was open, and we had a fabulous Canarian inspired meal before heading back up the mountain to catch the tail end of a fantastic sunset and wait for complete darkness to see the stars. The star gazing was spectacular and we got a glimpse of Venus and the Milky Way. From where we were standing, we were able to overhear a tour guide explain the various different star formations and galaxies in the sky. 

Another excursion we took was a two-hour sea kayak and snorkel tour. The kayaking was open ocean which I wasn’t entirely keen on, but I ran out of excuses that Z wasn’t able to dispel and so off we went. Thankfully the water was calm on our way out and as we kayaked out, we got to see dolphins, though they were a bit lazy that morning and didn’t fully breach out of the water. Nonetheless it was so cool to see them reasonably up close, we were maybe about 30 feet from them. The pod looked like it was a group of five bluenosed dolphins. The Spanish marine patrol was out in force that day as well and our guide got “pulled over” and grilled about who he was, who he worked for, if thy were licensed, and how many of us were in his group. After about 10 minutes of questioning, we continued on our way to the snorkelling spot where we were supposed to see the resident turtles except that this day there was really much to see at all and the snorkelling turned out to be a non event. I discovered getting back into a sea kayak isn’t as easy as they make it out to be on land. I struggled a lot and thankfully didn’t tip the kayak over, but man was it difficult. After much frustration, I  managed to get myself back in in the least graceful way possible and learned the next day that I managed to severely bruise my thigh in the process. The kayak back was a bit more rough and challenging as the winds had picked up causing more ocean swells and white caps. All in all it was a fun adventure despite my initial reservations. 

Our stay on Tenerife was brief, four days but we maximized our time and explored and experienced a lot of what the island has to offer. It was a fantastic stop before moving on to our next leg, Portugal. Our flight over to Portugal was about two hours on TAP airlines and even on that short of a flight, we had a full lunch service. There is definitely something to non North American airlines having superior service. 

Tenerifé, Canary Islands

Travelling just after the summer break is over we’ve discovered is a great time to travel. It’s less busy and for this trip’s two destinations the weather was still good. Our trip started with an early wake up call to catch our first leg flight to Newark on our  way to Tenerife. At 6am getting to the airport was a breeze as was getting through check-in and security. Our flight time was roughly 5 hours and the flight was quite pleasant with breakfast served shortly after take off. We had a 4 hour layover in Newark and decided to spend most of it in the new UA lounge. The second leg was a red eye into Tenerife. While on this flight we observed that a bunch of the passengers seemed to know each other and were travelling as a group. Turns out they were travelling to Tenerife for a wedding and the groom was sitting right in front of us; we later discovered they were also staying at the same hotel as us! The UA flight was interesting, the flight service was a bit chaotic and felt quite rushed, probably because the flight attendants wanted to get dinner service done quickly so passengers would go to sleep and they could chill out for most of the flight. It seemed to work for us at least as we took a sleeping pill with dinner and were fast asleep shortly thereafter. Our trusty neck pillows helped make this red eye comfortable and we got a decent 4 hours sleep on a 7 hour flight. All in all our travel time to get to Tenerife was 29 hours, so sleeping was key to making it through day one. 

Right before we boarded the flight to Tenerife we were checking on our car rental and started reading horrible reviews about Hertz and how they scammed customers and over charged people. Z being a loyalty Hertz member had booked our car with a pretty good price and all our other times renting from them we had no issues, but these reviews we found were BAD!! So at the last minute, literally, we rebooked our car rental through Sixt, got a lower price with mobile check-in, and ended up with brand new Audi Q2 manual car with only 11km on it. Our flight was slightly early landing and going through immigration was easy; another stamp for the passport. We got the car in a jiffy and were on the road to our hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, Abama.  The roadways on Tenerife are amazingly smooth, well kept and fun to drive.  The main highway TF-1 has a 120km/hr speed limit. Drivers are good at using the left lane as an actual passing lane on the island… what a concept! Our car was equipped with speed detection, much to Z’s annoyance, as it beeped every time he exceeded the speed limit. Needless to say one of the first things I had to google was how to disable this, but when we discovered we’d have to disable each time we started the car, we just got used to the beeping. 🤣

Our hotel was about a half hour from the airport and the drive there gave us really great views of the island and the ocean. Tenerife is a very mountainous island with a lot of barren, dry land. The island has an inactive volcano that last erupted in the 1900s and the lava formed much of the landscape seen today. The island however, is stunningly beautiful, with much fauna growing out of the lava rock, areas of treed forest, and countless banana plantations. Being a mountainous island, the roads are curvy with elevation gains and de elevation, making for some extremely breathtaking views towards the ocean or inland towards the mountain ranges.  

When we arrived at the hotel, our upgraded one bedroom suite was not quite ready so while we waited we had some lunch and explored the hotel grounds a bit. The entire hotel had recently been fully renovated and our suite was immaculate. Just upon entering was a dining table with a large bench against the wall. From there was a large living room with a couch large and chez lounger enough for maybe 8 people to sit comfortably. To the left was the bedroom with king sized bed and a single seater  chair. Both the living room and bedroom had access to a large bedroom that overlooked a lower level terrace and had an ocean view. There was a large closet, more than enough for our stuff and the bathroom had a great walk in shower, a separate tub and double sinks. 

The hotel resort is situated on a large hillside property with the lobby on level 6 which is street level. It is nicely laid out with both a train and funicular that will take you to Playa Abama which is a nice man made cove and is great for swimming and has snorkelling around the lava rocks on either side and by the large rock formations blocking the open North Atlantic Ocean. On each level of the resort leading down to the beach you can find a descent sized swimming pool with ample loungers. The hotel has a few restaurant options on site and for our first evening we chose to eat at Verde Mar, a different restaurant concept that focuses in fresh vegetable dishes as the main course and meat or seafood dishes as the sides. Overall it was a great dining experience with really delicious food, I just realized too late that I needed to be very specific that I like my meat cooked well done. Our stay included a lovely buffet breakfast at La Veranda and as the name suggests we got to eat breakfast each morning outside on the veranda. The breakfast spread was quite impressive and needless to say we only needed a light lunch snack before supper each day. We also ate at El Mirador twice and as the name suggests the viewpoint from this restaurant was stunning as it overlooking the ocean and was the best place to see the sunset. 

The resort was fantastic and while we probably could have spent our entire time hanging out there between the playa and the pools, we wanted to explore as much of the island as possible as we could and we had rented a car to do it.