I am feverishly typing before the Internet connection fails again. This is the story of being a North American in Tenerife. The technology supports the European browsers but not mine. Ah blog, I have missed you.
So, to the traveller that comes here during the Christmas season. Might I suggest that you figure out how to rent a car before you get here? That was the saga that took a couple of days to sort out. You see, I had booked a hotel in Puerto del Cruz in order to make going to Loro Parque easier - or so I thought. It was also the only place that I could get two rooms for one night in between resort allocations. That meant trying to arrange transport and when the bus costs more than the hotel room and doesn't afford independent movement, that can be interesting. Most people rented cars but at the Beverly Hills Heights, I had been assured that I should just come to the desk one day prior and everything would be fine. It wasn't. Eventually, we found a local car rental place not affiliated with any major companies and he was great to deal with. It took two days to find him though and a lot of stress.
Morning broke and we packed up the rental car. The lack of technology means no good maps are available. We drove comfortably to Santa Cruz, the capital. It looked to be a lovely city but I was not driving and the drive pasts of the castle like building that I wanted to see got frustrating and so we left the capital without stopping anywhere in the end. On we went to what looked like an interesting stop on the map. Now, maps here are not to scale and the signage is random at best. There are places on the maps that you cannot find and places that exist that are not on the map. My brother finally snatched the map one day to confirm that my suspicions were indeed correct. He was equally at a loss to figure things out.
This means that fuelling stations will become your best friends. They quickly can draw a reasonable map and help you find things like the quaint museum near Valle de Guerre. I still don't know where on the map that it is, but rest assured that it exists. The museum had lovely displays of costumes and traditional manor life. The booklets were in several languages to make it easy. The gardens were lovely and the wine press and water meter fascinating. It was a great stop for an hour or so. Add a picnic lunch and lizard counting and you have a great stop for kids too. Best feature was that it was free admission in the afternoon.
Next stop was finding the beach at Playa del Mar. The car zigzagged down the hillside for 20 minutes to get to the beach. There was a parking lot and below a wooden boardwalk with terraced benching. Below that was an amazing salt water pool. Beyond the cement pool edge? A cresting wave would break and wave through the pool. The waves crashed onto the rocks and spray cascaded over the edges of the walkway. This was a wonderful stop. However, we missed the tunnel to the beach until it was time to go to Puerto Del Cruz to find the Blue Seas Resort.
Except after an hour of driving in Puerto Del Cruz, getting frustrated by one ways and a hotel that no one had heard of, we discovered that the hotel didn't go by the Blue Seas Resort. In fact, thanks to the kind people at the nice hotel at the other end, we got good directions and a better map we found that in fact the tiny wee sign at the entrance of three hotels was the all inclusive and hotel resort. The Blue Seas resort was in fact a 1970's loud hotel called the Bonanza or Canary something or other. I already forget as might I suggest that no one should stay there? Ever? The hotel clanged and banged, and the staff didn't seem to know what was going on. We did enjoy the night life on the street and the restaurants, but there are some great hotels there...ours was not one of them.
However, this was within striking distance of Loro Parque and that is the adventure that awaits.
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