One week around Tenerife

I cannot say that I just got back from Tenerife, because I did not, it happened quite a while ago already, to be more precise in the second half of November. This year I decided to take one week of my summer holiday in November when the weather reached its most boring and dull period in Stockholm, when there is still no snow to say that it's winter already and the sky is dark and cloudy almost 24/7.

In retrospective I'm happy to say that I made this decision, I got plenty of natural vitamin D and tried for the first time ever road cycling with a professional bike, climbing hundreds and thousands of meters under three days. It definitely gave me inspiration to continue doing this sport and take it into the next level. Returning home (after I spent one more week home in Transylvania too), I set up a personal goal to compete the Halvvättern, the half-marathon version of the famous Vätternrundan which is a 300 km long race around the lake having the same name, Vättern. But first step first: I need my own race bike! 😄Having that under me, there won't be anything stopping me.

Back to Tenerife now. Each of the three mornings, I left towards three different directions from El Medano, the small, coastal village on the south where I was staying at.  What's important to know about Tenerife is that it is totally dominated by the mountain Teide, the peak standing at 3718m is the highest point in Spain and rules the landscape of the Canary Islands. Easy to guess that cycling is quite a challenge on the island even if you try to cycle along the coast as all the roads are like a tiny version of a roller-coaster going constantly up and down. I set my target high already on my first day, I picked up the bike from a rental place near my Airbnb and headed directly to the highest village of the island, Vilaflor, which lies at an altitude of 1400m. Not being used to sudden elevation changes on bike from Sweden, the initial tiredness (well, after the first 300 meters of elevation difference) got me as a surprise, but keeping myself hydrated and focused on my goal pushed me on all the way to the top where I found myself in a totally different climate which changed from cloudless and 25C degrees on the seaside to a freezing 6C degrees and drizzle in Vilaflor. Having brought a number of different layers with me, this didn't mean any problem. After loading up with fruit and fresh water, I took another road down back to the seaside and warm sand. It was just a perfect ride.

Next day I met a problem I didn't take enough into account before: ass pain (like S pain - SPAIN, where else than here, haha)! It took a bit of an effort but I managed to get used to the pain good enough to be able to do again a 60 km roller coaster ride, this time I turned to the East from Granadilla de Abona, and cycled to Villa de Arico, passing by villages having names like El Rio and Las Vegas (finally, I've been on the land of casinos too!).

My third and last day on bike I headed to the West through the well known beach resort, Los Cristianos all the way to Adeje. Having gone through constant mix of rain and hot, sunny periods, biking became even more fun and I appreciated the shower back at my place more than after any ordinary day.

Tenerife is fun on bike, but taking my limited amount of time and capabilities into consideration I realized that for my last full day the best would be to rent a car and just drive around and across the island and see all the rest that I haven't before. Luckily I  even got company in the person of Angelica, a Venezuelan-born but by now becoming kind of a local girl. We headed directly up to the Teide National Park where Martian landscape awaited. It was simply stunning! There it felt like you are standing on an otherworldly soil where rough, white sand is all over the place among huge volcanic blocks standing tall. That day I experienced again all kind of weather, from coastal hot weather up to 3C degrees and mixed rain and snow, rain showing up again and again several times during the day, those climate zones are crazy in Tenerife! During that day we paid a visit in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the island, Mirador Pico del Inglés (which was totally foggy), Mirador de Jardina (a bit less foggy). Despite the thick layer of clouds, at some point we've been lucky enough to see the sea on both sides of the road, up several hundreds of meters above the sea level. Unfortunately I couldn't snap a picture as I was driving, but the view lives on vividly in my memory. The last stop for the day was in Icod de los Vinos, where a solitary, 1000 years old massive, solitary dracaena tree keeps tourists pouring in the otherwise calm town on the north coast of the island. Being a tourist myself, I couldn't miss it out either. Thanks to Fabrizio, my Airbnb flatmate, at the end of the day I even got to know a lovely group of people from four corners of the United States and had a cozy, homemade Thanksgiving dinner. I couldn't be happier than that, as that was my first Thanksgiving dinner I have ever participated in, which surely will remain as a nice closing memory of my one, well-spent week in Tenerife.