Tenerife - Puerto de la Cruz, Christmas 2004
Spent Christmas 2004 walking in and around Puerto de la Cruz, on the north coast of Tenerife. Very lush, lots of vegitation, with quite a history of humas habitation dating back hundreds of years, this part of Tenerife is quite different than the southern arid part, around Playa de las Americas and Los Cristianos, where most tourist makers go.
We stayed in the Sol Puerto Playa hotel, a good value if slightly dated 4 star hotel. Very good location, around the corner from the bus station so it was easy to run for the buses in the mornings.
On Christmas Day, we caught the municipal bus up to the volcano - Mt Teide, getting off at El Portillo to do the Las Canadas walk around the Volcano to the Parador. This takes you into another land, high up at 2000m, with little rain, more like Mars, or the Wild West of America. You walk around a quarter of the volcano, gradually seeing different angles.
The walk is straightforward, mostly level, taking around 4 and a half hours. The scenery slowly changes as you walk through shallow hills, half expecting John Wayne to come riding around the corner.
Towards the end of the walk, you reach the Piedras Amarillas, bizarre yellow stones, from which theres around 30 minutes to the Parador (Government run hotel), from where the bus takes you back to Puerto de la Cruz.
Another great walk we did was up to 'Las Arenas Negros' (walk 16 in the Sunflower book). There was rain for most of the day, and we hiked up from the bus stop through forest up to 1300m, then followed an irrigation canal, until we reached rolling mounds of blank volcanic sands. Clouds were swirling all around, like being on another planet.
For one short moment the skies cleared and we had a marvelous view around across western Tenerife, even glimpsing La Gomera (the next island along).
Another walk took us along the coast east of Puerto de la Cruz, past Playa Bollullo. Part of the walk took us through banana plantations, unfortunately all the bananas were still green.
