Come with me to Tenerife

Hi guys

last week I was in Tenerife and I loved it so much. Here's my travel diary with everything I visited there. I was there from saturday 'till wednesday. I'll share with you the highlighted photo for each day next to the text and in a gallery I'll share some more shots with you. I'll link all the places with their Google maps locations for you.

What you should know first is that it was on the amber list for Belgian corona travels so we were able to go there without any quarantine. We only had to have a negative pcr test.

You need to fill in a passenger location form to enter Spain and you need this to get home again to Belgium as well. I only saved the QR code to enter Belgium because I didn't receive an email, darn you Belgium... and this gave me some troubles. The lady of our flight was very rude to me and wouldn't let me travel. After a small argue, she handed me the location forms on paper to be filled in. I mean, was that so hard haha?! A funny thing here, arriving in Belgium, no one checked my PL form or my QR code... Stress for nothing.

Going to spain, at the Belgian airport, they did ask for the PL form and the negative test results (in English).

The covid rules at the canary islands are the same for entire Spain. You actually need to wear a mask outside. Normally even in nature... but literally not many people did that and the police didn't really comment about it.

The climate in Tenerife: it's always pretty humid and hot there. It's also very windy. Especially around the southern area, at El Medano where we stayed. The UV index was very high. It was UV 11 at the sea and 12 on the volcano. The weather is the best at the southern parts of the island. At the north, it gets super humid and it rains more. We wanted to visit the north but the weater was too bad. To give you an idea: starting at El Medano with 25 degrees celcius and sunny weather, at the norther part it became 11 degrees and rainy!

Day 1: Arriving, getting our car and going to the beach at Los Americanos! Los Americanos is the most touristic regoin of the island because the weather there is the best and you have the most facilities there. The beach to me is pretty ugly with all the buildings.... A bit further though, in the nature it's lovely. I really loved all the cacti on the island.

After the beach we took a hike there above the rocks above the sea. The hike started at the beach called "playa de los hippies". We started at sealevel and hiked uphills to get this lovely view. The paths are not well maintained so it's easy to get lost, which we did...

Day 2: Hiking down the Teide volcano. The Teide is the highest mountain in Spain. It is 3718 m high! When you're at tany beach, you can almost spot this mountain everywhere because it's so so high.

We took the Teleférico del Teide (the cablecar) and hiked all the way down. We did the hike at the right side of the cablecar. The hike is very long and exhausting but has the most stunning views. On the maps, the hike is 4h long but we did hike way more than that. The paths down are in the lavastream so it's not easy to walk on it. You need really decent shoes there.

You start at the top of the cable care. Here you can take an extra hike to actually visit the crater. You need an extra ticket to get permission for that and you need to book this weeks or even months in advance. It's most of the times fully booked, which is a bummer. We weren't able to do this hike because I only booked this vacation literally a week before boarding, yolo! I booked this trip very last minute because due to covid it's not easy to find flights and you always need to wait for the traveling colors to stay updated... Our weather here in Belgium has been terrible for the entire month of may, I just needed an escape.

So, coming down from the hill, through the lava stream, you get a lovely view over the valley. Then you need to go around another hill to arrive at a parking space. If you, like us, parked the car at the cable car parking lot, you'll need to hike another 3km to the other parking space. Yay haha! I think it took us about 4 and a half hours to go downhills and then another hour to go back to the parking space.

At the end of the day, we were very tired but the views were worth it.

Day 3: Visiting the inland and Masca. On day three, I normally planned to go to the inland and to the famous millennial dragon tree (drago milenario) and then to the Punta de Teno. The weather was too bad so we didn't go to the famous tree, we went straight to the ligthouse. Arriving there, at 7km from the lighthouse, the road was blocked. You apparantly can only get there by bus at certain hours. I was so mad because google told me that on mondays, tuesdays and wednesdays, the road should've been open. Lesson learned here. I found out that the gorgeous town of Masca was on our road back, so we did that (which was the plan for day 4).

Masca is so stunning. It has these big rocks from the other side of Los Gigantes and it has a lot of palmtrees. It looked like I was in Hawaii or something. The town is super small and only had one terrace open but it was very lovely though. You can take a hike to the sea there, which is 600 m of climbing down... so also 600 height difference back up if you want to come back to Masca. You can also take a boat from there to the beach of Los gigantes. We didn't have time so didn't do this hike though.

After that went to the sea of Los Gigantes. The rocks next to the sea are called Los Gigantes for very obvious reasons. The mountains behind Masca are all over 1000m high and the rocks itself are around 600 m high. At the beach there, you feel very very small!

At the harbour we had some vegan paella and then searched for a beach. We choose the Playa de la Arena because it should be the best one. And so it was. It's a lovely small black sand beach with gorgeous oceanviews. You can even see the next canary island there: La Gomera. I also saw a whale! Okay, he was super far away but I did see him spouting water though. I always wanted to take a boat to go whale or dolphin watching but it was not for now. My mom is super sick at sea so I didn't want to leave her alone... One day, one day!

Day 4: Going back to the Teide 'cause we fell in love. We took the cablecar up and down for this time. We went to the left side of the mountain, where you can see the other small volcano crater. You can also find places there where there's hot humid mist coming straight out of the mountain. It's so cool, knowing that this gas is literally coming from the centre of our earth.

After that, we visited the ancient crater and we hiked around the big rocks called "Los Roques de Garcia". There is a hike all around them, which is a couple of kilometers long. The hike is gorgeous. It's inside the crater so there's not much wind and it can get pretty hot there. The views are worth it though.

This typical plant is the Tajinaste. Rojo It's a gorgeous plant with little pink flowers in it. It was blossoming when we were there so the perfect timing. Around the plant, you find a lot of cute little bees. There's not much wildlife in Tenerife because it's an island and because of the climate there. These plants are like a small oasises of life. They can become pretty large, some of them are up to 3m high. This particular plant can only be found at one place in our world, here!

The plant is also very strong, it lives in a super dry climate with hot temperatures but can stay in perfect conditions untill -5 degrees celcius. How fierce!

Day 5: A tranquil day; first we went to the "Montana Roja" and the sea and then we rested a couple hours at the pool.

The Monatana Roja is the red mountain that's near to the airport. You can see this mountain when arriving by plane. The mountain is 171m high. The hike is about 1 hour from the beach of El Medano, back and forth. It's a cute little getaway near the ugly buildings of El Medano.

After that, we went to the pool of our apartment.

Then we went back home :(.

Would you come to Tenerife?

If I'd go back, I'd totally visit the northern island with it's woods and I'd take a dolphin boat! I'm dreaming of that. I'd also book a ticket to go to the top of the Teide if that's possible.

X Steph