Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Nice Melons Chiky-Monkey?- Tenerife, Canary Islands

We had monday off of school so we decided to take advantage of the weekend and go to the Canary Islands :). We left friday night on the last bus to Madrid (around 9) and got to the station at about 11. Then we took the metro to the airport and slept on the floor there until 4:15am when we were able to check in for our 6am flight. We aren't crazy, it's just that there are no morning buses that would get us there on time so we really had no other choice haha. Anyway our flight was good and we got to Tenerife (one of the 7 Canary Islands) around 8am because they're an hour behind Spain. After checking into our hotel and talking to a really helpful tourism lady we decided to spend Saturday on the beach at Playa de las Americas. It was really touristy and full of flabby topless ladies, but was really fun overall. For a Spanish territory in Africa it was a lot more British than I expected. And everyone spoke english even though Spanish is the official language. Their spanish was also funny because it is a lot more like latin american spanish than Spain spanish (i.e. we took the guagua instead of the autobus).

View from the plane
Hopefully there are no visible naked ladies in this one

The next day we woke up early again to take the only bus up to Teide, the volcano in the middle of the island. It's the highest point in Spain and the 3rd largest volcano in the world at 12, 198 feet. When we got up into the mountains we took a little walk/hike for about an hour and a half (not too difficult since I was doing it in flip flops) to the giant gondala that takes you up only 300m shy of the crater (you need a license to go all the way up). It was really really beautiful, but I learned that I don't do well at high altitudes. At all.

View from the top of Teide

The top of the volcano

After our all day volcano adventure we went home and went to bed early again before our 9am flight Monday morning. It was a really short trip but I'm definitely glad that we went!

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