April 22, 2024 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain 13 days left of 138

 We docked this morning at 7 am. It is still dark out, so this was the picture Mike got. It is almost a full moon, so you can just see it going below the clouds. Tenerife looks inviting.

We are off on a 4.5 hour tour of Northern Tenerife. We will be driving through the northeastern corner of the island. We enjoyed the rugged peaks and deep ravines of Anaga Rural Park, home to the largest number of endemic species in Europe. 

Our ship from land.

I tried to catch the colorful houses. Some villages will paint them all white, and others look for different colors from their neighbors, and the bolder the better.

It is a land of cactus, and the homes are built right up steep hills in clusters.

Make sure to note the roads we are traveling. You can see them across the ravine,...

past terraced areas for produce, or grapes...

the roads have wood guardrails, and cement blocks to keep you from careening down the hillside. Note the hairpin turn. It took cars stopping on the other side, and the bus had to do wide full road turns to get around them.

Once down we came to the Atlantic Ocean.

The beaches are black due to the volcanic rock that has been pounded into sand. Santa Cruz has a white beach that the sand is imported from Africa.

Our guide Maria. She drove from the Southern part of the Island, which was about 60 miles away.

I tried to catch the waves coming through this hole with a dramatic splash. This was the best I could do.

You can tell it was a beautiful day. A perfect sightseeing day as the temperature is 72 degrees, with a slight breeze. Perfect

You could walk out and around this large bolder.

This is Taganana, and is famous for being one of the first settlements founded by the Spanish explorers. 

We visited this church Nuestra Senora de las Nieves - "Our Lady of the Snows" - it has a beautiful altar triptych. This church was renovated in the mid 1900's. They did not change anything, but repaired things. It was a special simple church.

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This was on the outside of a nearby home in the church courtyard.

These are the two side alters, for what ever reason the main alter picture will be at the end of the blog as I can't get it into place. ugh!

The area is very fertile, and where cared for things grow well. 

We stopped for some local wine and goat cheese.

Again note the road we traveled. We were stopped twice once for work on the side of the road preparing for the rainy season to direct the water down the mountain. The second time was for some branches that must have fallen across the road, and were being cleaned up. The tour that was traveling a half hour behind us were not able to make it through as there was a rock slide. It was just lucky that we were able to make the full planned trip. I am hoping that they were able to stop the other bus before it got on this narrow road, as I would not have wanted to turn around the bus on the narrow road, or back all the way down this winding road.

On the way back we drove through a forest. It is located from 1,000 - 1,400 meters above sea level. It is in the clouds, and they call it horizontal rain I would call it heavy dew. The leaves are able to absorb water to assist the trees to survive.

We saw orange and lemon trees ready to harvest.

Again the brightly colored homes.

There Opera house was designed by the same architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. You can see the similarity in design.

We could not read what this statue was honoring as it was all in Spanish. We came into the city to do our own walking tour. It is a beautiful easy to navigate city. We found the people friendly, and the city clean. We did learn that their Siesta time started shortly after we arrived to the Our Lady of Africa Market.

St. Francis Catholic Church

This was the former Performing Arts building.

The tower and the colorful buildings.

Our lady of Africa Market. Shortly after we arrived everyone was putting things away, and locking up for a 2 hour siesta.

We decided if we purchased anything in the market, we would have to carry it home on our heads like this statue.

We were told this is the oldest church in Tenerife.

We were able to find a Pub open and most enjoyed some local beer. We love pictures when we are toasting. Skoal!

When we arrived back to the ship we gathered for some games of Sequence. If you could see our winning record, you would see Mike P. and I ruled the day with 5 wins to Susan and Greg's 3 wins, and Mike and Roseanne were the biggest losers with one win. It always evens out in the end. It was a fun way to pass some time.

Tonight our Viking Vocalists sang for us. They did country music, so we had fun singing along.

Here is the main alter of the Church from above.