Tenerife - Overview

        The new vacation finally came. We booked our new adventure in the first half of August in the most popular of the Canary Islands – Tenerife. It was a great experience and I shall share it with you. I will detail every experience in the upcoming articles. But for now, I will sum up below some of the important and necessary aspects I personally encountered in this vacation.

        Weather

        We had the accommodation in the northern part of the island, in Puerto de la Cruz. A very important aspect when you choose a vacation in Tenerife is where would you like your accommodation to be; north or south. The north side of the island is usually cloudy and foggy, and right after a few kilometers of driving south to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, there is clear blue sky. I did not know this aspect before, but personally I was glad we stayed in north because I could not have resisted the constant sun in my head 😊) But don’t worry, Tenerife sees like a couple of days of rain PER YEAR. So wherever you're staying, you will have great weather.

        Parking

        Usually, there are many parking spaces on either side of the road and also free parking lots near the center of the cities. So it should not be a problem being a tourist with rented car in Tenerife. The only problem we encountered was the parking overnight because the hotel did not have one. Being so crowdy, it was hard to drive around, in searching for a new parking space at the end of every day, and even more because we carried many baggages with us. In Puerto de la Cruz we found as a solution to buy a parking ticket at the mall Centro Comercial Martianez for more days. We paid 50 euros for 15 days (from which we stood only 10, but that was the offer) which we found pretty expensive, but it was the closest and safest parking in our area. I noticed the parkings on this island are either free or very expensive, there is no inbetween.

        Roads

        If you get a rental car, which I advise you to do, you can easily drive around the island and get the taste of the beautiful sights. Tenerife has 2 main highways, one in the north (TF-5) and one in the south (TF-1), both toll free. A full circle of the island would take about 2 hours and a half. However, the most impressing roads are not the highways, but the ones that hide inside the island. The roads to Teide (TF-21) and village of Masca (TF-436) are the most spectacular roads I’ve been on while here. The views are breathtaking and the roads wind through the heart of the mountains’ ridges.

        Food

        Tenerife is one of the biggest exportator of bananas to Spanish mainland (around 40%) so most of their fields are covered in banana trees. Among so many bananas, I also noticed fields of mangos, avocados, papayas, oranges and many other exotic fruits I could not really recognize 😊) So in terms of fruits you will always find fresh tasty exotic fruits to delight yourself. The prices in supermarkets I was expecting to be more expensive, but to my surprise they were actually really good. However, anywhere you go you must try the local cuisine. We’ve been a few times at restaurants and ordered one dish from each traditional food and we shared them between us to get a little taste of everything :D…and they were some of the best foods we’ve ever tried. I tell you, Spanish people really know how to cook. Lastly, I must not overlook, a must-do in Tenerife is to try their cactus fresh. We did not get the chance to try it because it seems in August the fruits are not mature enough to be harvested. But I heard it is absolutely amazing.

        Activities

        Being such a popular island, of course there are many activites that can be done here. I will list below some of the most popular among them:

• taking the cablecar to Teide Volcano (+ other activities like guided hikes, sunset and stargazing)
• Off-Road tours
• whale & dolphin watching
• Loro Parque visit
• Siam Park
• camel/horse riding
• one day or half day organized tours (if you don’t have a rental car) in different places on the island such as: Teide, Masca, Garachico, Icod, La laguna, Taganana, Anaga
• organized trekking at Anaga, Teide or Masca

        These activities can be purchased from the stalls – the streets are full of them – and you can find more information on the leaflets provided by them. Also, some of them must be booked in advance online, that's why I advise you to carefully check the details of each experience you want to do. For this reason, I will also write an article about each experience I have had or that I intended to have.