Tenerife 2020 2 5 (7) 25 2 21

Yeah, I'm married to this person who in many ways couldn't be more different to myself and believe it or not the differences I would have to admit sometimes appear to be predominantly positive. Like in the midst of winter taking me off for a week's vacation to Puerto de la Cruz on the Island of Tenerife!

You see as most of my longer term readers will appreciate my idea of a good holiday is to re-visit my beloved Scotland and climb a few more of my remaining hills, which in a few months' time we shall probably do anyway, but in the depths of winter she, the true native of these northern climes, needs to get away to warmer places because she finds the darkness of deep winter oppressive, whilst I who hail from somewhere further south have no problems with the restricted light of winter, because at its worst the days are still light from 9 until almost 4 in the afternoon and generally we have snow during the darkest time of year, which of course brings additional (reflected) light. This year however was the first I can remember when for the whole of January we had no snow and no sub-zero temperatures to speak of: 4 deg.C in the sea for my daily swims for the whole month when I endeavoured to take my dips during the daytime, and for the most part succeeded.

She ended up arranging our travel, after, at her suggestion, my initially checking out a few destinations, and perhaps settling on the Canaries for another visit, the last ones to the area in late February 2016 on Gran Canary, and 10 years earlier our last visit to Tenerife when we stayed in Santa Cruz, the island’s capital.

So we arrived there Tuesday 28^th January 2020 and followed an ad hoc programme of walks recorded as follows with A-E’s “Health” App:

         

Date                      steps              km               Objective

29^th Jan                 19402            14,1            Playa Bollullo

30^th Jan                 19290            14,4             SE Mirador path

31^st Jan                 12085              8,7            Loro Wildlife Parque

1^st Feb                   20497            15,4            La Caldera

2^nd Feb                  10343              7,2            Jardin Botanico     

         3^rd Feb                  24546            17,8           SE Mirado/Los Roques

The first two walks, coastal, the first heading off north east, the second days walk, south west, see pics listed chronologically...

We had clothes with us for less summery weather and whilst I began the holiday carrying my long-john underwear and cotton vest, wearing a pair of lightweight trousers which could double as shorts by unzipping the lower leg sections, I soon had dispensed with all these articles, to spend my days wearing separate short shorts and a short sleeved cotton shirt, with copious rubbings of sun tan block, plus my baseball cap with flap to protect ears and neck from the semi-tropical sun which shone each day in the region 23 to 27 degC. My water-proof clothing remained the whole time unwrapped in a suitcase.

                                                          

And A-E who this last 12 months has struggled to walk effectively with pains to her legs and back, set a cracking pace for most of our walking days, which following the coastal paths, included much loss and gain in height above sea level, another normal difficulty this last year for A-E no longer giving her so much trouble.

Exceptionally we dined for breakfast and evening meals most of the time in the Hotel Orotava’s 4 star restaurants when I commented the quality of the food was the best we had experienced for many a year…  

                                

The whole week we only bought one bottle of our favourite Marqués de Cáceres wine to drink in our hotel room, but rather enjoyed drinking the chilled Spanish beer, no more than two half pint measures in any evening, and following this up usually with maybe a 24 ml glass of house red, a very inexpensive item of sustenance. 

January in Tenerife: magic and something I would never have arranged had I been living without my dear wife!

Returning home after one of the most successful week's away with my wife A-E...5th February 2020
In this visit to Tenerife in 2020 and my last blog here describing our visit to Gran Canary in 2016 in which i began by saying our first visit was earlier it occurs to me today how we first visited the island and islands in connection with my 50th Birthday celebrations in 1989 shortly after moving to Scandinavia in 1988. And now as I look back over those 35 yrs of visits i have to note that over the period of review we have visited the two islands mentioned many more times, including one year when we also added the smaller island of La Gomera. Thanks to sustained interest in my blog by my bloggers i now get to reap the rewards of having written about these events of my life: no longer with its focus to write a daily blog, but appreciative that once upon a time i did have so much enterprise, hahaha.