Arrival At The Island Of Eternal Spring, Tenerife
..8th Of November, 2016..
I arrived on Tenerife, Canary Islands together with my best bud from Belgium, Mr. L. He had 14 days off to join me, to visit an old friend of ours, who moved here 3 years ago, Mr. T.
T. had a really cool roommate, Mr K., who was living with him for a while. From the first day we met we had a lot of laughs, K. was a really funny guy, a born entertainer. We decided to rent a car for a week to explore the island of eternal spring Tenerife.
Exploring Tenerife
Alcalá - Turtle Spotting
In this little beautiful town called Alcalá there is a place where you can spot turtles when snorkeling. It is advised to go snorkel before 10am, this is when they come close to the coastline apparently. And we hit the jackpot!!
As we were swimming, each spread out looking for turtles, suddenly I hear a scream underwater from somebody and I pull my head out of the water to listen..
"Guys, guys get your asses over here!"
It was K. calling us to come quickly.
"Could it be? I think he found something..."
I started to swim towards him and so were the others. As we were coming closer he was making signs to slow down, not to scare the turtle. As I arrived I was looking in the direction of his pointing finger and suddenly BOOM!!
There she was, the most magnificent beauty of the ocean I have ever witnessed!
We were so lucky as K. had brought his GoPro camera. We were all swimming behind the turtle, keeping a little distance not to scare the beauty, and K. was filming the turtle's journey.
This is a real special animal! Swimming behind the turtle and keeping your eyes focused on it was an enchanting experience!
It felt like the turtle was radiating a peaceful, meditative feeling that was piercing right through my inner core.
K. made the most awesome video clip of the experience, you can almost feel it buy watching the clip.
Let's check it out..
Masca - Hiking
The hiking route of Masca is one of the most famous of the island. It is very touristic. When you experienced it, you will get it why it is so popular. The ride to Masca by itself is already very spectacular! If you aren't a good driver you should take the bus, this road ain't for rookies.. it is a very small road through the mountains and very often you pass buses and cars from the other direction. It's an exciting ride, that's for sure. If you like driving in environments like this, than it is a nice challenge for you.
I like this part of the island a lot, if not the most.. very beautiful environment. It is full of wild palm trees here and they grow in the most insane spots. It looks like they just grow out of very steep rocky mountains. It almost looks like they just come out of cracks in between rocks sometimes, like wild herbs growing out of rocky walls, amazing! Completely different landscape than the desert-like south.
The village of Masca is the start point of the hiking route. It is at an altitude of 650 meter. The route goes down in between a very beautiful ravine. Sometimes you can spot mountain goats when going down. Truly amazing animals, as they jump and climb from rock to rock to nibble on the rocky plants.
One time I believe I witnessed something like a domestic fight between goats. At first I heard, in the distance, what seemed like an argument among people. Loud crazy screams, it sounded like people going completely berserk. Arriving a 100 meters deeper in the ravine, I suddenly saw at my left side, more up on the rocks, 2 groups of goats screaming against each other, and like I heard, one of them was going berserk.. haha.. jumping around and screaming like a madman..
Lol.. what a strange experience that was.
If you walk down you will end up at a black lava sand beach, closed-in between both ends of the ravine. This place somehow reminded me of the movie "Pirates Of The Caribbean". Really beautiful! You can take a boat to get out of there so you don't have to go all the way back up. Some people will be happy for this, as it might take at least 3 hours to get back up hiking! We went back up hiking. It was hard but this must have been a very healthy day.. haha..
Barranco Del Infierno
Barranco Del Infierno is another beautiful ravine where we went hiking on another day. The environment here reminded me more of a wild west movie from when I was a kid. It was full of cactus fields and in between the cactus fields, nicely spread out through the area, you see the beautiful Canarian pine trees.
My shoes tore my skin off last hike so I went on my slippers. My friends looked at me and said..
"Are you crazy?"
"No, I just hate these shoes to hike, they hurt more than they feel good."
"Okay if you go without me too."
"Okay fuck it, me too then."
Suddenly, while hiking, Mr. T said -
"Let's go off road and try to get over the mountain to look for the waterfall"
The entrance to the waterfall was closed this day but Mr. T wanted to go and see anyway... Bad idea! especially without shoes, hiking through cactus fields.. haha..
Looking back on it, it is quite funny though. I would call these guys my second 3 musketeers click.. haha.. these 2 friends from Belgium feel like family anyway, my unrelated brothers!!
No shoes
One time I even hiked barefoot in Masca (half of the route) because the slippers were annoying me. This was a very special experience! At the end of the hike this somehow gave me a rush of energy and seemingly emptied my mind. It was like the volume of my "inner talk show/mind radio" was turned down a big notch... a sense of inner peace filled the rest of my evening. I loved this feeling!
Contrasts
What I really love about Tenerife is the huge contrasts in surroundings at really short distances. The biggest one is going up on El Teide with a car. Up, from the south of Tenerife, over El Teide, the huge volcano, and driving back down in the north. This is a stunning journey! You start from a desert-like environment up through an always changing scenery, until you eventually feel like you have landed on the moon.. haha..
It is a genuinely beautiful strange setting up there. We stopped a few times to enjoy the view of the surroundings. It felt like walking on an alien planet. Nature can really show her beauty in so many ways! When you drive down on the other side of the volcano you suddenly find yourself in a more tropical environment. Tenerife is like an attraction for driving around the island, so many spectacular places to see..
So much diversity on this island, truly amazing. Many hidden gems!
After 14 days Mr. L had to go back home. I stayed here for a while to catch up on lost time with T. We hadn't seen each other for a long time and we were both free...
Original Plans
My original plan was to stay one month and travel around to explore other islands too, but like I said before, plans change all the time when you are traveling.. and one month became two months eventually.. haha.. at the end of the year my brother and cousin arrived too to start traveling plus the friend from Belgium who visited me in Italy came to visit again on Christmas. At this point the top of El Teide was covered in snow. Another Amazing view!
This was my beautiful Tenerife experience
Graphic designs are done with the website https://www.canva.com/ and all non-sourced images are 100% my own work.
☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯
I am a member of the minnowtowhale team, thanks to
. If you are new to steemit and want to become a member to help each other grow and participate in the community go here for guidelines, and go to the discord channel and talk to 
in the team minnowtowhale channel https://discord.gg/Xuw5DF
Tips
- Randowhale is now only 0,5 Steem/SBD per vote! Spread the news!
- Treeplanter is a bot that plants trees for every 1usd donations and votes on a post of your liking, donate votes to fellow steemians with this bot. Click for more info
Video Tutorials
- Learn Effective Post Promotion On Steemit.Chat With @samstonehill
- Learn The Basics Of Markdown Style Guide in 10 Minutes (and APPLY TO POSTS and COMMENTS)
- Learn how to effectively use your WALLET & how to cash out your earnings! To watch video directly click here
- For more steemit tutorials check out
☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯