The February sky was tinged pink and cool as we waited in Waterford for JJ Kavanagh’s bus to take us to Dublin airport….our first visit to any airport since our trip to Ethiopia in 2019. All trips since then then were confined to Ireland or else by ferry with the Guzzler. We were missing the Guzzler already – we had to be far more disciplined with our packing without the luxury of throwing things in the back of the car ‘just in case.’

Dublin Airport was eerily quiet on Wednesday morning, Feb 2 without queues or bustle. JJ dropped us at the door of Terminal 2 (great service) and we self checked in one 10 kg bag and sailed through all hand luggage checks with no-one asking about Covid passes or Spanish QR codes. Despite that, our 14.20 flight to Tenerife was surprisingly full…maybe it was the freedom to fly, the lure of winter sunshine, the cheapness of the ticket (we paid less than €100 for 2 tickets) or that more exotic destinations were off-limits. A gang of young people from UL had planned to go to Vietnam instead and we would have been winging it to the Philippines if borders were open to tourists.

While we were waiting for the flight in Dublin, we checked bus timetables in Tenerife. We had booked accommodation the previous night for the first three nights in Puerta de la Cruz in the north of the island and we were flying into the south. We discovered that it was a public holiday in Tenerife – feast day of the Black Virgin, the patron saint of the island – and bus services were very curtailed so we decided to hire a car for the first five days…..an electric car and so began the saga of the electric car.

We arrived in Aeraporta Sud at about 6.45pm – it was a little cloudy but still bright and a very pleasant 21^o degrees, not bad for an early February evening and there was no time difference between the Canaries and Ireland. Our Spanish Covid QR codes were scanned for entry -a few people didn’t have their QR codes and were kept aside. Presumably they got help to fill them in and hopefully were allowed entry and not sent back on the next plane. We picked up our (very)compact electric car – a Fiat 500. The battery was fully charged and the car-hire guy told us that there were plenty of charging points in towns and shopping centres everywhere, many of them free. The journey to our apartment in Puerta de la Cruz was just over an hour on good roads but about half way there, we were shocked to have to turn on the windscreen wipers 🙄- the first rain in months apparently (and the only rain we have seen since).

Google told us that there was a fast electric car charger near Loro Parque ( a zoo/aquarium in Puerta de la Cruz) so we headed in that direction the following day only to find that we had to pay €4 to park before we could use the charger. So on we went in search of another charging point and found one near the Botanical Gardens but it was in use. So we amused ourselves by drinking barraquitos – an expresso layered with condensed milk and liqueur – a great way to pass the time and a speciality in the Canaries. But later when we attached our cable to the car charger we found that we needed to swipe a card to get it to work although the actual charging was free (this isn’t unusual as we have a special card to charge our electric car at home). Luckily Carmen, my sister in law who lives in Tenerife was with us and she rang the number on the charging point and off we went in search of a card which we found in an electric motor bike shop just before it closed for the day. Back to the charging point (still free, phew!!!!) and now we discovered that we needed to register the card before it would work. That shouldn’t have been a problem but it was….there was no option to register a card on the website unless we had ordered the card from them and they had posted it out to us. We contacted the rental company(CI cars) to get them to register the card – no problem, they said – and so we drove to their small office in Puerta. The rep there tried for about 45 minutes to register the card but without success. So we were in the ridiculous position of hiring an electric car (that we were very happy with) but with no way of charging it – the company should have had cards registered already for use but they didn’t. So we had no choice but to swap our electric car for an even more compact hybrid Fiat 500 (the only car that was in Puerto). The boot was teeny in this one – we had great fun fitting Carmen in the back seat with her two dogs -Snowy and Jamie – and all their paraphernalia including a dog-buggy (Jamie has a terminal heart condition and has mobility issues). By then we were all in dire need of some refreshment… luckily wine was very cheap …as was fuel, about €1.30 a litre. But the car had a certain retro charm with its cream leather seating – like something in an old Bond movie.

Caoimhin had the Bond feeling over the next few days as he sped around hairpin bends in our little car – Tenerife may be small but the landscapes are incredibly varied – banana plantations, fig trees, cloud forests, lunar landscapes, hill villages that were so steep that the little Fiat struggled and hillsides dotted with caves and terraced cultivation, sunshine coasts and cloud-wrapped mountains. We visited Candelaria with its impressive statues of the ten Guanche kings, the original inhabitants who ruled the island before the Spanish invaded. Fine specimens of men reported to be tall, strong and blue-eyed and despite tales of great valour, they were crushed and destroyed – at any rate little evidence of their lineage remains in the present day physique of the locals 🤣. We visited Santiago del Tiede, a gorgeous town famous for its almond grooves, hiking trails and the most fabulous OTT church with statues clothed in silk cloths,

We spent five nights in Puerta de la Cruz in two different apartments – both about €45 a night with swimming pools and balconies. Puerta was a large bustling fishing town full of palm trees, flowering shrubs, black sandy beaches, hotels and a long esplanade lined with restaurants, cafes and tourist shops. It has a mountain backdrop that twinkled with lights at night from hill villages. Mount Teide, the highest mountain in the Canaries and shaped like a child’s drawing, lurked up there too but because of haze, cloud and dust, we rarely saw it, only catching occasional faint glimpses of its snow-capped summit.

We headed on to El Medano, a little beach town and fishing village near the airport – much smaller and scruffier than Puerta de la Cruz but with a laid-back charm, very popular with surfers and water sport enthusiasts, families, walkers and sun worshippers. On windy days, the sky was full of coloured kites from the kite surfers against a backdrop of blue sky and the red glow of Montana Roja (red mountain} and an arid dessert landscape where even cacti struggle to grow. Tomatoes were grown intensively until the 1960s and depleted the land leaving it barren but there is some recovery and hope with conservation efforts and the creation of a Special Nature Reserve with salt lakes becoming a mecca for migratory birds

We will be sorry to leave El Medano today – we rented an apartment here for a week… but we get itchy feet🙃 However, I would definitely recommend El Medano with its comfortable daytime temperature ranging from 22⁰ to 27⁰– lovely restaurants and cafes – and so near the airport that a taxi costs only €15. Such a lovely place to escape winter.

But today we will take the ferry from Los Christianos in Tenerife to El Hierro, the most westerly island of the Canaries. It has been called the island with Soul – I image something like the Aran Island but warmer… but I could be totally wrong.. The seas are forecast to be rough but we have been told that the Canarian cure for sea sickness is to eat a small can of olives with anchovies (never fails….apparently)

Till next time, Happy Valentines Day to everyone ….and remember if you don’t have a Valentine, treat yourself💕💕