Spain and the Canary Islands

Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands with 1 million people. It was conquered by the Spanish in 1493 after welcoming Portuguese and Italian traders for centuries. Santa Cruz is a bustling city in the midst of a month long carnival, so this morning when we met our guide, Andreas, the streets were pretty quiet as the party goers were still in bed.

Tennerife was the site of one of the biggest aviation disasters in history. In the early 70’s two 747s collided . Clearly this is a part of their history they would prefer not to focus on.

The island is crowned with Eo Teide, a volcano that is dormant. It has a profile reminiscent of Mount Fuji...a perfect cone with a smattering of snow on top.

Andreas from Lanzoratte Experiences took us to 2 smaller cities...La Orotava and La Luguna. La Orotava is a town renowned for its houses with balconies jutting out from the top floors of the houses. Many of these houses date from the 1600’s and have been re-purposed as government buildings. They are built in the Spanish style of a central, internal courtyard, with open air corridors. The street facades of the houses tend to be quite plain, with ornate, wooden shutters. This is a pedestrian friendly city with wide roads and sidewalks but quite hilly. Once a year for a holy day (sometime after Easter), the town creates a sand carpet, a very ornate picture created by different colours of sand. It takes a month to create. They also cover a short stretch of the Main Street with a carpet of flowers which, of course get trampled by the procession. The city has a botanical garden including a 300 year old dragon tree which traditionally was used for medicinal purposes. It’s sap is red, like blood.

La Laguna (the lake) no longer has a lake. It is one of the larger towns on the island and is less interesting than La Oratavo. We visited the central market and had a delicious coffee called a Barrique (this is my guess on the spelling). It has expresso, sweetened condensed milk, cinammon, a small shot of liquor and, oddly, a piece of lime peel! Delicious. We added a glazed donut with a sweet potato filling for our morning snack. The Spanish laid out the town on a grid system so the roads are wide and straight. We visited the Church of San Fransica Real Sancitraviso Del Santerno Cristo (quite a mouthful). It has a silver gilded altar and a Black Jesus who, once he was cleaned of his oil and soot coating, turned out not to be black. Over 600 of the buildings here have a historical designation.

We thought both of these towns were fascinating and would warrant a multi-day visit.Read more