Tenerife 2005 - Photos and appropriate LJ entries...
(Cause I am too lazy to write it all out again!)
Tenerife Land Based Photos
Underwater photos
Tenerife... after our flight was delayed for little over an hour due to computer malfunction (yeah very reassuring i tell you) we arrived to a balmy 26C midnight, onto the coach and at the hotel at near enough 2:30am saturday morning - and of course we were STARVING... and there was no where around serving food (i wonder why!) so after searching the maze of the hotel complex we came across a vending machine - and you guessed it - we had NO COINS!!!!! grrrr... after some tussling with the night porter we bought some sprite and crisps from the machine...
back to the room - we had a very nice room on the top floor in the corner (ie no neighbor on the one side and fortunately all the other neighboring rooms were not occupied!) ...
off to bed and awake at 10ish we were...
so the first thing i do when awaking is throw open the door and see the view from the non poolside ... it was breathtaking - proper geography - you know the kind you get in the cape or in the mountains between joies and durbs...
cliffs shrouded in a light morning mist, blue and intimidating and lovely all at once... (i love mountains) ... then with a few hours to kill before going diving we went to the 'orientation thingy' hoping to gain some usefull info... also to hire a car...
anyway we signed up for near nothing except a car which the tour rep fucked up on anyway...
off we went to feed la rays at 3pm ...
my god there were at least 20 little rays and one big one that frightened the hell out of me - apparently i was heard screaming when it surprised me whilst i was laying on the floor and swam over me ...
then we got back to the hotel to find the rep had duffed up our car booking so off to the neighboring hotel to book it... sucess car booked...
so sunday we picked up steve (bardofely) a wonderful excentric man with the green beard! and of we went to explore the heights of teide, the pools of garachico, the forests, villaflor, strange long driveways which we thought were roads, discovered beards of capachino, climbed into a fortress that withstood a lava flow, watched lizards, felt hot hot hot, drove through clouds and had nice pizza in los galletas whilst watching the sun set... a busy day to say the least...
then monday... my aging day... 2 dives were planned - atlantis was first - a 30 m dive around some absolutely breathtaking lava columns which culminated in the 'cathedral' where the lava columns had collapsed forming a ... you know it... church type roof.... absolutely gorgeous and my first view of a eel garden - where these reed like things that disappear and look like grass are actually eels... then a break, food and of course the dive we were looking forward to...
seahorsies!
so off we go to kit up, 4 of us + guide on this dive and 2 doing a navigation dive course... so we go to the seahorsie place and we find 3 of these gorgeously camouflaged creatures in the sea weed... so tiny and delicate... after observing them for a bit off we go to see other stuff around the sight - a few minutes later we were surprised by being circled by - get this... a deep sea manta - similar to the one in the link.. it just circled us slowly and elegantly, it was around 5 meters wide and had 2 ramores (sp??) hanging off it... apparently they very rarely come to shore - only where there are jellyfish (and there were a few about) - so rare that the owner of the dive school has never (and still not cause she wasnt on the dive) seen one irl... in 8 years of diving in tenerife... it circled us for around 10 - 15 mins - hopefully the pics came out...
that was the most amazing thing ever....
monday night we went back to el pescador (ii) for some more yummy food, then we wandered along the seashore and got drunken and drank the leftover bits of lovely red wine on the rocks by the sea... pretty...
tuesday was a short day diving for us - just one dive then a nice long drive to candelaria afterwards... candelaria has an interesting history and a black madonna and child in the main church ... this has a story behind it but i wont go into that now...
we wanted to hit the beach but candelaria didnt have the cleanest of beaches - the black sand is not a put off for me its the plastic wrappers floating in the water that made me cringe - so off we went heading back towards our town with a quick veer into playas del la americas (the main brit resort) - needless to say the white beaches (all fakely made) and the profusion of monsoon, next, etc and pubs meant we didnt even stop (did see a few no local food only tescos produce type places and shuddered as we tried to find the damn motorway out of there again...
needless to say we ended up in our local beach (playa del la arena) which was spotless, the water clear and rubbish free and coincidentally the blackest of all the beaches we had found (ps we nicked some sand so we can show people just how black... whilst swimming in the sea we saw this woman excercising by walking from left to right along the beach... the strange thing was all she was wearing was a thong... i spose that takes care of sweaty work out clothes eh?
wednesday was our diving day off so off to bard of elys place and then up to masca we went... masca didnt have road access until 5 years ago and has a mere 100 locals (maybe 101 as bardofely is thinking of moving there), its a hidden village in the cliffs with a 3 hr hike to the sea / plantations (where the locals grow their own food) and the MOST AMAZINGLY WINDY road EVER! the road was built over the footpath the locals used to get to the nearest town... needless to say lunch was gorgeous and the views spectacular...
after masca we went off to garachico to go do some swimming in the lava pools - funny how 22C seems cold after using a wetsuit! tide was coming in and <lj user="supergoth"> whimped out of dipping in again... i must point out that these rock pools are deceptively deep and lovely to swim in - and full of fishies (which attest to their cleanlyness(sp??))
thursday saw our last 2 dives. the first being to the wreck which was incredibly hard work - the spring tides had sprung and i am just not strong enough to swim in currents - all i saw was determination to follow the leader and not end up on another island swept away by the current... we almost didnt do the second dive but i am glad we did as it was truely gorgeous drift dive with a strange sea cucumber, pretty damsels and parrot fish and a family of rays ... drift dives are good and we were down for around an hour when told to ascend and it felt like 10 mins!!!
thursday night we discovered el mason ... my golly gosh never order garlic with your food and dont bother with starters the mains are big enough ... hamish had rabbit , i had pork + garlic (which was 2 HUGE pork chops covered in around a cm thick layer of chopped fresh fried garlic), which meant h had pork chop too... and the neighboring table donated a piece of fish to h's plate too... after dinner the wierdest thing happened - when i asked for honey rum (a canarian speciality) they brought over a bottle of rum, a bottle of apple liquer, and some peach liqueur and LEFT THEM on the the table (after poaring me almost a half cognac glass of honey rum) then after paying the bill we found ourselves the proud owners of a bottle of bubbly and a bottle of wine - on the house...
friday was our go slow day - shopping for curios, feeding some fish, hanging out in the pool and going back to el mason for dinner... (this time paella and yet another bottle of wine and half bottle of apple liqueur to take away)
whilst lazing about the pool we joined in an organised activity where i was near strangled by some northern blokes and still have a scratch on my neck from them.., i thought that a bit unfair to be strangled when NOT ONE of the girls on their team was assaulted but me i was near killed by them... oh well...
then back to blighty...
and kitties...
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