Bright sunlight filled the jet’s cabin as our pilot dipped the plane’s wing into a descending curve that revealed an arid rugged coast, bound by surf and azure waters. Tenerife! The walk to the car park under gently swaying palm trees was refreshingly balmy, a good omen for our visit.

Heading north on TF-1 in our rental car, views of picturesque small villages along the coast awakened our expectations for the days ahead. Our 14 days on Tenerife were divided evenly between stays in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Icod de los Vinos and La Orotova, with multiple day trips planned from each town to explore the island in depth. Traveling during the September shoulder season, we were able to find some very good pricing for stays at the Iberostar Heritage Grand Mencey, Hotel Emblemático San Marcos, and the Hotel Alhambra.

Three hotels with distinctive character. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was our first destination, the island’s capital; it is a surprisingly large yet intimate, historic and cosmopolitan port city that offers ferry service to several of the other Canary Islands.

The volcanic seven island archipelago is closer to the coast of Morocco than the Iberian Peninsula. Discovered and populated by folks of Berber origin known as the Guanches around the 5th century B.C., It’s thought their indigenous Canary culture developed in isolation over the next 2000 years until Spain’s Age of Discovery sent fleets of ships south along the African coast in the early 1400s. In 1492, after sailing south from Spain, Christopher Columbus’s fleet of three ships and his intrepid explorers stopped in the Canary Islands to resupply their fresh water and food before catching the favorable, westward-blowing trade winds that carried them across a vast ocean to the discovery of the New World. Tenerife was the last island to succumb to Spanish rule in 1496 after the Guanches were forcefully defeated. For the next 400 years the islands played a crucial role in the colonization of the Americas, sending settlers to help establish Caracas, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and San Antonio, Texas, along with exporting the first banana plants and sugarcane seeds to the islands in the West Indies. Potatoes and maize, new foods from the Americas, arrived first in the Canaries along with treasure ships laden with silver and gold destined for Spain. The importance of the islands to the Spanish crown was noted by the English privateer and favorite royal bad boy Sir Francis Drake, who found the weather so much more agreeable than England and attacked them in 1586 and 1595. Dutch privateers along with Barbary and French pirates also attacked the islands frequently.

Situated along the tree lined Rambla de Santa Cruz, with its wide pedestrian walkway that runs down the center entire length of the boulevard, the Iberostar Heritage Grand Mencey blended effortlessly into the beautiful 19th architecture that surrounds it. While parking on the street in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is free, there is tremendous competition in finding a space, so we opted to use the hotel’s garage during our stay. Fortunately, our lodging was only a fifteen-minute walk from the city center. It was an ideal location to explore the city from.

Adjacent to the hotel, the Parque García Sanabrias provided a tranquil sanctuary under a canopy of old growth trees. It’s a huge city park with different gardens, monumental sculptures, and several eateries, and is popular with folks seeking a place to exercise or relax. It’s here that we were first introduced to café leche y leches, a visually attractive layered coffee that was originally created in Santa Cruz de Tenerife early in the 1900s. Surely it was an act of divine inspiration that led to its creation at the Bar Imperial for a loyal customer who always requested the same special coffee. Made with whole milk, condensed milk, espresso, and cinnamon, its popularity quickly spread across the Canaries. Made with an additional shot of Liquor 43, it’s called a “Barraquito,” in honor of the customer who inspired the drink’s creation.

Walking through the city on the way to the harbor and the Palmetum one day revealed a vibrant combination of old and new. Beautiful historic buildings and grand sculptures dotted our route. We were surprised to find that the city also has a modern tramline, the Tranvia de Tenerife, that connects its outer neighborhoods and La Laguna to the city center and port area.

Reaching the Plaza de Espana, we paused to contemplate a tall obelisk, the Monument to the Fallen. A controversial piece today, it was erected in 1947 during the dictatorship of General Franco, and sadly dedicated to the victors in the Spanish Civil War. In 2019 a local government commission determined that the forced labor of political prisoners was used to construct it. And the “monument violates the Law of Historical Memory, and it needs to undergo a resignification process.” Nearby stands a contemporary sculpture called “Lo llevo bien,” or “I’m doing well,” by Julio Nieto, a Basque artist based in Tenerife. It’s a 16-foot-tall stainless-steel sculpture shaped like a humanized tree. A re-interpretation of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, Nieto’s piece symbolizes “the optimism of the human being, who, despite all his thoughts, carries it well.”

Looking back at the city from the park’s edge, the rectangular modern shapes of the city contrasted sharply with the jagged silhouette of the rugged Tenerife mountains behind them.

We walked along the waterfront to the Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín, Santa Cruz’s iconic landmark, an auditorium and arts center, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Its ultramodern design reflects Tenerife’s prosperity and optimism for the future.

From there it seemed as if we were walking back through time as we passed the Castillo de San Juan Bautista, a short circular fortress constructed in 1640s to defend Santa Cruz from pirate and British attacks, and the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de Regla, a small church that dates from this era.

Reaching the Mirador Caribe at the Palmetum, we were rewarded with an expansive view of the city with Auditorio de Tenerife, and Parque Maritimo iCesar Manrique. A botanical garden, the Palmetum was started in 1995 atop 30 acres of reclaimed land that was once a landfill. Now it’s filled with nearly a thousand palm trees gathered from around the world and other plantings. It’s a spectacular place.

Heading back through the city, we stopped at the old-town market Nuestra Señora de Africa; it’s a sensory experience with colorful fruit displays, aromas of fresh baked goods and the clattering of commerce. Originally an open-air market, it was reconfigured in the 1940s. Built in a neo-colonial style, its arcaded shops and plazas attract locals and tourists. Outside the main entrance two statues reminded us of the old way of life on Tenerife when men still rowed heavy wooden boats through the surf to fish and women called Lechere would walk from village to village with baskets balanced on their heads, carrying jugs of milk to sell.

We finished our walk to the hotel down the wide pedestrian walkway in the center of Rbla. de Sta. Cruz, so we could get a better look at some of the interesting architecture that we passed when we first drove through town.

The weather on Tenerife can be fickle, sunny, foggy, rainy, and cloudy all within the same hour, as it was when we headed northeast early the next morning to the small village of San Andrés for breakfast, before visiting Playa de Las Teresitas, a wide manmade beach of imported yellow sand built behind a series of protective breakwaters. Across from the small café where we had breakfast under a threatening sky stood the ruins of Castillo de San Andrés, a small round fortress built to deter pirates from landing and ransacking the village and Santa Cruz. As British troops attempted to land in 1797 and seize Spanish treasure from the Americas, it’s believed a canon shot from this fortress wounded the famous Admiral Horacio Nelson, causing the amputation of one arm. This cannon is oddly on exhibit in the museum at the Castillo de San Cristobal in Santa Cruz. During the 18th and 19^th centuries flooding from the stream next to the castle undermined its foundation causing it to split into almost even pieces, like a cake sliced in half.

Above the beach the Mirador Playa de las Teresitas offers tremendous views south of the coast. Turn around and walk a few yards back along the road for a spectacular view of the black sand beaches Playa de Las Gaviotas and Playa Cueva del Agua.

Any resemblance to a straight road disappeared as we turned onto TF-12 to work our way across the island to Playa del Roque de las Bodegas, the Mirador de Playa Benijo and continue onto the El Draguillo mirador in an isolated hamlet in the Anaga Rural Park.

Distance between sites on Tenerife are relatively short as the crow flies, but the roads are narrow and serpentine, so the driving is slow, even though not many cars are on the roads. Rising into the mountains, the terrain changed from arid browns to verdant greens. The views along the way of isolated villages hugging the steep slopes were awesome.

Our intent was to drive all the way to the El Draguillo Mirador, as our GPS map led us to believe was doable, but the road ended at a very small gate in a muddy car park with a sign that said only residents of the village were allowed to drive past this point. Evidently this is the starting point for the El Draguillo trail, a 6 hour hike. The parking lot was jammed full and it took a serious multipoint K turn to get us out. We recovered nicely though by having a great lunch nearby at La Venta de Marrero, a cliffside restaurant with a fabulous view.

Scenes obscured by fog and low clouds as we drove across the mountainous interior that morning were now brilliant in the afternoon sunlight as we headed toward the Túnel de las Hadas. It’s a mesmerizing channel covered with moss, that was cut through the surrounding laurel forest. It is located in the Parque Rural de Anaga, which is recognized as a biosphere reserve with the largest number of endemic plants in Europe. The fog rolled in again and it was enchanting.

Our last day trip from Santa Cruz was to San Cristobal de La Laguna, an old colonial city that on its founding in 1497, after the defeat of the indigenous Guanche kingdoms, became Tenerife’s and the Canary Archipelago’s first capital. The village at first grew haphazardly around the Iglesia de la Concepción.

These first dwellings, built mostly of reeds, were ordered to be replaced in 1502, as their building material threatened to destroy the growing town if it ever caught fire. By this time La Laguna was the largest city in the Canaries with 6000 thriving inhabitants, two large churches and several monasteries. The city leaders adapted a plan Leonardo Da Vinci created for the city of Imola, Italy, as a blueprint for their city. Local son and Jesuit missionary José de Anchieta is credited with the inspiration to use this design of La Laguna when he founded the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the mid-1500s. The priest is highly revered on Tenerife and a venerated wooden sculpture of him from the Cathedral of La Laguna is carried in procession through the streets every June 9th.

On the flip side of good there is always bad, and San Cristóbal de La Laguna also recognizes another historical figure from their city, Amaro Pargo, a famous corsair, from, as the Spanish like to call it the “Golden Age of Piracy,” who savaged ships flying the British and Dutch flags sailing to their colonies in the West Indies. With a reputation as notorious as Sir Francis Drake’s, he was also recognized for his services by the Spanish crown and was declared a Caballero hidalgo, a knighthood, in 1725. He was also a merchant with many business interests and during his time the richest man in the Canary Islands, who was also highly regarded for frequent and large religious donations. He had an interesting relationship with a nun from the Catedral de San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Mary of Jesus de León y Delgado, who he credited with saving his life during a fight in Cuba by her ability to bilocate. Sister Mary is an interesting individual in her own right, credited with miracles, acts of healing, clairvoyance, levitation, psychokinesis, and stigmata. Sister Mary’s incorrupt body is preserved in the Monastery of St. Catherine, where she lived for 63 years, without ever leaving. Every 15 February her ornate glass-covered coffin, gifted by Amaro Pargo, is placed on display in the convent. With 1,251 miracles attributed to her, she has been nominated for canonization.

Though La Laguna is over 500 years old, it hosts a 300-year-old university with nearly 25,000 students that keeps it young at heart. Vibrantly colored buildings are interlaced between traditional examples of Canary architecture that feature wooden balconies that face the street and have deep courtyards to provide a shady sanctuary from the midday sun. The city’s major buildings incorporate a variety of styles that have been trendy across the centuries.

Older Gothic, Baroque, and Renaissance style buildings dot the historic center, while Neoclassical elements are present in the newer 18th century buildings that were built around the city’s core. In other words, there’s a delightful hodgepodge of architectural styles to enjoy.

Some of the older buildings have now been re-envisioned as exhibition spaces, as was the deconsecrated Ermita de San Miguel, which hosted a show of 3D printed sculptures when we visited. Others are now hotels or restaurants. The historic core of the city is pedestrian only and as we like to say “walk a little then café” is the best way to explore it.

Returning to Santa Cruz, we detoured into the mountains above the city to Parque de Las Mesas for an expansive view of the city below us. Brilliant in the afternoon sun.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna