Greetings from Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, to be precise.
From the moment we rolled into town, our hire car’s fuel warning light flashing madly to tell us that our tank was down to its last vapours, it’s been pretty crazy here.
We got in late Saturday night on a delayed flight. Then, we had to pick up our hire car and strap in the child seats that had been left on the back seat of the car for us. Of course, it was pitch black in the car park, so we couldn’t see what we were doing and the car seats were models with which we weren’t familiar.
We headed straight for Santa Cruz in our juiceless vehicle, Sod’s Law ensuring that there wasn’t a petrol station in sight anywhere, except perhaps on the wrong side of the motorway.
Once in Santa Cruz, all of the major thoroughfares turned out to be closed for Carnaval, which is said to be second only to the big one in Rio de Janeiro. The crowds were out in their thousands, most of them in flamboyant fancy-dress, and it became clear that reaching our hotel was going to be a nightmare.
To cut a long story short, we didn’t reach our hotel until close to 02:00 and then found that it had no parking facilities whatsoever; not even an arrangement with a local car park. Finding a place to legally park at that time of night in the thick of Saturday’s Carnaval turned out to be a major challenge, although Eloïse and Lucas were, at least, mercifully asleep as we kerb-crawled around the neighbourhood in search of a slice of tarmac long enough to accommodate our Opel Astra.
Once parked, we dragged our entourage of children and suitcases along the streets back to the hotel and checked in, although we would still have to undergo a change of room before we could finally get our arses into bed.
The last couple of days have, as I said, been raucous. The locals aren’t shy about dressing up and many of the costumes are very elaborate. You normally need to order a stripogram to see women dressed like some of those we’ve seen about town. I heartily approve.
As is the case anywhere in Spain, Tenerife is a meat lover’s paradise. The streets are lined with the skeletons of dead vegetarians.
Daily visits to the heladerías (ice-cream shops) and zumerías (juice bars) are a must and, in fact, we go more than daily. The fresa con leche (strawberry juice with milk) is to die for.
English speakers are in surprisingly short supply, allowing me the opportunity to dust off and sand down my very rusty Spanish. If linguistic rape were a crime, I’d be languishing in prison by now.
One local menu offers “shattered eggs” and a strangely appealing seafood dish called “octopussy”, although we didn’t actually stop to partake of such delicacies.
Whilst the gladiators, nurses, pirates, witches, drag queens, catwomen, knights and other colourful characters have their undeniable appeal (especially for Eloïse), we feel as if we’ve seen enough of Santa Cruz in the two days we’ve been here, so we’re moving on tomorrow to La Laguna.
The weather here is very amenable, a kind of permanent early summer. There’s almost no variation in temperature, day or night, January or July. Any quaint notion of season is utterly superfluous here.
It’s good to be travelling again.