We picked up our rental car at 9:30am and received absolutely no instructions from the car company. I asked the representative for a “crash course” in road signs and driving in Tenerife and he looked a little scared… apparently that expression doesn’t translate well to Spanish. The representative also parked our rental car on the hill next to our hotel pointing down, and the hill was so steep we couldn’t back the car out! We had to ask the reception desk at our hotel to help us back the car out, which she did by using the E-brake and reversing at the same time. It was pretty cool, and I learned something new about driving a manual. It was also pretty funny, trying to explain to the reception desk that we could, in fact, drive a manual transmission car… but that we couldn’t back it out of such a steep parking spot! And then we were off.
We chose to visit El Teide first, which is an active volcano located in a national park in the center of the island of Tenerife. It has only erupted once (so according to Joe, “it’s due again”), and is surrounded by other, smaller volcanoes that were formed when El Teide first erupted (or something like that). From our hotel it was about an hour drive through the craziest uphill and curvy roads; we have fantastic video footage of the drive. The scenery up to El Teide was gorgeous, with all the trees, driving through the clouds, above the clouds, watching the mountains and various peaks appear to grow before our eyes – we have video footage and pictures of all this too. We stopped at several “lookout / photo” points in the National Park on our way to the cable car that would take us near the top of El Teide. When we finally reached El Teide, we parked the car and walked up a short hill to stand in line for tickets to the cable car. Joe purchased some awesome donuts from the café to eat while we waited in line for tickets. We finally purchased tickets and boarded the cable car, which held about 20 people, and made the 8 minute trip to the (almost) top of El Teide. The public is allowed to hike to the top of El Teide and actually into the crater itself, but you have to stop at the Park office in town and get a permit – which is free – but that sounded like a lot of work to us. Plus, the hike to the top was taller than we thought it would be, so it’s probably a good thing we didn’t pursue that idea. The cable car station at the top had various walking/hiking paths to cover and took us through some very rocky terrain. We hiked almost a mile on one path before turning back to check out other paths. The view was spectacular from such a height. We were above the cloud line again, and above the tree line as well. We could see several other craters/volcanoes from this vantage point and took a ton of pictures. We stayed about 2 hours up top, and then took the cable car back down to the base again, where we split a sandwich for lunch and checked out the souvenir shop, before heading out.
We continued driving through the state park and back down the mountain, the opposite way of which we came, so that we could continue to see the beautiful sights in the state park. We drove through a segment of desert and black rock that was really cool, before finally finding the tree line again and heading down the mountain. The views driving down the mountain were just as amazing as driving up, and we could see 2 other islands off the coast of Tenerife. We didn’t seem to see any wildlife in the hills/trees on our way up or down the mountain, but we did see plenty of trails for hikers.
After leaving El Teide and the national park, we attempted to drive to the Camello Center to ride camels, but we managed to get lost. Turns out our directions took us to the back gate of the Camello Center which did not contain any signs, so we didn’t even know we were there! We stopped at a park nearby and attempted to speak with the boy running the ice cream and beer stand. Between his limited English and my limited Spanish, we were halfway able to understand his directions… but not entirely. Then one of the old men at the stand drinking his beer informed us (in Spanish) that he would show us how to get there. So we jumped back in our car and followed the old man through town for about 10 minutes. Just when we thought he might not have understood where we wanted to go, he pulled up in front of the Camello Center! Such a sweet man, and he refused any offer of a tip. We then went inside and paid for our tickets to ride the camellos and waited by the entrance to the trail.
The Camello Center (pronounced “Cah-máy-oh”) preferred to have everybody wear blue robes with a black turban-type head piece – we all looked like fools! (And the possibility of racism was a serious thought in our minds…). But we finally entered the camello trails and there they were – all of the camellos! It was fantastic and scary at the same time. The camellos looked kind of sad, and they all had their mouths covered with metal “muzzles”, possibly to keep them from biting. Each camello was tied to the camello in front of it and the line of camellos were lead by a man. It was basically like a trail ride with horses, but instead of horses we rode camellos. The ride was 20 minutes long, and the camello behind us kept trying to talk to Joe and I. He also spit on Joe – it was gross and hilarious all at the same time. We purchased the picture of us riding the camello from the Center, and decided that was enough adventure for one day. We headed home 🙂