Tenerife, Canary Islands (Our Stop Instead of Morocco)

Tenerife, Canary Islands



Day 1: I woke up early to the ship coming into port (or rather…the
train coming through my window, violently shaking my room). I didn't
have any plans for the day but one of the SAS day-trips sounded kind
of fun so Dylan and I planned to just show up at the gangway when the
trip was leaving (around 830) and try to get on at the last second.
(Most of the time you can go to the gangway early and get a 'dock-
sale' of SAS trips, its really nice we don't always have to sign up
before-hand. Signing up for anything ahead of time is not something I
am good at) Luckily we showed up in time because we got two of the
last seats on the Tenerife Jeep Tour trip. We hopped in one of the 5
jeeps and after everyone was ready we headed off driving through
Tenerife. Tenerife has a huge volcano on it (it is an island after
all…) so the jeep tour took us up to the top of the island where the
volcano was. Many kids on the ship were planning on hiking the
volcano, which after doing some research (and my fear of hurting my
ankles) I decided that just cause I made through hiking around
Gibraltar, doesn't mean I can do a 6-7 hour hike up a volcano. Our
jeep tour stopped every once in a while so we could take pictures of
the amazing views. The higher we got up the island, the colder it got,
and my regret of wearing shorts and a t-shirt grew. The middle of the
island had big trees and was very forest-y, then when we got up near
the top it turned very rocky (from all the volcanic magma). At one
point on the tour everyone was amazed at the red rocks we stopped near…
but to me I felt like I was in Sedona, I was home! Except not really…
because there was a volcano in the distance. Then at the top we
stopped for some hot chocolate and cookies and there was a couple of
vendors. One of the vendors was selling chocolate covered dried
bananas and almonds, I couldn't resist buying the chocolate covered
bananas, they were too good, so I bought a tiny box. Then after our
short break we headed back down the island with a few more stops (one
looked like we had stopped at the moon, it was really cool!) We got
back to the ship around 2pm and were pretty hungry so Dylan and I
walked over to the city center. We forgot that everything closed
between 2-4ish so the only thing we could find for a while was
McDonalds, but we refused to eat there, so after some more walking we
found a cute little restaurant open. There was about 7 other SAS kids
eating in there so we sat near them and enjoyed some lunch, and a
local Canary Island beer (Dorada)! I was exhausted by the end of lunch
and I knew I would be up late so we walked back to the ship and I took
a nap and then showered and got ready. That night was my friends
(Alex) 21st birthday so 8 of us were all going out to dinner to
celebrate. It was Sunday night so not a lot was open but we were sure
(well one of the girls were sure, so we believed her) that this nice
restaurant would be perfect. So we hopped in 2 cabs and headed off to
this restaurant…it wasn't open, so one of the cab drivers said he knew
of a good place that would be open, so we believed him and he drove us
about 10-15min away (up the side of the mountain where it looked
completely deserted…the scenes from the movie Taken was running
through all our head for a moment) and then we got to this restaurant
and it was closed as well…at this point we were all unhappy and hungry
so we told the cabs to just drop us off in the city center and we
would find something. Luckily right where we got dropped off there was
a cute little restaurant open. We enjoyed dinner (though we were with
some people with awful restaurant manners, especially because the
waiters didn't speak any English, so by the end they would just look
to Dylan and I because at least we were understanding most of what
they were saying and could reproduce some broken Spanish which I think
they appreciated.) but I was happy it was over because by the end the
entire restaurant knew that we were being those stereotypical loud
annoying Americans, and the people we were with didn't even seem to
notice. After dinner we went to a bar a few doors down on the same
street to meet up with everyone else to help celebrate Alex's (and a
few other peoples) birthdays. I didn't stay up too late; I was tired
from the long day on the jeep tour, but it was still a fun night after
a great day, I'm glad I took the jeep tour so I got some really great
views of the island.



Day 2: Today was probably the least productive day I've had on the
trip. My roommate (Kelsey) woke up early and left to find WiFi in town
to get some Skyping in, once she left I fell back asleep and my alarm
never went off so I didn't wake back up until 10am. I called Dylan and
woke him up. We met at 11am and left the ship to go find breakfast
somewhere. Halfway to the city center we ran into Kelsey so she came
along with us to find food. We eventually found a little café and
ordered some sort of sandwiches and orange juice, none of us knew what
we actually ordered, but it turned out well. We all enjoyed our
sandwiches and then carried on to find a grocery shore somewhere. We
passed a computer store and since Dylan's computer charger has stopped
working, the three of us walked over. The computer guy didn't know how
to help without the computer there so Kelsey and I walked back to the
ship with him. The computer store was closing at 130 so Kelsey and I
strolled back to the city center while Dylan zoomed over there to make
sure he got there before it closed. He got a charger for his computer,
then we went over to McDonalds next door to use their free WiFi. The
WiFi wasn't too great so I basically just stared at Facebook for a
while but it wouldn't let me click much. Then we asked some locals
where the nearest grocery store was, and from what we understood, it
wasn't close. So we wandered up the city center and found tiny grocery-
like store that would be good enough. I bought some granola bars,
cashews, kinder eggs, and Pringles. Then after that we walked back to
the ship with all of our groceries and I wrote out some emails and
saved them because our internet/email on the ship was down (and had
been for about 2 days). Then at 530 there was a barbeque up on Deck 7
for dinner (where theres the pool (tiny pool) and a snack bar that we
can buy food that doesn't consist of pasta and potatoes) so we went up
there and ate some delicious food that was not the usual dinner food,
so we were all very happy with it. Then the tugboat came along right
next to where we were eating to pull us away from the dock and head
out of the port. It was really cool to watch first hand, tugboats are
amazing haha. We all stood at the railing and watched from the ship us
leaving the port, waving to every boat that passed us (I totally got a
wave from a little tiny boat going by us!)



I wish I had brought my computer to use the WiFi at McDonalds because
I have found out my computer no longer plays disks…it eats them for a
while then spits them back out. Which is very unfortunate because I
only have 2 movies on my computer (Mean Girls, and The House Bunny…
both are very educational, I know) and I don't have any Internet to
download the program that I need to play movies off other peoples
external hard drives. So basically the amount of times I have watched
Mean Girls and The House Bunny is disturbing, and I can now quote both
movies fully. I don't really like movies that much (solely because I
always fall asleep during them) but I would give anything to just have
my computer play a few more movies.