Tenerife - Papas Arrugadas & Poolside Hangouts

After galavanting around Gib and Ceuta for a while, we hopped on a pretty quick plane out of Málaga to Tenerife. To help with geography, check out this map of Tenerife. Our first stop was Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the northern part of the island. Then we spent one night up near the volcano in the center of the island, and ended the trip in the south, near Playa de las Américas.

We arrived in Tenerife on New Year's Eve - just in time for some awesome local celebrations. Our first few nights we stayed in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which is on the north side of the island, usually thought of as the less touristy area.

By the time we got to our hotel it was about 9pm. We had to look around for a while to find an open restaurant that was still serving food, and ended up sitting outside at this little cafe-style place. 

Here's WP enjoying a jarra of the local brand of cerveza, Dorada. I think I also took this photo to try to capture that character in the tuxedo standing behind Will. He had bright red hair and came out literally every 2 minutes to smoke a cigarette... and of course, he's wearing a tux. He seemed like a character that would be in one of those CSI style crime dramas set in Boston. Just saying. 

After dinner we wandered down to the main plaza and were pretty impressed with their New Year's set up. Leading up to midnight they were playing club hits and everyone there was dancing in the square. It was fun to see families, some other tourists, young Tenerife kids and everyone else just hanging out together and getting pumped for the New Year. A lot of people were also very dressed up - men in suits or tuxedos and teenage girls in what looked like prom dresses.

Before everyone was brave enough to start dancing this one little boy was tearing it up to Shakira and Wyclef's "Hips Don't Lie." Hilarious and adorable:  

They do the whole midnight part of New Year's differently than we do. There is no countdown from 10 down to the new year. Instead they play 12 chimes (or if you're in a square with an actual bell tower they ring the bell 12 times) and with each chime you're supposed to eat a grape for good luck. It was pretty hilarious standing in the plaza with every Spanish person around us hurriedly gobbling grapes (made harder by the fact that grapes in Spain are almost always with seeds). We forgot to buy some grapes of our own, but a nice lady next to us offered us her extra grapes. Glad someone is looking out for our 2012 good luck! 

Right after the grape gobble they did an awesome firework show over the water! 

After the fireworks they brought a live band onto the stage and the festivities really got started. The Spaniards were probably out until sunrise, but being the Americans we are we snuck away at a respectable 2am. 

On January 1st, we set out to explore Santa Cruz. The weather was just right for walking around - probably in the low 70s most of the time. Right next to the city, there are some mountains (much lower than the main volcanic peak, but still impressive) that make for a dramatic skyline. 

Right after New Year's, all the extra Christmas-like decorations for Tres Reyes (Three Kings or Wise Men) went up. The kids in Spain usually don't get presents from Santa on Christmas morning but presents from the Three Wise Men on January 6th. This comes from the Bible when Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar show up on horse, camel and elephant with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for baby Jesus. In the main plaza in Tenerife (and probably many Spanish cities) they have this "Royal Mailbox" where you can drop your letters to the 3 different kings. Cute!

We also found some funny storefronts that reminded us of home in weird ways - the Cafeteria Snuupy (is this their way of avoiding a trademark lawsuit?) and clothing store New England. 

In Santa Cruz we had some pretty amazing meals. At this restaurant we went to for lunch I got the most beautiful avocado salad. Mmm making my vegetable dreams come true! 

The menu at this restaurant was written on a chalk board and we didn't know all the words for the different types of seafood they served. When we asked what bogavante was the waiter told us it was similar to a shrimp but a little bigger. And by "a little bigger" he meant a lot bigger...Will just ordered a lobster. The chalk board menu also didn't show prices... but according to WP it was 25 euros well spent, and we won't forget what bogavante means! 

The best food we tried in Tenerife was the local specialty of papas arrugadas, or wrinkled potatoes! They had these at pretty much every restaurant we went to (whether or not on the menu, it is the kind of thing they always have if you ask for it) and are so delicious. They boil these special small potatoes (papas negras) in really salty water for a long time until they become soft. Then they're served with two sauces - one made of cilantro and oil and the other of red peppers. Delicious!

Down by the water in Santa Cruz there is this really cool theater building that kind of looks like the Sydney Opera House, designed by the famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. 

Here's a different view of the theater with a billboard of sorts out front. We thought it was funny that instead of an actual sign they painted the side of an 18-wheeler truck and dropped it off near the building. We checked with the box office and the play was actually The Sound of Music, only they translate the title into "Sonrisas y Lágrimas" or "Smiles and Tears". Had we known earlier we might have tried to get tickets!

After a relaxing couple of days exploring Santa Cruz we took a couple buses to get to the base of the volcano, "El Teide," that sits in the middle of the island. In fact, the entire island of Tenerife was created by this one volcano, similar to the Big Island in Hawaii. The bus ride up the mountain was pretty crazy - lots of switch backs on the narrow road. Inside the bus things were also pretty funny. We apparently were on the same schedule as a group of German mountain bikers who were all decked out in their gear and riding the bus up the mountain with plans to bike back down. At least WP got to get some practice listening to some German.

Here's the awesome view of the summit of the volcano. We took this photo from about 8,000 feet and the summit of the volcano is at a little over 12,000. Crazy!

Up in the national park that surrounds the volcano (Parque Nacional del Teide) there is only one place to stay - the nationally-run Parador hotel. Luckily they had a discount for young people, so we were able to stay there. Here's a photo of the hotel with the volcano in the background. 

The area around the hotel and volcano had some pretty cool rock formations reminiscent of places we've seen in Nevada, California, and Arizona. 

We did a short hike around this one area called Los Roques de Garcia. The hike took us past some really crazy formations that reminded us of the Pinnacles National Monument in California. Here's me with some of the big roques and the volcano in the background. 

Here are a couple more photos from the hike:

This one reminded us of something out of Lord of the Rings. Very sinister but cool looking! It is a little bit hard to tell without a human reference figure in this photo but this rock formation is several hundred feet tall.

Seeing the volcano and rocky terrain was great, but after only one night up there I was happy to descend to some lower altitudes and warmer weather! On the bus ride down we got a pretty cool view. As you can see we're up above a layer of clouds that had settled over the ocean in the distance. That darker area in the middle of the ocean and clouds is actually the neighboring island of La Gomera!

After all the traveling through Morocco and around Tenerife we were very happy to check into this hotel for 4 nights of doing nothing but relaxing by the pool. The southern side of the island is known for being more touristy, probably because it is several degrees warmer! In Santa Cruz I wouldn't have been walking around in a swimsuit but in the south where we stayed it was in the 80s everyday. Here's our balcony! 

And the view from the balcony - beautiful! 

Here's the pool area at the resort where we spent so many hours laying in the sun and reading (got through a big chunk of the Game of Thrones books here). December and January are popular times for other Europeans to travel to the Canaries to try to warm up a bit. At this hotel we didn't meet or hear any other Americans, but there were a ton of Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, and UKers. 

They had this little display set up from Christmastime, I thought it was cute and therefore made WP sit amongst the tiny snowmen for a photo op: 

Near our hotel there was this rocky beach by the water where people have stacked hundreds of rocks into little towers. If you look real closely you can make out the island of La Gomera in the background. 

Also, this was in the elevator at the hotel. I didn't know Spain instituted China's one child policy! (jk)

Our last night in the fancy resort we got dinner at the Japanese restaurant inside the hotel. It was so fun to be out at a restaurant eating Asian food in Spain!

After dinner we got a nice bottle of cava - honeymoon style! 

On our last day at the resort we did some more poolside lounging and also decided to check out the mini golf course.

Then we took the bus, or guagua (this term is used in South America and the Canaries but not usually the rest of Spain, pronounced wahwah), to the hotel near the airport where we stayed the last night.

We had time to explore a little before leaving town and ended up finding some pretty amazing things! Number one amazing thing - more Asian food! This place looked like a normal Chinese restaurant but had dishes from all over the region, including real kimchi, mapo tofu, and Sapporo beer. Yum!

We also found this detailed replica of Picasso's Guernica made out of coins. 

And finally, got to see a pair of really weird and cool looking dragon trees! 

The trip was so fun, crazy, exciting, and romantic. We will definitely not forget how we spent our first Christmas and New Year's Eve as married people! Thanks for reading all these posts about our honeymoon travels this winter - it has been great to share our stories with friends and family. 

From now on the posts will (hopefully) get back to normal - I've already got some more photos to share of adventures we taken since getting home from the honeymoon. Tomorrow our friend Jimmy gets to town, so you better believe more crazy stories are on the way!