One of the big parties/festivals in Spain is Carnaval. The two best places to see it are in Cadiz, in the southern part of the penninsula and in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. We deicded to go to the Canary islands for the good weather and the atmosphere. I went with my friend Alissa and our Spanish/Italtian friends. They had booked the reservation for us and we got the flight and three nights in the only 5 star hotel in Santa Cruz, The Sheraton, but more commonly known as the Hotel Mensey.
We got up super early on Friday and caught the metro to the aiport. The flight is around 2hrs and 45min. Bascially the longest flight to go anywhere in Spain. We had decided to rent a car because it would make transportation and sightseeing a lot easier epsecially because we planned on going all the way around the island. We found out that because of Carnaval, all of the cars were gone. But we apparently managed to get the last one? A long toyota that they told us was diesel, but actually was gas...
Once we got into Santa Cruz we checked into the hotel and went for a walk and to grab some lunch. The Canary islands are an hour behind the pennisula time. The hotel is very interesting. The lobbies are very nice and the terraces are also very nice, but there are trying to expand the hotel and to the view from the back side of the hotel is all of the construction site. Not a very prettty back drop. The rooms were nice and ours had a terrace. The food in Tenerife is very cheap. We went to this Juice bar/cafe and we got normal sized sanwhiches for 2 or 3 euros. There is fruit everywhere and bright colors from the plants all over the place. There was a park right next to our hotel with is the recently remodeled Parque de Garcia Sanabria. It is gorgeous. It has tropical plants like hibiscus and torch and wild ginger, it also has bamboo covered paths and fountains and little art installments. There are lots of random bursts of color everywhere because of the Fuscia plants that are hung in random places.
We walked down some of the main parts of the town, but everyone was at siesta so we didn´t see too many people. There were a bunch of stands that sold costumes for carnaval. Alissa and I were very unsure of what carnaval exactly entails and over the course of the trip we decided that it is bascially a ten day halloween. People get dressed up in random costumes, bascially what we call halloween costumes and go party in the street for 10 days in a row. There are parades and other music things as well, but its one big dress up party. We had decided that we would go as FBI agents because we found some funny FBI shirts for all of us in a random store in Madrid. We also bought some of the traditional Carnaval masks.
To save money, we went to the grocery store and loaded up on sandwhich materials and drink mixing supplies which we loaded into our mini fridges. We took a nap and then got ready to go out and see the parade. The problem with this night was that as we were in the supermarket, it started to rain heavily. We found out later, as we were going out to see the parade, that this meant the parade was canceled. Later on in the night, we found out that it probably caused many people not to out because the street parties that we encountered were not very crowded. The street parties we did find were interesting because there were trucks that people had decorated in a certain way that each had their own type of music playing. The trucks were all in a row on a street. Try to image a street lined with taco trucks of all different kinds of tacos...There was also a place along the port that had carnival rides and carnival food stands. A big thing was the baked potato. And cotton candy. We also passed a soft serve truck and a California Ice cream truck.
The following day, Alissa was ill so I went with the boys to the beach Las Teresitas. It is an amazing beach. A huge cresent of sand and clear blue water with a break so there are pretty much no waves. One side of the beach harbors some colorful boats and the rest is open to swimming. I was soooo excited to be on the beach with sand and sun and water. That is definalty something that I miss in Madrid. There is no water close by. The water at the beach was kinda cold but I went in for a swim anyway and it was glorious. After the beach we went and collected Alissa from the hotel and drove half way around the island to Puerto de la Cruz. Which is a very very touristy area to be with a beautiful coastline. There were so many foreigners and all of the restaurants had their menus in 4 languages. I felt like I was in Waikiki but with out the Asians. All sorts of lobster red people and tourist shops and beautiful coast.
That night we were finaly able to see the Cabalgata, or the parade. We walked down to closer to where the cabalgata started which in the end was a good idea because otherwise we would have been waiting for ages even for the thing to get to us. They move at a snails pace. The first half hour or so was just different groups of people dressed up at different types of clowns. Their costumes were very elaborate and colorful, but after a while they all started to look the same. If they had drums accompanying them then they all played the same beat and kinda marched around. They were mostly groups of kids and there were even some who were really just todlers. Those ones were really cute. We saw various different Carnaval queens from the youngest one to the senior one. We saw some fire blowers and some people on stilts. When the parade of clowns passed we finally got to see the dancers with their huge feather get-ups, like the kind you see in pictures of Rio at Carnival. Their head pieces and feather things were HUGE. They must have been so heavy and the girls were wearing heels and dancing around. After a while we got tired of the slow pace. One of the queens had a fainting spell. We could never tell which was the actual Queen queen of carnival, but the one who fainted looked like she was queen of fruit... We got some sandwhiches for dinner and then hung went back to the hotel with the aim of going out later. No such luck. Spending the day driving around and being in the sun took its toll on us and we all passed out around midnight.
The next morning we took full advantage of being in a 5 star hotel. The way we first did this was to go to the full breakfast that they serve. It was amazing. They had spanish cold cuts and cheese and sausages and bacon and eggs and cereal and fruit and fresh juice and pastries. We ate so much food (partially so that we wouldn´t have to eat so much later). After we digested breakfast a little we hopped in the car and started driving around the island. We planned to hit two cities and see the Teide, the highest mountain in Spain. We ended up driving past the mountain and stopping in several small places. We went to see the oldest tree in the world. Its a Drogo tree. It looks like a tree. I thought it would be all witherd like an old man...but not so. We also tasted wines and banana flavoured liquer. Since bananas are everywhere banana flavouring is used a lot. We stopped by the coast before we climbed the moutains to get to Los Gigantes. Los Gigantes are basically cliffs that must have been the inspiration or the back drop for the Cliffs of Insanity scene in the Princess Bride. They looked exactly like that. We stopped by some beaches and then hit the big well known beach called Playa las Americas. It is made up of several nice cresents of sand. We enjoyed the beach and then went to get something to eat. We had planned to see what the Carnaval parties were like on the otherside of the island where a lot of tourists are but someone told us that everyone was going to go to Santa Cruz so after we finished our snack/dinner we drove back to Santa Cruz only to find out that nobody does anything on Sunday. We did make a complete loop around the island, which was pretty cool.
On Monday we ate a great breakfast and went back to Teresitas beach and sunbathed and swam. It was so nice and relaxing. We got some seafood for a late lunch and then drove to the airport. I think I am a fan of little fried fresh sardines.
Over all it was an interesting trip because we went to party and to see the island and were able to enjoy the island more because we were not hungover. I would really like to go back because it is a very calm place with lots of sun and really cool plants and cheap and fresh food. I keep forgetting that it is way far south almost more south than Morocco. Its probably the furthest flight from Madrid. Almost 3 hrs. In some aspects it was very much like Hawaii but it was missing the humidness and was a lot more landscaped. In other words, a European Hawaii.
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