Week 2: Adios Tenerife

Feb. 17th 5 pm
Highlights from Tenerife and Canary Islands

It’s a rainy Wed. as we prepare to leave the Tenerife airport relieved to be at the gate for our flight to Porto after a stressful drive due to heavy rains that made traffic stand still for over an hour and a half.
Overall our 2nd week was even more enjoyable than the first. We thoroughly enjoyed the town of Garachico and the beautiful surroundings of Hotel la Quinta Roja (great breakfast & staff too) where we stayed for 8 nights.
The highlights of our second week included two Carnaval celebrations-one I saw right in front of our hotel/town square put on by the local elementary school children (dressed in pro-recycling outfits!!) and the other one we sent to the big city of Santa Cruz to see. The latter went on for over 3.5 hours; in addition to elaborate costume and float designs, we saw a lot of people dressed up as if it were Halloween.
We rode up Teide for a 3rd time (ugh!) where we also saw 6 of the pro Liquigas (Tour de France) riders. Mac chatted with one rider for a bit; they don’t ride up the mtn-just stay at the top and train at high altitude to oxygenate their blood.
The touristy area of Las Americas was utterly horrible, so bad we just kept driving all the way around the island back to Garachico. We also saw the world's oldest(1000 yrs+) and largest Dragon tree in Icod!
Yesterday I did my last ride, Mac on Sunday. We climbed the steep 9km of switchbacks above Garachico until we got to a smooth wide road (5-6% grade) that went for another 15 km until turning around to descend (gotta trust those brake pads!).
Believe it or not we didn’t swim once in the ocean, not a lot of sandy beaches here due to its volcanic nature but that’s okay since the south of Portugal awaits us!