Tenerife

Ok I know that it's July and this post is about a trip that happened in March, but it takes a certain kind of energy to write that work has been sucking out of me recently. I also realized I don't like writing all that much. Also, it's summer and I'm busy. 

Alec, Matt, and I met Nick at the Tenerife South airport to kick off Alec's 31st birthday weekend. We would be staying in an Airbnb right on the beach in Playa de las Americas, which is one of those fake tourist towns no one actually lives in. You can find the exact same place with the same fake flower instagram walls and imported sand all over southern Europe. 

Since this blog is mainly about documenting my struggle and (theoretical) eventual rehabilititation from gear acquisition syndrome, we have to talk about cameras and film. For my big camera, I brought my beloved XPan, and the Fuji Natura Classica as my point and shoot. For film, I brought ektar and proimage thinking with all that island sun I could finally use up the 100 speed film in my drawer. And I did!

The next day, Matt had planned a full tour along the west coast of the island, with many stops along the way. Our first stop was at a viewpoint of the cliffs of los Gigantes.

We then drove down into the town of Puerto de Santiago, when our car started producing fumes and leaking fluids: 

Yeah not good. We tried calling the car service and hit voicemail. I assumed our car was dead and at best we would get a new one the next day, and worst case we would never get a car for the rest of the trip. We finally got in touch with TopCar, who to our collective surprise dispatched a handyman with a replacement car shortly after.

While we waited, we explored the town:

After getting the replacement car, we started the long twisty drive to Masca, with some stops on the way. The area was beautiful but it was also midday peak sun so the light wasn't that great for color film. I wound up not taking that many photos:

We then drove to this crazy looking lighthouse in Buenavista del Norte and walked around:

We then ended the day in Garachico where we got some pre-dinner ice cream:

The next day we drove up north to collect one of Alec and Nick's friends from college. After a couple false starts (heavy rain in the north where we wer going to hike, running out of gas driving to Teide, not being able to get a last minute gondola ticket to go up Teide), we did a little loop trail in the national park.

We then stopped in Vilaflor for a drink before continuing down to El Medano for dinner. It got really cloudy below Teide so I didn't take any film pictures.

After two full days of driving across the island, we had two pretty chill days around the Airbnb.

We also did one of those whale tours where they chase the pods and it's probably not ethical lol. We tried to book one of the ethical ones and ironically they oversold it.

Nothing else interesting happened and we went home 😀 The end!

Happy birthday Alec!