Being in Puerto Santiago, Tenerife, Canary Islands, we were under alert for high temperatures. Even a day at the beach can get hot. Imagine trying to walk from your towel to the cool ocean through hot lava, or black sand. With the sun shining pretty much the entire day, you're bound to need to discover other adventures. Onward to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The photo above is our walk to the park (not the park). The whole city is so clean and green!
Santa Cruz is more north, greener and a little cooler. Just an hour drive away and we could already tell the difference. Even now as I write this at 10 a.m. mid August, it is 24°C in Tenerife and already 31°C here in Puerto Santiago. Crazy, but true!
What's even crazier was the reason we even thought to go to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. so here's the backstory....after leaving the states you would have thought we would have purchased mask, fins and snorkels by now with all the water fun we have traveling all over Nicaragua and Costa Rica. But, let's just be honest here, the water in these locations, IMHO, are not worthy of spending money to see nothing. The water isn't clear by my standards (the Caribbean), so why shlep all this gear for nothing. Yes, I know, we went to the Corn Islands and it was crystal clear Caribbean blue, yet we just didn't have the "need" to purchase water gear. Now we are here, in the Canary Islands and although it's not Caribbean blue, the water is most definitely clear. Not only that, there are plenty of things to see. So with Eli taking a diving class and us wanting to get in and watch, we went to a dive store to purchase our equipment. Although this was a retail store, it didn't have all the equipment we needed. The main store was up north in Santa Cruz, see where I am going here? Finally, today, we decided to trek up north and get the rest of the equipment we needed. Search Macaronesia Dive Shop in Tenerife and you'll see why we were happier than a little kid in an ice cream shop!
By now we are hungry and we are looking for a place that is "Enzo friendly" or rather, spacious and outdoors, to settle in for lunch. If there is one thing that we have to warn everyone about, and have been warned ourselves, is that parking is the worse experience here. We headed towards Parque García Sanabria where we knew we'd find outdoor seating and good food (thanks to other bloggers). However, we did not find parking. 2 very hungry and worn out boys and their parents finally found a parking spot about 15-20 minutes away, 45 minutes later.
Yes, that is a 4 and a 5 for 45 minutes circling and circling the park just to find a spot to park! We were ready to eat!!
There is a beautiful Garden Clock next to the Cafetería Parque García Sanabria. This open air restaurant provided the escape we needed from the heat and the city, even though it was smack dab in the middle of the city.
For a park restaurant, it was impressive. The place was clean and the food was delicious. Next was walking around this impressive park. I googled all about the park after our visit. It was created back in 1926 and really reminds me of Coral Gables, Florida. The park was so clean, with amazing sculptures, fountains and even a large playground for the kiddos. Canopy lined sidewalks shaded us from the sun and I could only imagine life as a professional photographer here. This is the kind of place where weddings are officiated, graduation photos are captured and I can even imagine a baby reveal party here. The greens, the water fountains, the different species of flora abound. None of us wanted to leave, yet, we found ourselves realizing it was past 5pm and we still had an hour drive back to our apartment. And for the record, I won't complain about the drive. It is all coastal, it's sunny until 9pm and there is just so much beauty to see. Besides the large windmills, who doesn't like looking over the Atlantic Ocean or watch the large crash of the waves on the rocks? The drive started out in a lush green city covered with splashes of color from all sorts of blooms, then changed to a desert like feel where windmills towered over brown dirt (or volcano rocks), yet somehow so striking with the different patches of colored residential homes as we passed small pueblos along the way AND ALL OF THIS with a backdrop of the deep blue!
I couldn't resist taking this photo which doesn't do any justice to the views we had as we stepped away from central park and back into the residences surrounding the area. Narrow streets (or at least what I am not used to) lined with parked cars and large city recycle and trash bins with apartments towering down on you make for an unforgettable experience walking back to our car.
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