First walk through Puerto de la Cruz and pick up the car - Tenerife, the diverse island - 2
Canada Blanca hike, drive to Costa Adeje and the lost place Sanatorio de Abona
Arenas Negras hike and stops at the Piedra de la Rosa and the observatory
Sunrise in the Anaga Mountains and a missed sunset at Playa de Benijo
Cruz del Carmen and the coastal hiking trail to Casa Hamilton
Hiking at Mirador de Samara and another visit to the south coast
Long time exposures at the sea and another drive through Teide NP
Mon, 6th Sept. - First walk through Puerto de la Cruz and pick up the car
We don't have a lot on the agenda for today. After noon we can pick up the car and that's the only fix appointment of the day.
Breakfast in the hotel is ok and the variety seems to be big enough for the two weeks to come. After breakfast, we pack our things and walk down through Taoro Park towards the city center. Quite a lot of steps, but that was already clear when we booked the hotel.
The city center is quite nice, of course very touristy, but still. On this Monday morning, it is still quite sleepy, the stores and restaurants are just opening, but there are not many people out yet. We take pictures of some nice graffiti, buy some water at an astonishingly large supermarket in the city center and finally make it to the car rental station.
The paperwork is done quickly, no annoying questions about additional insurance or anything. We get an Opel Astra with, as I will find out in the course of the trip, lots of driver assistance systems. The most annoying of these, by the way, is the automatic detection of speed limits. Not that the car doesn't recognize them properly, but when it misses new signs, it starts making some up (most likely based on what's normally allowed on that kind of road). This makes the whole feature not only useless but downright dangerous.
The car has a lot of scratches all over the place of whom I try to take pictures. We are fully insured, but I hope we can avoid discussions and paperwork on the return.
As the car is already running on reserve, the next thing to do is to look for a gas station. In Puerto de la Cruz this is no problem, there are many here.
Afterwards we return to the hotel and relax. Freya goes to the pool and Jürgen likes it on the shady balcony.
In the evening we again walk down the stairs of Taoro Park to have dinner in the city center. We stroll around and decide on a small restaurant in the pedestrian zone where we can sit outside (La Tasquita de Berna). Freya takes the "fish of the day" and I decide on the grilled octopus. Both are super tasty and so this becomes our favorite restaurant in Puerto de la Cruz.
Now we have to walk up the streets to reach the base of Taoro garden and then to climb more than 300 steps. But it sounds worse than it is.
