[ Dec.2018 ] The northeast end of the island of Tenerife in Spain is Anaga Natural Park.
People go there for trekking.
We do not do trekking, but because we had heard the view is nice there, we wanted to visit there.
First, we went to the tourist office in La Laguna where we stayed, to get the information about how to get to Anaga and to see if there are any tours on the island and so on.
The tourist office was open after the Christmas holiday, but they did not have any tour information or even the bus timetables.
They usually have a tour within the town at least, but “because of Christmas and New Year, all the tours are off. It will start in the second week in January”, she said.
I was surprised to hear that they do not have any tours during a peak time for tourists.
She suggested that we should ask tour companies in the town about the tours on the island, so we visited two of them, but they were only the tour operators dealing with local people going abroad.
Most people probably rent a car to visit places, but we do not do that when we are abroad, especially in places where there are many ups and downs.
We were very disappointed about getting no information and decided to go to the bus station to see if they had any information.
On the way there, we came across a taxi rank with many taxis waiting for customers.
Although we cannot speak Spanish, we tried to negotiate, showing the map.
In the end, we came to the agreement that we would pay €90 for the 5 hour drive.
After all, I think this was the right choice.
Although the driver could not give us much information as we could not communicate well, he was flexible, stopping at many places with the wonderful view for us.
We did not see many buses during the journey, so probably the bus services are not frequent.
At the first stop, called Mirador Cruz del Carmen, we could see El Teide far away, the volcano roughly in the middle of the island .
The
surrounding mountains in Anaga are jagged and attractive.
At the car park, there were already many cars, which meant that many people had probably already started walking in the natural park.
When we went a little further, we came out to the mountain pass from where we could see the sea on both sides.
We felt wonderful seeing the deep blue sky and the sea far away in the warm air.
At another spot, an Englishman was flying a drone.
We had just had a huge problem at Gatwick Airport in England before Christmas because they spotted a few drones in the air and so they had to cancel all the flights.
A group of German tourists were looking up at the drone and asking the English man if it was legal.
I could not hear what he answered unfortunately, but in this kind of peaceful countryside environment, it must be OK.
After that, the slope went downwards and we went down gradually towards our destination, Roque las Bodegas.
