Day #11 (2008/12/25) The tour of the island

Today we went for a ride! We decided to take trip around Tenerife island.
We left Puerto de la Cruz around 13:00 and went with the sunny weather towards West in direction of Icod de los Vinos. We filled the gas tank (our expenses control checkpoint) and continued. We followed the north road all the way to Punta Teno, the west-most point in the island. Then we went to Masca - a village in the middle of inhospitable mountains and single lane roads - and continued to the south of the island.

Near Las Americas we turned to the interior and headed towards the Parque Nacional del Teide, going through Arona on TF-51 road. On our way up, we drove chasing a rainbow trying to figure out where the gold pot might be. We concluded there must be two pots of gold at each end of the rainbow. These would be guarded by a single red-hair leprechaun dressed in green with an Iris accent. The best way to get the pots would be for two people to go at each end of the rainbow and dig the pots out, but on a time when the rainbow would be incomplete at the middle. This way, if the foul leprechaun appears on one end to guard the pot, he could not go through the rainbow to the other gold pot.

When we reached the crater, we saw the top of the Teide with snow! There was no snow there when we had left the observatory 24 hours earlier! We then came down from the mountain through La Esperanza, Santa Cruz, and back to Puerto de la Cruz. I am curious to see tomorrow how the Teide will look like, when we return to the observatory.
This was a nice 5 hour stroll with few stops around the island, that ended with about 40 minutes searching for a parking space near the hotel. When I reserved the hotel, I was told it had parking space for hotel guests, which it has not!