A Spoilt Tourist's Guide To Tenerife

A few weeks ago I made the ill-advised decision to give Tenerife a go. As somebody whose ideal holiday usually involves seeing more animals than humans, it was certainly not my usual choice.

After yet another stressful job shuffle and the onset of the dreary English winter I was desperate to escape to the sunshine once more. As I was again leaving my husband behind at work, I needed it to be super cheap to assuage my guilt.

And so, despite extensive last minute searching and trying to avoid needing a hire car as I still haven’t got around to getting myself a credit card (idiot!), Tenerife was about the only option.

After all, anywhere you can swim in the sea in December in a balmy 22C can’t be too bad, I thought.

Flying into Tenerife it seems pretty clear that I’d summed up the island’s main (only?) appeal as a major tourist metropolis. Barren dust meets a ubiquitous strip of white apartment blocks, only given colour by the artificial blue of palatial swimming pools.

But still you smile as a waft of hot air meets you stepping off the plane and sigh with relief, as if you didn’t quite believe it could really be warm in December.

Naturally then, the first thing you do is head for the beach and avoid racking up a small fortune by lying in the sand beside the sea of stupidly-priced rental sunbeds.

Don’t be put off by the black sand – I promise it’s nothing like the ghastly mud flats of northern England. Although you’d be hard-pressed to call it beautiful, the volcanic sand feels clean beneath your feet. And as a bonus it doesn’t drag you down and make you bleed, as somehow happened to me during my most depressing trip to the ‘beach’ in the UK.

From the endless tourist resort of Costa Adeje you can wander all day along the coast without ever really breaking free – but thankfully you will stumble upon some prettier pockets. Quieter harbours and pebble beaches provide more scenic swims in crystal clear water.

A patch of rocky mountainous paths and a nudist beach can be found near La Caleta for example. It is a thrill to escape, but you still won’t be able to find a moment to feel like the only person in the world. And as I neither looked hipster nor homeless, like the camping community found here, I felt somewhat out of place.

You don’t go to Tenerife for a rich native culture and history, but if you’re like me you will search in vain regardless. English was not the most spoken language around me; that makes it authentic right?

Who cares that 99 percent of the people around me wouldn’t be able to say who the native people were, what they would look like, or what language they would speak? Any trace of the Guanches has been all but eradicated.

Alternatively, Tenerife is just about Spanish enough to be able to sit down to dinner at 10pm, but not so much so that the streets become apocalyptic in the middle of the afternoon. Prices are cheaper than at home; but certainly not third-world-esque.

Heading off on trips around the island, there are a couple of spectacular finds. The volcanic landscape around Mount Teide is fascinating and the magical hidden village of Masca looks like it belongs only in an Indiana Jones film. These places go some way to redeem a visit to Tenerife, but again you’ll be disappointed if you hope to get away from a touristy feel.

Photos do not do justice to the magic of Masca

Whatever you do, don’t be as foolish as I was and go on one of the €15 bus tours. The brochures do mention a ‘heath presentation,’ which I was naïve enough to think would be a cute local shop trying to sell us oils and creams.

No – what it really means is half a day in a conference room being talked at about bedding for arthritis and other typically twilight disorders. I can save you the lecture – basically if you had slept under wool growing up you would be scaling mountains in your 80s like the Germans, etc etc. You’re welcome.

Why the tour was sold to someone in their 20s is beyond me. Perhaps as a subject of the asides about kids these days never going outside, alongside the other irrelevant but well-pitched comments about the good ol’ days.

After the most unhurried sales pitch you then get a whistle-stop tour with just over an hour off the bus.

So I beg you, choose one of the tours advertised around the €40 euro mark (I was given this for €25 with little effort). You will still waste excessive time at a very average restaurant where you will get a two-option €7 euro slop-it-on-a-tray meal. (I would have preferred to pay more for better food – and that is really saying something as stingy as I am.) But you will actually get a day tour, not a brief bonus added onto the end of your ‘educational’ experience.

When it comes down to it, if you’re looking for validation from a stranger on the internet, as we are all guilty of doing now and again, I’m not going to tell you not to go. Ultimately Tenerife was what I needed it to be – sunny and stress-free. But don’t expect too much more than that!