Friday Bench (31):Tenerife 2006

Four years ago we escaped the beginning of February and went to the warm climes of Tenerife.

This bench was in one of the shopping plazas in Playa de Los Americas. I have to admit now that it was the cactus I was taking a photograph of and I've cropped it so you can see the bench and the plant. I did a different crop excluding the bench but including a shop window on the other side when I published the photo Shopping Plaza Cactus along with others on my account of Tenerife & La Gomera.

My favourite benches discovered recently include Inverness Daily Photo's on Ness Islands, Misfit's in Liberty, Daryl's in Battery Park City, Steffen's in Stuttgart and AB's in Saarland.

ABC Wednesday - J is for Joggers

Joggers on a beach (Playa del Camison) in Tenerife.

I've only just got back on line after telephone engineers replaced the cable running from our house to the telegraph pole. It had become frayed after an adjacent tree was chopped down some while back, allowing water to get in!

Perhaps it is also J for Job Well Done, but I'll keep my fingers crossed a little bit longer as the speed still seems slow - hopefully it get back up soon.

To visit other ABC J posts go to Mrs. Nesbitt's Place.

ABC Wednesday - Z is for Zoo

I was in two minds whether to go with Z for Zoo, as I'm not too keen on promoting zoos and I'm sure a few other's will have done Z for Zoo too. I had an alternative, obscure Z as a possibilty but decided to go to the Zoo anyway.


Loro Parque Zoo is in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. We went because, when there are only a limited number of excursions on offer, you take what you can get. We travelled in a large coach, belonging to Orobus, which had an hydraulic lift for wheelchairs. Being first on, we were seated at the front over the driver, affording us an excellent view. Our route was all the way round the island on the motorway. We got many sightings of El Teide.


In Planet Penguin the humans stand on a slowing moving conveyor belt, watching the penguins on their artificial iceberg, or maybe it is they who watch us in wonderment.


We wanted to see the dolphin show but the signposting was such that you had to go round through many other areas to get there. The direct route was either unsigned or blocked. It took us twenty exhausting minutes to push our way through the crowds. When we did get there, it was certainly worth it. Dolphins are natural performers and the show was very enjoyable.


We had four and a half hours in which to explore the park. At €24 each, entrance isn't cheap. It is typical of most such places. They compulsorily take your picture as you enter and then try to sell you a copy at the exit for an outrageous €6! If you enjoy this sort of place, there are lots to see, but we got lost in and around a forest walk with raucous caged parrots. Although the paths allowed wheelchair access everywhere, they went up and down and around, often bending at an angle. Christine skidded on one particularly steep adverse camber. We were soon quite tired and really did't get to see too much of what was on offer.

More of my photographs from the zoo can be found in my Natural Images album.

ABC Wednesday - T is for Travel

I could have gone T for Tallinn but you can see my photos and account of that lovely city here and here.

I could have gone T for Trondheim but you can see my photos and account of that lovely city here.

I could have gone T for Tenerife but you can see my photos and account of that island here.

People seem to have the impression that I am well-travelled but I have only visited 13% of the world.



This map and the others you can compile on the net are bit misleading but interesting nonetheless. For the first 50-odd years of my life apart from a week in Amsterdam in 1980 [which included a day-trip to Brussels] and one holiday in Denmark, I never left the UK. However we saw an awful lot of the UK from St Agnes in the Scillies to Unst in Shetland. Very few areas of the British Isles are unvisited.

We didn't start world-travelling until 1999 when we ventured across the sea to Ireland. Later that year we flew via Amsterdam to Los Angeles. On the visited countries map that is enough to colour in the whole of the USA from New York westwards including Alaska.

In 2001 we had our tremendous holiday of a lifetime spending a month travelling around New Zealand which puts some colour in the bottom right-hand corner. The dot representing Singapore, our only stopover in Asia barely shows up.

The following year, having had to give up driving, we took a coach holiday through Europe visiting 9 countries in 9 days. There were some highlights but, in some respects it was possibly one of our grimmest holidays. It certainly colours the map though.

It was three years before we ventured abroad again on a fabulous cruise to Ireland, Greenland, Iceland and Norway. In 2006 we went quite mad (and why not?). Firstly we had a holiday in February to Tenerife, which adds Spain to the map even though we've never seen its mainland. June saw us on our second cruise, this time to the Baltics. Although we only visit St. Petersburg, the map covers in the whole of Russia all the way to Siberia! Finally at the end of September we went to Crete, which adds Greece to the map even though we've never seen its mainland.

Our only holiday this year was a week in Southport. We have enjoyed a few day-trips to various places. The likelihood is that we won't be doing very much physical travelling in the future except for short journeys. Any regrets? Absolutely none. I travel Around the World everyday without leaving home.

adventure

mother and child
seek their adventure
below the peak

words & photo © gerald england 2007

in response to the "adventure" theme at One Deep Breath.

Wandering the Hills of Tenerife

Here is another video of Tenerife. It is less hair-raising than the previous one of the road to Masca and has a very pleasant musical soundtrack.



Thanks to Pamela of Secret Tenerife for tracking this down.

Masca and hairpin bends

Pamela of Secret Tenerife led me to this short video of driving around the hairpin bends to Masca.



If you want to know more and watch a longer video about this once remote village, visit her post on The road to Masca.

one line haiku

The theme this week at One Deep Breath is one-line haiku.

Here is a selection of haiku written during our visit to Tenerife in February 2006.

1. lift music wafts down the corridor into our room



2. two palm trees a ladies old bicycle parked between



3. purple flowers opposite burnt-out remains of mini-golf



4. skateboard park iron bars at the entrance to the church



5. on the roof outside the nudist zone topless sunbathers



6. among dunes across the old crater snow and stones



7. hillside terraces hang uncultivated between land-slips



8. overcoats strewn on hotel lobby cases the weather back home



9. red sailboat at the side of the motorway by a bus stop

## 2 & 6 were published in Time Haiku (UK).

## 4, 5 & 9 and the above charcoal were published in The Sons of Camus Writers International (Canada).