Tenerife: No Es Moco de Pavo

Literal translation: It’s no turkey booger
Figurative translation: It’s no small thing/It’s no easy feat

My trip to Tenerife has been quite the adventure. Tess and I arrived to one of the seven Canary Islands very early Friday morning and left late Sunday night. We went to Tenerife for a couple of reasons: to celebrate Tess’ 23rd birthday (my god, she’s young!), to take advantage of our 4 day weekend, to take a break from chilly Madrid, and of course, to visit the Canary Islands.

Lots of shit (good and bad) happened that got us saying “No es moco de pavo” a lot. Here’s a summary:

STICK SHIFT CAR: As you all know, I don’t drive. So that left the driving to Tess. She has driven a stick shift car before (like a long time ago) so she didn’t mind if we saved some money and renting a manual car – like all the other islands here, renting a car is the best way to get around. Tess did awesomely! She was a bit nervous at first and the car stalled a number of times. But by the end of Friday, she was getting used to it. I was very proud of her. Me on the other hand felt really bad because I couldn’t help her at all. When do you let go of the clutch? I have no idea! So I concentrated on my navigating, which I have to say I’m pretty fucking good at. Yes we had to do some cambio de sentidos (see next post), but it was mostly because of the stupid confusing rotundas, bad road signs, construction work, and lack of street names on the map and on the streets. Yup, I got lots of excuses.

ALAN? ALAN WHO?: Tess and I had rented an apartment we had found on the internet. The man, Alan, who we were in contact with, sent Tess an email with a map that led us to their “sales office” in Costa de Silencio, the area where we were staying. After some time of looking for the office (these islands really need to get their act together and draw a proper map), Tess and I walked into the office, told the lady about Alan, and got the response of WHO??? The lady had no idea who he was and no one in that office has any contact with this guy Alan. Somehow, we found the apartment and we had a place to stay…whew! But it’s still a mystery as to who this Alan guy is and why he directed us to that office.

TEIDE: The highest point in Spain…and it’s ridiculously beautiful. This one was no easy feat either. It took us about two hours just to get up, over and around mountains to finally reach the Teide (again, poor Tess). Yes we stopped a few times to enjoy the view, but it was quite a drive up there. We had to go through lots of winding narrow roads. During one of our stops, we couldn’t get the emergency brake down and thought we were never gonna get out of there…thankfully a random man just happen to walk by (in a very deserted area) and helped us out. As we were halfway up some mountain, we found ourselves in the middle of the clouds. We could barely see what was in front of us. But once we got above the clouds, it was totally worth it.

PEANUT DISCO PUB: The name, Costa de Silencio, is quite fitting for this part of Tenerife. This area is super calm – compared to Playa de las Americas and Cristianos, where most tourists stay – especially at night. Tenerife is full of Germans and Brits. It’s also full of Latin Americans. I rarely heard Spanish there…at least the Spanish I could understand. In Silencio, the only tourists that were there were old retired foreigners. So Tess and I found only one place to go to – that didn’t involve driving - on Friday: Peanut Disco Pub. Oh si!...not only is it a disco, but it’s also a pub. We were there for less than two hours and we got, against our will, about 5 different guys’ digits and offers to give us “tours” of Tenerife. One even wrote under his number, “Para ligar, trabajar NO!” (In order to flirt, not to work!). It was ridiculous. This place was basically a pub with about twenty Latin Americans (mostly men) hanging out and dancing to sexy Latin music. If only they were sexy! Gradually, they all came up asking us to dance, which eventually led to a lot of “me encantas”! Me encantas my ass! There was a Columbian guy who would not stop telling me this, and I just looked at him half laughing, half “get the hell out of here”. He was 45 years old with two daughters, 14 and 18. Sick!!! Needless to say, Tess and I found ourselves running out of there, escaping as they were all distracted.

P.S. Me encantas means I like you, but it’s more than just like. It’s between like and love.

AIRPORT CRISIS: Oh the airport crisis. For being an island, Tenerife is pretty fancy and has two airports. We flew into the Northern one so we just assumed we would fly out of the same airport. But of course not. We arrived at the Northern Airport, dropped off the rental car, checked in just to hear the lady say Air Europa ONLY flies to Madrid via the Southern Airport. Ooops! With a little less than two hours before our flight, we hurriedly got into a cab and agreed to pay a ridiculous amount of money to catch our flight. We just made it on time for our flight and do some window shopping, which was quite necessary after a nerve-wracking cab ride.