sometimes you say you are in paradise, but you are really just in florida (spring break #4)

our second day on tenerife.

we had talked with manfred and asked for some hiking suggestions. with his amazing accent he informed us of the trail at masca, where you have to take a bus to the other side of the island, to this town called masca on the top of a ravine. from here you continue to hike down the ravine for about four hours until you make it to the ocean, where you take a boat (maybe get to see some dolphins), pass by los gigantes, and end up in another town where you can get a bus back home. it all sounded quite perfect.

so we set the alarm clock to go off the next morning at 6 AM, just in time to catch the bus. snooze. snooze. snooze. claire, its 645!...RUN. we barely made it to the station in time to stuff down some bus station donuts and catch the bus to buena vista. we then had to catch a connecting bus from buena vista to masca. and my definition of bus is loose. really, it was a van stuffed with unsuspecting victims. germans, spaniards, tessa, and me. it may have been the scariest ride of my life. i couldn't even understand how the van could be going up the mountain and around those curves so quickly. at one point you could see where a car had crashed, and was no left on the side of the mountain. that didn't give me too much hope for survival. everyone was scared, it was an international bonding experience.

and so we finally get there alive, and it is the cutest village. and i know i have said this a lot, but i should probably live there someday.


we stopped to buy our boat tickets, for once we got down to the ocean, and then to eat some breakfast/lunch/pre-hike goodness.
white coffee, salt water potatos with mojo, and goat cheese with honey and mojo. (tessa- you are an evil cheese and potato doofus...sorry guys, i would explain, but its really not all that funny to begin with anyway)

exploring the town we
1)made a cactus friend
2)discovered that cactus flippers can be very dangerous when they get old cause they get too heavy and just randomly fall. seriously, i think you could probably die if one big enough happened to fall on you
3)tried to find the museum, but either it was closed, or we are too challenged to be able to find a museum in town about 3 meters across.
4) bought some mystery tropical fruit from a little old lady on the side of the road. one was guava, i am pretty sure, but the other we have no idea what it was other than yellow, round, and with black seeds. but they tasted good, so it didnt really matter.




and we started off on the trail. all i can say was it was amazing. one of those times when you don't believe that you are actually doing it, and you know that it won't feel real once you leave either. highlights:

1)tessa taught me some cool geology stuff. (dykes are vertical stripes in the rocks and sills are horizontal stripes...i think)
2)we stopped at this little wooden bridge for a fruit break and sang loudly (well, it was more like me singing loudly and tessa being embarrased and laughing at me)
3) we made friends with the german hiking tour group. we couldn't get away from them...those german tours are fast!
4)scaled cliffs, climbed rocks, rock jumped, butt slid, and got laughed at when i fell down by a french family. (the kids were badass, but seriously, did they need to laugh at me?)

apparently when manfred said "hike down a ravine", tessa heard "stroll merily along a hill"...so the climbing and scaling took her quite by surprise. she went from excited, to amazed, to crazed, to a bit grumpy. thankfully the grumpy phase was only towards the end (seriously, we LITERALLY can't get any lower now....i think we died yesterday on the plane, and now we are in hell and this ravine is never going to end!)...and all that meant for me was less talking besides the funny tortured comments on her part, so i didnt mind. when we could see the ocean tessa could not have been happier.


basically it was unbelievable.

we then boarded a boat, floated on turquoise bright blue water past huge cliffs (called los gigantes)...didn't see any dolphins, but it was ok...and ended up in the town called los gigantes, which is this super tourist, ugly, same as any other tourist resort, town. but it was good enough for sitting and eating (potatos and mojo once again, and tessa got some calamari).

it was also good enough to rid our feet of evil binding tennis shoes (we had been hiking in some quite innappropriate shoes, so our feet weren't too happy), and buy some flip flops. unfortunately, after stopping at a bar to waste some time (where they had strongbow!-i got one for you rach!), and suddenly realizing we were going to miss the bus..i left my shoes! so i have officially sacrificed my favorite green and blue shoes to the god of masca and strongbow.