Tenerife

With the boom back on, we left Puerto Calero in the afternoon and had a smooth overnight sail to Santa Cruz de la Tenerife, a place we haven't been to since the start of our world tour in 2004. Not much seemed to have changed in the harbor, except for a new marina building, which by now looks like it has always been there. The harbor itself is as sleepy as always, and it seems just the ferries and the occasional cruise ship which dock in the next basin up north. But the town, which we always liked, had improved and now features a nice central pedestrian zone.

Our friends had already started exploring the island by car when we got in in the late morning. So we took off for another island tour the following day. First along the north coast to the rather pleasant little town of Garachico, which once was the major port on the island, until a volcanic eruption filled most of the natural harbor basin with lava. A new harbor has recently been built to the east and the new marina is just becoming operational. It's quite a large basin, that contains a little fishing basin, the marina and a ro-ro terminal for a ferry that is supposed to go to Tazacorte on La Palma. Right now, the still narrow and fast shoaling entrance would not allow any such ferry to make it into the harbor. So, that's ll future. But yachts are welcome and in decent weather the entrance should be fine.

After exploring the old town center of Garachico, we moved on west and south towards the large caldera that surrounds the mighty Teide at an altitude of about 2000m. From in there the big cone goes up another 1700 meters. It si possible to take a cable car up to almost the top and a limited number of pre-registered people is allowed to hike up to the summit from there. We skipped all this and just enjoyed the views from the mezzanine level, which is still way above the clouds.

The next day we started early for a long long 75 mile day cruise, first down the east coast of Tenerife, then along the south and across to the western side of Gomera, where we anchored in our favorite anchorage at Valle Gran Rey.