Hola Spain

Ok, ok I'm a little behind in my blog posts but I'll catch up soon (I hope)!! For so long we have heard about the "Legend of Tenerife" that we were beginning to wonder if we would ever see it ourselves so we were most excited as we berthed in Tenerife, an island of the Canary Islands group and part of Spain. After a smooth, ten day sail from our last field service, Togo we pulled alongside the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Jess peering over the railing as we pull closer.

Our beautiful view for about two months. Tenerife is a very mountainous and volcanic island. It lies on the same latitude as the Sahara desert and enjoys beautiful weather all year round. Mostly to me it was HOT! Even though most Australians would never have heard of the Canary Islands, according to Wikipedia the Canaries are one of the major tourist destinations of the world! Tenerife itself receives more than 5,000,000 tourists per year. So imagine how lucky we felt to be able to spend some time on this amazing, diverse island.

The Africa Mercy docked and the land rovers down.

So what do we do after six months in West Africa. Why McDonalds of course!!! After clearance from customs and a record attendance at a community meeting where we were all debriefed (well not literally) on the ins and out of Tenerife we were allowed to disembark. Then after fighting our way out the door we made our way to Maccas only to hit our first and continual snag. We can't speak Spanish!! On dear-thank goodness for pictures! Hand gestures will take you a long way also. After downing a rather large amount of food we went to the supermarket and revelled in aisles and aisles of things we could actually afford and foods that we had been dreaming of.



 One small catch in Tenerife was "the walk". I give it it's own title as "the walk" was about 40 minutes to McDonalds-one way! Talk about a pack of desperado's!! We did "the walk" over and over again, night after night. My feet have just about recovered. Yes we do have about 30 land rovers, however they are not designed for the very narrow streets of Tenerife.

The Africa Mercy from the town side.

The Canary Islands were everything I pictured them to be when I envisaged Spain-colourful, lively. busy but relaxed all at the same time and  full of lovely arcitechture. Fun fact....Tenerife is also famous for being the site of the world's worst aviation disaster. In 1977 two jets collided on the runway at Tenerife North Airport causing 583 deaths.

Very narrow streets!

Very big department stores. Think KMart and Coles smooshed together and then x 3 at least! There were also more Ikeas than you can poke a stick at which was great fun too.

But if I had to sum up the Canaries I would have to say it was all about the food. Food, food everywhere and every kind! Ice creams, pastires and cakes were a definite specialty. This is the only place I have found whipped cream flavoured ice cream and pizzas by the metre.

 Choices, choices......

We promised Jess that she could get her ears pierced for her 13th birthday but as we will be in West Africa for that we made the wise decison to get them pierced in Tenerife.We pounded to pavements searching for somewhere to get it done. Finally we found a pharmacy that did it. Jess managed to laugh and cry at the same time and had some excellent facial expressions.

Nearly there!

All happy now it's over.

That was week one!