Tenerife: Small Children Give Me Hives

They don’t really.  That isn’t very nice.

Also, what’s Tenerife?  It’s a totally spectacular, very strange island off the western coast of Africa (but it’s technically Spain).  Strange because it’s like a vacation island, only you might die there (for further explanation, read on).

I initially heard about the Canary Islands years ago from a few friends of mine who had studied abroad in Madrid, and something about their vague stories had captured my imagination and I decided that we HAD to go.  (Right?  Makes total sense.)  Add that to the island’s enormous volcano (this was the death part) and bizarre flora and fauna, and we were totally in.  Observe:

Here’s an exercise for you.  Imagine looking at this nice, fairly harmless-looking hill.  Then, imagine that the ground starts to rumble.  Then, imagine that a hole blows open in the side of the hill and piping-hot lava starts shooting out of the side of the hill and sliding down the landscape towards you.  What would you do?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I DO know that once I realized that the volcanoes on Tenerife were still very much active, I was maybe just slightly less excited to be there.  Because when it blows, it blows EVERYWHERE:

[Sand/not really sand and really painful for your feets]

This is the “sand.”  On the “beach.”  As in, the perimeter of the island.  As in, if you start to feel things a-rumbling, I really hope you can swim.  Also as in, these are lava rocks.  Not sand.  Because there ain’t nowhere to hide.

I’m sorry, am I stressing you out?  I shouldn’t be, because other than its tendency to kill all living life and destroy all standing structures and ruin everything every few hundred years, Tenerife is basically paradise (with a caveat.  There’s always something, right?).

We had a pretty good instant-gratification situation after flying in, where we drove for 30 minutes and suddenly were seaside eating this:

Which soon became this:

[This picture doesn’t make it super easy to see how much this looks like a cartoon fish skeleton.  But I promise it was.  Also, how happy does he look?  I am so lucky.]

Real talk: I am, as a rule, entirely uninterested in a massive platter of fish.  Bring on the paella:

[This was really pleasing.]

Tenerife, like Boulder, has a rocky beach full of strange rock statues inevitably made by some deranged person.  Proof:

And the zoom-out:

[RIGHT???  I know.  Someone needs to get a job.]

It is also home to several pleasant seaside walks with charming restaurants:

and really satisfying palm trees and blue sky:

In general, it was pretty freakin’ amazing.  We took the requisite vacation photos:

[The tannest I will be for a very, very long time]

and My Man spent a lot of time pondering the meaning of life.

[It’s a good use of time.]

So, other than the consistent feeling of imminent death, I would say that Tenerife gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up.  I don’t think I would go back because it’s too far away.  But I sure am glad we went!  The end.  Oh, and in case you’re wondering: the name of this post is because there were too many small German children at our hotel.  That’s all.  Now it’s really the end.