When travelling we’re always looking for adventures and „photo opportunities” spots. We’re visiting and exploring places, which aren’t mentioned in a tour guides. Out first day on Tenerife was just like that – visiting sites of the beaten path. El Medano should be added to this list – chilled slow pace surf vibe town , it was near our accommodation and we spent a lot of time there. It’s a perfect place to start exploring eastern coastline.
El Medano
El Medano in our opinion is not a place you can call “stunning”- it’s kind of ordinary, peaceful town with beach and hill on the south. El Medano is definitely a paradise for kite and windsurfing fans due to strong winds rolling down the hills from top of El Teide.
Instead of spending time on the beach or in the city (there’s lot of nice places to eat) we’re recommending amazing view point near El Medano. We went there from our isolated hotel Casa Bioclimatica, but you can try to find that place with GPS- it’s called Montana Pelada. You should take exit/zona industrial/from autopista and go toward the ocean after first roundabout keep and eye on right turn on a gravel road which should bring you to the seaside along the windmills. You can leave your car here and trek 15min to the top of old caldera on your right and continue around the rim until you see El Medano.
Sanatorio de Abona
We visited Sanatorio de Abona- sanatorium of leapers, because we saw it on one of polish travel blogs and we knew that we can’t skip it. Finding it is not so easy, but it is highly recommended if you are into abandoned places! We navigated to Abades and left our car in a village then we walked to the Iglesia (church) on top of the small cliff. Iglesia is visible all the way from autopista so it is a good navigating spot. We discovered that place on the Ola’s blog- Tails of Wonders.
Sanatorio de Abona supposed to be a village purposely built for leapers and construction began in 1943. Epidemic of leprosy stopped before construction was finished and no leaper ever been there.
Sanatorio looks like perfect scenery for post-apocalyptic movie. While we were strolling around and moving towards large buildings in the middle of a complex we have spotted army trucks moving towards us and without thinking we turned around, place is scary enough without additional attractions this looked like invasion in Syria – not our cup of tea . We observed more military on the way back in Abades and in Sanatorio area we thought it could be some kind of camp or they were trying to make military base there. Its a perfect place for something like that, landscape is similar to one in Iraq or Afghanistan and there’s lot of buildings to carry out military exercises. They didn’t take care about us, but we preferred to stay in distance: D
Los Roquest de Fasnia
As a next we visited Los Roques de Fasnia and it was just quick „photo opportunity” place, so we stopped only for a few minutes.
Candelaria
Candelaria is very important place from religious point of view. There is a sanctuary of veneration of the Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands. We were in Candelaria when local people were preparing for celebrating Carnival. We were surprised, because in our part of Europe it was a time of a Great Lent (Ash Wednesday in 2018 was on 14 February, and we were on Tenerife between 1-8 March). We have no idea why they celebrating at this time, so if you can explain it to us we are eager to hear that from you!
In Candelaria we met people from a senior club who casually were having a dancing fiesta on the street it didn’t take long for being invited to the party which we happily accepted.
Playa de las Teresitas
Playa de las Teresitas was very short stop on our trip, because we’re not a big fans of lying down on a beach and doing nothing. Literally we weren’t even on a beach, we went to the view point called Mirador Las Teresitas and view from there is stunning. Las Teresitas is likely the most beautiful beach of Tenerife, but don’t be naive- it wasn’t yellow always. Before 70’s Las Teresitas was covered by black, volcanic “sand”, then people decided to create a little paradise there and transported tones of yellow sand from Sahara.
