Tenerife

Unfortunately I forgot my camera when going on Tenerife and wife's 5M Fuji was clearly not up to the job. Not all optics are created equal and the "big" pixel number does not get you far if it sits behind a consumer grade lens

Scenery

Parts of Tenerife are beautiful.

Los Gigantes, Teide and the lava fields.

Other parts are like the middle section of Fuerte. Package Holiday land at its worst. Land ravaged and vandalised by holiday overbuild. You can find them in any travel company booklet so no point posting anything here.

Beaches and Coastline

Tenerife beach is an oxymoron. There are so few, that "X meters away from the beach" in a resort brochure reads like a bad joke. So the choice for having a dip is mostly between lidos shared by several hotels and the hotel pool. Based on our own experience lidos should be avoided unless you feel like having to administer first aid to cut toes on a daily basis.

Entertainment

My ideas of "party life" differ from those of the general british population so any of the material here will not be of interest for the "10 pints, chicken tikka massala and throw-up party" fans.

Dolphin and Whale Watching

Tenerife has is one of the few places in the world where you are practically guaranteed to see dolphins and whales. The straights between Tenerife and La Gomera have a couple of resident pods of bottlenoses and pilot whales so all it takes to see them is to just go out and watch.

As with all tourist attractions on Tenerife this has been industrialised and perverted to the point where it will suit the big tourist operator aims of delivering nothing while still charging you a fortune. The dolphin watching ships going out of Playa de Ingles are big, slow and lavishly decorated to suit the tourist sense of kitsch. They are also utterly useless for seeing anything because it takes them a couple of hours to get to the actual area where the pods reside. Once there they have only 10-15 minutes to hang around before they have to go back. If you want to see dolphins go to Los Gigantes and get onboard of one of the small boats that sail regularly from there. They are only 30 minutes out from the area where the pilot whales are and they are small enough to get close to them so you can see them properly.

Water Parks

The main Tenerife water parque at Playa de Ingles is crowded and severely overbooked even out of season. As with all other Spanish water parks the food is limited to specially selected set of cholesterol and shugar junk-food-at-its-worst through a "cross-marketing" agreement. Fruit, a good chuleta or fish are totally off the menu. Burgers, super-shugary junk drinks and chips dripping fat. Yeah, serves you right for not bringing your own.

However, in the specific case of Playa de Ingles there is a saving grace - they have an extremely good dolphin show. In fact probably one of the best I have seen in Europe so far.

Loro Parque

Loro Parque is a "must see" for Tenerife and the sole reason why it is still being considered as a possible destination when we discuss the destination for our next family holiday.

It has a good aquarium, fantastic collection of parrots (though after the 3rd parrot they all start looking the same to most kids), well designed park grounds and a reasonable collection of other animals. However, the dolphin show was sub-par compared to the Playa De Ingles one at least in 2006. Fortunately, the absolutely excellent see lion show and parrot show were more than enough to compensate for this. The last time we went there was before they became the second place in Europe to have killer whales and this is something we would definitely want to see next time we am there.

-- AntonIvanov? - 14 Nov 2008