Local experiences in Tenerife

For our three-week (survival) holiday in the Canary Islands in the winter we had planned nothing - no accommodation, no sightseeing spots, no transport. We just flew off with our rucksacks, tents, ready-to-eat food and a tin pot and would just go on vacation step by step - sort of like a scavenger hunt. During this time I have collected some insider tips ... and I would like to share them now!

Our first stop: Tenerife. As I dangled dinner in our first "home" in La Caleta (a naturist hippie camp, as I discovered to my surprise), our new neighbor, Georgi from Bulgaria, greeted me. After a short conversation came the first hint of our scavenger hunt: Georgi had a car on the island, since he lived here for five years and asked us to drive us the next day for a bit of money through the island in a turbo speed and We also show local spots. Perfect!

On the following days we rattled off many beautiful places on our road trip with Georgi: 

The volcano El Teide

The Masca gorge

A rock formation in the form of a rose (Mirador Piedra de la Rosa)

The city of Porto de la Cruz 

Our insider tip: a typical Guachinche

Without our new friend, who has lived in Tenerife for years, we would never have found this highlight in the middle of nowhere with traditional Spanish cuisine and no other tourist. Around the place “La Orotava”, for example, there are many of these cuisines to discover. There was no menu in this restaurant and luckily there was no English-speaking waitress - here a few traditional dishes were freshly cooked every day. Our personal "tour guide", who could also speak fluent Spanish, ordered everything for us to try once: A cherry pea and meat stew, Canarian goat cheese with various sweet sauces, potatoes with the specialty sauce "Mojo Rojo" and " Mojo Verde “from the Canary Islands and three different desserts. With wine it all cost a mere 40 euros.

My initial skepticism about camping on vacation was quickly dampened by many helpful and open people. Sure, a vacation on a much too thin mattress on a stone floor was not the coziest, but here we really experienced new adventures every day. So if you feel inspired - let's go to the Canaries, have fun discovering!